Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA.
Neuroimage. 2013 Dec;83:862-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.044. Epub 2013 Jul 24.
The idea that the conceptual system draws on sensory and motor systems has received considerable experimental support in recent years. Whether the tight coupling between sensory-motor and conceptual systems is modulated by factors such as context or task demands is a matter of controversy. Here, we tested the context sensitivity of this coupling by using action verbs in three different types of sentences in an fMRI study: literal action, apt but non-idiomatic action metaphors, and action idioms. Abstract sentences served as a baseline. The result showed involvement of sensory-motor areas for literal and metaphoric action sentences, but not for idiomatic ones. A trend of increasing sensory-motor activation from abstract to idiomatic to metaphoric to literal sentences was seen. These results support a gradual abstraction process whereby the reliance on sensory-motor systems is reduced as the abstractness of meaning as well as conventionalization is increased, highlighting the context sensitive nature of semantic processing.
近年来，概念系统依赖于感觉和运动系统的观点得到了大量实验的支持。感觉-运动系统和概念系统之间的紧密耦合是否受到上下文或任务需求等因素的调节，这是一个有争议的问题。在这里，我们通过在 fMRI 研究中使用三种不同类型的句子中的动作动词来测试这种耦合的上下文敏感性：字面动作、恰当但非惯用的动作隐喻和动作习语。抽象句子作为基线。结果表明，对于字面和隐喻动作句子，涉及感觉-运动区域，但对于惯用句子则没有。从抽象到惯用再到隐喻再到字面句子，可以看到感觉-运动激活程度逐渐增加的趋势。这些结果支持了一个逐渐抽象的过程，即随着意义的抽象程度以及常规化程度的增加，对感觉-运动系统的依赖程度降低，突出了语义处理的上下文敏感性。
