Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Neuroimage. 2017 Nov 15;162:106-116. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.08.082. Epub 2017 Sep 5.
Although research has now converged towards a consensus that both languages of a bilingual are represented in at least partly shared systems for language comprehension, it remains unclear whether both languages are represented in the same neural populations for production. We investigated the neural overlap between L1 and L2 semantic representations of translation equivalents using a production task in which the participants had to name pictures in L1 and L2. Using a decoding approach, we tested whether brain activity during the production of individual nouns in one language allowed predicting the production of the same concepts in the other language. Because both languages only share the underlying semantic representation (sensory and lexical overlap was maximally avoided), this would offer very strong evidence for neural overlap in semantic representations of bilinguals. Based on the brain activation for the individual concepts in one language in the bilateral occipito-temporal cortex and the inferior and the middle temporal gyrus, we could accurately predict the equivalent individual concepts in the other language. This indicates that these regions share semantic representations across L1 and L2 word production.
尽管现在的研究已经趋向于达成共识，即双语者的两种语言都至少在部分共享的语言理解系统中得到体现，但对于两种语言是否在相同的神经群体中用于产生还不清楚。我们使用生产任务来研究翻译对等词的 L1 和 L2 语义表示之间的神经重叠，在该任务中，参与者必须用 L1 和 L2 命名图片。我们使用解码方法来测试在一种语言中产生单个名词时的大脑活动是否可以预测另一种语言中相同概念的产生。因为两种语言仅共享潜在的语义表示（最大程度地避免了感觉和词汇重叠），这将为双语者的语义表示中的神经重叠提供非常有力的证据。基于单侧和双侧枕颞叶皮层以及下颞叶和中颞叶的单个概念的大脑激活，我们可以准确预测另一种语言中的等效单个概念。这表明这些区域在 L1 和 L2 单词产生中共享语义表示。
