State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
Sci Rep. 2013;3:2049. doi: 10.1038/srep02049.
The embodied view of language processing holds that language comprehension involves the recruitment of sensorimotor information, as evidenced by the somatotopic representation of action verbs in the motor system. However, this review has not yet been examined in logographic scripts such as Chinese, in which action verbs can provide explicit linguistic cues to the effectors (arm, leg, mouth) that conduct the action (hit, jump, drink). We compared the somatotopic representation of Chinese verbs that contain such effector cues and those that do not. The results showed that uncued verbs elicited similar somatotopic representation in the motor and premotor cortex as found in alphabetic scripts. However, effector-cued verbs demonstrated an inverse somatotopic pattern by showing reduced activation in corresponding motor areas, despite that effector-cued verbs actually are rated higher in imageability than uncued verbs. Our results support the universality of somatotopic representation of action verbs in the motor system.
语言处理的具身观认为，语言理解涉及到感觉运动信息的招募，这一点可以从运动系统中动作动词的躯体定位表示中得到证明。然而，这种观点在汉字等表意文字脚本中尚未得到检验，在汉字中，动作动词可以为执行动作的效应器（手臂、腿部、嘴巴）提供明确的语言线索（击打、跳跃、饮用）。我们比较了含有这种效应器线索的汉语动词和不含有这种线索的动词的躯体定位表示。结果表明，未提示的动词在运动和前运动皮层中引起的躯体定位与在字母脚本中发现的相似。然而，效应器提示的动词表现出相反的躯体定位模式，在相应的运动区域显示出较低的激活，尽管效应器提示的动词在可想象性方面实际上比未提示的动词评分更高。我们的结果支持运动系统中动作动词的躯体定位表示的普遍性。
