Conder Julie, Fridriksson Julius, Baylis Gordon C, Smith Cameron M, Boiteau Timothy W, Almor Amit
McMaster University, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, Canada.
University of South Carolina, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, United States.
Brain Lang. 2017 Jan;164:16-24. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2016.09.007. Epub 2016 Sep 28.
It is commonly held that language is largely lateralized to the left hemisphere in most individuals, whereas spatial processing is associated with right hemisphere regions. In recent years, a number of neuroimaging studies have yielded conflicting results regarding the role of language and spatial processing areas in processing language about space (e.g., Carpenter, Just, Keller, Eddy, & Thulborn, 1999; Damasio et al., 2001). In the present study, we used sparse scanning event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of spatial language, that is; language used to communicate the spatial relationship of one object to another. During scanning, participants listened to sentences about object relationships that were either spatial or non-spatial in nature (color or size relationships). Sentences describing spatial relationships elicited more activation in the superior parietal lobule and precuneus bilaterally in comparison to sentences describing size or color relationships. Activation of the precuneus suggests that spatial sentences elicit spatial-mental imagery, while the activation of the SPL suggests sentences containing spatial language involve integration of two distinct sets of information - linguistic and spatial.
人们普遍认为，在大多数个体中，语言主要定位于左半球，而空间处理与右半球区域相关。近年来，一些神经影像学研究在语言和空间处理区域在处理关于空间的语言方面的作用上得出了相互矛盾的结果（例如，Carpenter、Just、Keller、Eddy和Thulborn，1999年；Damasio等人，2001年）。在本研究中，我们使用稀疏扫描事件相关功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来研究空间语言的神经关联，即：用于传达一个物体与另一个物体空间关系的语言。在扫描过程中，参与者听关于物体关系的句子，这些句子在性质上要么是空间的，要么是非空间的（颜色或大小关系）。与描述大小或颜色关系的句子相比，描述空间关系的句子在双侧顶上小叶和楔前叶引起更多激活。楔前叶的激活表明空间句子引发空间心理意象，而顶上小叶的激活表明包含空间语言的句子涉及两种不同信息集——语言信息和空间信息的整合。
