Van Ettinger-Veenstra Helene, McAllister Anita, Lundberg Peter, Karlsson Thomas, Engström Maria
Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV), Linköping UniversityLinköping, Sweden; Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping UniversityLinköping, Sweden; Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping UniversityLinköping, Sweden.
Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping UniversityLinköping, Sweden; Division of Speech and Language Pathology, CLINTEC, Karolinska InstitutetStockholm, Sweden.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Mar 11;10:110. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00110. eCollection 2016.
This study investigates the relation between individual language ability and neural semantic processing abilities. Our aim was to explore whether high-level language ability would correlate to decreased activation in language-specific regions or rather increased activation in supporting language regions during processing of sentences. Moreover, we were interested if observed neural activation patterns are modulated by semantic incongruency similarly to previously observed changes upon syntactic congruency modulation. We investigated 27 healthy adults with a sentence reading task-which tapped language comprehension and inference, and modulated sentence congruency-employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We assessed the relation between neural activation, congruency modulation, and test performance on a high-level language ability assessment with multiple regression analysis. Our results showed increased activation in the left-hemispheric angular gyrus extending to the temporal lobe related to high language ability. This effect was independent of semantic congruency, and no significant relation between language ability and incongruency modulation was observed. Furthermore, there was a significant increase of activation in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) bilaterally when the sentences were incongruent, indicating that processing incongruent sentences was more demanding than processing congruent sentences and required increased activation in language regions. The correlation of high-level language ability with increased rather than decreased activation in the left angular gyrus, a region specific for language processing, is opposed to what the neural efficiency hypothesis would predict. We can conclude that no evidence is found for an interaction between semantic congruency related brain activation and high-level language performance, even though the semantic incongruent condition shows to be more demanding and evoking more neural activation.
本研究调查了个体语言能力与神经语义处理能力之间的关系。我们的目的是探讨在句子处理过程中，高水平语言能力是否与特定语言区域的激活减少相关，或者更确切地说，是否与支持语言区域的激活增加相关。此外，我们感兴趣的是，观察到的神经激活模式是否会像之前观察到的句法一致性调制那样，受到语义不一致性的调制。我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI），通过一个句子阅读任务（该任务涉及语言理解和推理，并对句子一致性进行调制）对27名健康成年人进行了研究。我们通过多元回归分析评估了神经激活、一致性调制和高水平语言能力评估中的测试表现之间的关系。我们的结果显示，与高语言能力相关的左侧角回延伸至颞叶的激活增加。这种效应与语义一致性无关，并且未观察到语言能力与不一致性调制之间存在显著关系。此外，当句子不一致时，双侧额下回（IFG）的激活显著增加，这表明处理不一致的句子比处理一致的句子要求更高，并且需要语言区域增加激活。高水平语言能力与左侧角回（一个特定于语言处理的区域）激活增加而非减少相关，这与神经效率假说的预测相反。我们可以得出结论，尽管语义不一致的情况显示出要求更高且引发更多神经激活，但未发现语义一致性相关的大脑激活与高水平语言表现之间存在相互作用的证据。
