Tomasino Barbara, Fabbro Franco, Brambilla Paolo
Scientific Institute IRCCS "E. Medea", Polo FVG, San Vito al Tagliamento (PN), Italy.
Scientific Institute IRCCS "E. Medea", Polo FVG, San Vito al Tagliamento (PN), Italy; Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Università di Udine, Italy.
Brain Res. 2014 Dec 3;1591:38-52. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2014.10.008. Epub 2014 Oct 14.
This fMRI study investigated the functional mechanisms related to mental simulation of abstract- and action-related words and measured the effect of the type of stimulus (Abstract vs. action verbs) and the type of task (imagery vs. control task) to explore how conceptual representations interact with processing demands. A significant task by stimuli interaction showed that action-related words activated the left sensorimotor cortex during explicit imagery (as compared to the control task), whereas abstract-related verbs did not automatically activate this area. Rather, as we made sure that Abstract verbs were not associated with motor states (as tested in a rating study of our stimulus list), imagery elicited by abstract verb processing (as compared to Action verbs, and controlled for letter detection) differentially activated a right hemisphere neural network including the right supramarginal (SMG) gyrus and the precuneus which might be related to mental imagery of emotion-related scenes and not to the semantics of the stimuli per se. Our results confirmed the view that the activation of the sensorimotor cortex during language processing of abstract- and action-related words is strategy-dependent.
这项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究调查了与抽象词和动作相关词的心理模拟有关的功能机制，并测量了刺激类型（抽象词与动作动词）和任务类型（意象任务与对照任务）的影响，以探究概念表征如何与加工需求相互作用。一项显著的刺激与任务交互作用表明，在明确的意象任务中（与对照任务相比），与动作相关的词激活了左侧感觉运动皮层，而与抽象相关的动词并未自动激活该区域。相反，由于我们确保抽象动词与运动状态无关（如在对我们的刺激列表进行的评级研究中所测试），抽象动词加工引发的意象（与动作动词相比，并控制字母检测）差异激活了一个右侧半球神经网络，包括右侧缘上回（SMG）和楔前叶，这可能与情感相关场景的心理意象有关，而与刺激本身的语义无关。我们的结果证实了这样一种观点，即在对抽象词和动作相关词进行语言加工时，感觉运动皮层的激活是依赖策略的。
