L2C2-Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS/UCBL, Université Claude Bernard Lyon1, Lyon, France.
PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e30663. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030663. Epub 2012 Jan 24.
Evidence for cross-talk between motor and language brain structures has accumulated over the past several years. However, while a significant amount of research has focused on the interaction between language perception and action, little attention has been paid to the potential impact of language production on overt motor behaviour. The aim of the present study was to test whether verbalizing during a grasp-to-displace action would affect motor behaviour and, if so, whether this effect would depend on the semantic content of the pronounced word (Experiment I). Furthermore, we sought to test the stability of such effects in a different group of participants and investigate at which stage of the motor act language intervenes (Experiment II). For this, participants were asked to reach, grasp and displace an object while overtly pronouncing verbal descriptions of the action ("grasp" and "put down") or unrelated words (e.g. "butterfly" and "pigeon"). Fine-grained analyses of several kinematic parameters such as velocity peaks revealed that when participants produced action-related words their movements became faster compared to conditions in which they did not verbalize or in which they produced words that were not related to the action. These effects likely result from the functional interaction between semantic retrieval of the words and the planning and programming of the action. Therefore, links between (action) language and motor structures are significant to the point that language can refine overt motor behaviour.
过去几年来，关于运动和语言脑结构之间相互作用的证据不断积累。然而，尽管大量研究集中在语言感知与动作之间的相互作用上，但对语言产生对明显运动行为的潜在影响关注甚少。本研究旨在检验在进行抓握-移开动作时发声是否会影响运动行为，如果是这样，那么这种影响是否取决于发音单词的语义内容（实验一）。此外，我们试图在另一组参与者中测试这种效应的稳定性，并研究语言在运动行为的哪个阶段介入（实验二）。为此，参与者被要求在进行明显的动作描述（“抓握”和“放下”）或不相关的词（例如“蝴蝶”和“鸽子”）时伸手、抓握和移动物体。对几个运动学参数（如速度峰值）的精细分析表明，当参与者说出与动作相关的词时，他们的动作速度比不发声或说出与动作不相关的词时更快。这些效应可能是由于词的语义检索与动作的计划和编程之间的功能相互作用所致。因此，（动作）语言和运动结构之间的联系非常重要，以至于语言可以细化明显的运动行为。
