Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Center for Imaging Research, Milwaukee, WI 53226, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2013 Jul;51(8):1510-7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.04.008. Epub 2013 Apr 25.
According to an influential view of conceptual representation, action concepts are understood through motoric simulations, involving motor networks of the brain. A stronger version of this embodied account suggests that even figurative uses of action words (e.g., grasping the concept) are understood through motoric simulations. We investigated these claims by assessing whether Parkinson's disease (PD), a disorder affecting the motor system, is associated with selective deficits in comprehending action-related sentences. Twenty PD patients and 21 age-matched controls performed a sentence comprehension task, where sentences belonged to one of four conditions: literal action, non-idiomatic metaphoric action, idiomatic action, and abstract. The same verbs (referring to hand/arm actions) were used in the three action-related conditions. Patients, but not controls, were slower to respond to literal and idiomatic action than to abstract sentences. These results indicate that sensory-motor systems play a functional role in semantic processing, including processing of figurative action language.
根据概念表示的一种有影响力的观点，动作概念是通过涉及大脑运动网络的运动模拟来理解的。这种具身观点的一个更强版本表明，即使是动作词的比喻用法（例如，抓住概念）也是通过运动模拟来理解的。我们通过评估帕金森病（PD）是否与理解与动作相关的句子的选择性缺陷有关，来研究这些说法。20 名 PD 患者和 21 名年龄匹配的对照组进行了句子理解任务，句子属于以下四种情况之一：字面动作、非惯用隐喻动作、惯用动作和抽象。在三个与动作相关的条件中使用了相同的动词（指手/臂动作）。患者比对照组对字面动作和惯用动作的反应更慢，而对抽象句子的反应则更快。这些结果表明，感觉运动系统在语义处理中发挥了功能作用，包括对比喻性动作语言的处理。
