VA Northern California Health Care System, Martinez, CA 94553, USA.
Cortex. 2013 Mar;49(3):658-67. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.03.001. Epub 2012 Mar 8.
A number of recent studies utilizing both functional neuroimaging and lesion analysis techniques in neurologic patients have produced conflicting results with respect to the neural correlates of picture naming. Picture naming involves a number of cognitive processes, from visual perception/recognition to lexical-semantic retrieval to articulation. This middle process, the ability to retrieve a name associated with an object, has been attributed in some cases to posterior portions of the left lateral temporal lobe and in other cases, to anterior temporal cortex. In the current study, we used voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) to identify neural correlates of picture naming in a large sample of well-characterized left hemisphere (LH) patients suffering from a range of naming deficits. We tested patients on the Boston Naming Test (BNT), a clinical, standardized measure of picture naming that is widely used in both clinical and research settings. We found that overall performance on the BNT was associated with a network of LH regions that included significant portions of the left anterior to posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) and underlying white matter, and extended into left inferior parietal cortex. However, when we added covariates to this analysis that controlled for deficits in visual recognition and motor speech in order to isolate brain regions specific to lexical-semantic retrieval, the significant regions that remained were confined almost exclusively to the left mid-posterior MTG and underlying white matter. These findings support the notion that a large network in left peri-Sylvian cortex supports picture naming, but that the left mid-posterior MTG and underlying white matter play a critical role in the core ability to retrieve a name associated with an object or picture.
近期的一些研究利用神经影像学和神经病变分析技术在神经患者中进行，这些研究在图片命名的神经相关性方面产生了相互矛盾的结果。图片命名涉及到许多认知过程，从视觉感知/识别到词汇语义检索再到发音。在某些情况下，这个中间过程，即检索与物体相关的名称的能力，归因于左侧颞叶后部的一些部分，而在其他情况下，归因于颞叶前部。在当前的研究中，我们使用基于体素的病变症状映射（VLSM）在一组大量特征明确的左侧半球（LH）患者中识别图片命名的神经相关性，这些患者患有各种命名缺陷。我们在波士顿命名测试（BNT）上测试了患者，这是一种临床标准化的图片命名测试，在临床和研究环境中都广泛使用。我们发现，BNT 的整体表现与 LH 区域网络相关，该网络包括左侧前到后中部颞叶（MTG）和上部颞叶（STG）的重要部分以及下方的白质，并延伸到左侧下顶叶皮层。然而，当我们在此分析中添加协变量以控制视觉识别和运动言语缺陷，从而隔离特定于词汇语义检索的大脑区域时，仍然存在显著的区域几乎完全局限于左侧中后部 MTG 及其下方的白质。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即左侧颞叶旁皮质的一个大型网络支持图片命名，但左侧中后部 MTG 及其下方的白质在检索与物体或图片相关的名称的核心能力中起着关键作用。
