Center for Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy; Neuroscience Institute of Turin, Italy.
Center for Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy.
Cortex. 2017 Sep;94:73-86. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.06.010. Epub 2017 Jun 27.
Neuroimaging studies have shown that a left fronto-temporo-parietal cerebral network is recruited in the comprehension of both deceitful and ironic speech acts. However, no studies to date have directly compared neural activation during the comprehension of these pragmatic phenomena. We used fMRI to investigate the existence of common and specific neural circuits underlying the comprehension of the same speech act, uttered with different communicative intentions, i.e., of being sincere, deceitful or ironic. In particular, the novelty of the present study is that it explores the existence of a specific cerebral area involved in the recognition of irony versus deceit. We presented 23 healthy participants with 48 context stories each followed by a target sentence. For each story we designed different versions eliciting, respectively, different pragmatic interpretations of the same target sentence - literal, deceitful or ironic-. We kept the semantic and syntactic complexity of the target sentence constant across the conditions. Our results showed that the recognition of ironic communicative intention activated the left temporo-parietal junction (lTPJ), the left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG), the left middle frontal gyrus (lMFG), the left middle temporal gyrus (lMTG), and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC). Comprehension of deceitful communicative intention activated the lIFG, the lMFG, and the lDLPFC. fMRI analysis revealed that a left fronto-temporal network-including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG)-is activated in both irony and deceit recognition. The original result of the present investigation is that the lMTG was found to be more active in the comprehension of ironic versus deceitful communicative intention, thus suggesting its specific role in irony recognition. To conclude, our results showed that common cerebral areas are recruited in the comprehension of both pragmatic phenomena, while the lMTG has a key role in the recognition of ironic versus deceitful communicative intention.
神经影像学研究表明，在理解欺骗性和讽刺性言语行为时，左额颞顶叶大脑网络被招募。然而，迄今为止，尚无研究直接比较理解这些语用现象时的神经激活。我们使用 fMRI 研究了在理解具有不同交际意图的相同言语行为时，共同和特定的神经回路的存在，即真诚、欺骗或讽刺。特别是，本研究的新颖之处在于它探索了在识别讽刺与欺骗时涉及特定大脑区域的存在。我们向 23 名健康参与者展示了 48 个上下文故事，每个故事后面都跟着一个目标句子。对于每个故事，我们设计了不同的版本，分别引出对同一目标句子的不同语用解释 - 字面、欺骗或讽刺。我们在不同条件下保持目标句子的语义和句法复杂性不变。我们的结果表明，识别讽刺性交际意图激活了左颞顶联合区（lTPJ）、左额下回（lIFG）、左额中回（lMFG）、左颞中回（lMTG）和左背外侧前额叶皮层（lDLPFC）。理解欺骗性交际意图激活了 lIFG、lMFG 和 lDLPFC。fMRI 分析显示，一个左额颞网络 - 包括额下回（IFG）、背外侧前额叶皮层（DLPFC）和额中回（MFG） - 在讽刺和欺骗识别中被激活。本研究的原始结果是发现 lMTG 在理解讽刺性与欺骗性交际意图时更为活跃，因此表明其在讽刺识别中的特定作用。总之，我们的结果表明，共同的大脑区域被招募到理解这两种语用现象中，而 lMTG 在识别讽刺与欺骗性交际意图方面起着关键作用。
