Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Brain Topogr. 2013 Jul;26(3):458-67. doi: 10.1007/s10548-012-0264-8. Epub 2012 Nov 5.
This study explores the interaction between working memory systems and language processing by examining how differences in working memory capacity (WMC) modulates neural activation levels and functional connectivity during sentence comprehension. The results indicate that two working memory systems may be involved in sentence comprehension, the verbal working memory system and the episodic buffer, but during different phases of the task. A sub-region of the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45) was correlated with WMC during the probe and not during sentence reading while the only region to reveal a correlation with WMC during sentence reading was the posterior cingulate/precuneus area, a region linked to event representation. In addition, functional connectivity analysis suggests that there were two distinct networks affected by WMC. The first was a semantic network that included the middle temporal cortex, an anterior region of the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal region. The second included the posterior cingulate and BA 45 of the inferior frontal gyrus. We propose here that high capacity readers may generate an event representation of the sentence during reading that aids in comprehension and that this event representation involves the processing of the posterior cingulate cortex.
本研究通过考察工作记忆容量（WMC）差异如何调节句子理解过程中的神经激活水平和功能连接，探索了工作记忆系统与语言处理之间的相互作用。结果表明，两个工作记忆系统可能参与了句子理解，即言语工作记忆系统和情景缓冲器，但在任务的不同阶段起作用。左额下回的一个亚区（BA45）在探针期间与 WMC 相关，而不在句子阅读期间相关，而唯一在句子阅读期间与 WMC 相关的区域是后扣带回/楔前叶区域，这是一个与事件表示相关的区域。此外，功能连接分析表明，有两个不同的网络受到 WMC 的影响。第一个是语义网络，包括颞中回、额下回的前区和顶下小叶。第二个包括后扣带回和额下回的 BA45。我们在这里提出，高容量读者在阅读过程中可能会生成句子的事件表示，这有助于理解，并且这个事件表示涉及到后扣带回皮层的处理。
