Department of Psychology, College of Science, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan; Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan; Department of Neurology, National Taiwan University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10048, Taiwan; Center for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Robotics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
Department of Neurology, National Taiwan University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10048, Taiwan.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Dec;149:107671. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107671. Epub 2020 Nov 13.
Neuroimaging evidence has suggested that Chinese-language processing differs from that of its alphabetic-language counterparts. However, the underlying white matter pathway correlations between semantic and phonological fluency in Chinese-language processing remain unknown. Thus, we investigated the differences between two verbal fluency tests on 50 participants with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and 36 healthy controls (HC) with respect to five groups (ventral and dorsal stream fibers, frontal-striatal fibers, hippocampal-related fibers, and the corpus callosum) of white matter microstructural integrity. Diffusion spectrum imaging was used. The results revealed a progressive reduction in advantage in semantic fluency relative to phonological fluency from HC to single-domain aMCI to multidomain aMCI. Common and dissociative white matter correlations between tests of the two types of fluency were identified. Both types of fluency relied on the corpus callosum and ventral stream fibers, semantic fluency relied on the hippocampal-related fibers, and phonological fluency relied on the dorsal stream and frontal-striatal fibers. The involvement of bilateral tracts of interest as well as the association with the corpus callosum indicate the uniqueness of Chinese-language fluency processing. Dynamic associations were noted between white matter tract involvement and performance on the two fluency tests in four time blocks. Overall, our findings suggest the clinical utility of verbal fluency tests in geriatric populations, and they elucidate both task-specific and language-specific brain-behavior associations.
神经影像学研究表明，汉语语言处理与其他语言不同。然而，汉语语言处理中语义流畅性和语音流畅性之间的潜在白质通路相关性尚不清楚。因此，我们调查了 50 名遗忘型轻度认知障碍（aMCI）患者和 36 名健康对照者（HC）在 5 个组（腹侧和背侧纤维流、额纹状体纤维、海马相关纤维和胼胝体）的白质微观结构完整性方面，两种语言流畅性测试之间的差异。使用了弥散张量成像。结果显示，从 HC 到单域 aMCI 再到多域 aMCI，语义流畅性相对于语音流畅性的优势逐渐降低。两种类型的流畅性测试之间存在共同和分离的白质相关性。两种类型的流畅性都依赖于胼胝体和腹侧纤维流，语义流畅性依赖于海马相关纤维，而语音流畅性依赖于背侧纤维流和额纹状体纤维。感兴趣的双侧束的参与以及与胼胝体的关联表明，汉语流畅性处理具有独特性。在四个时间块中，注意到了白质束参与和两种流畅性测试表现之间的动态关联。总体而言，我们的发现表明语言流畅性测试在老年人群中的临床应用价值，并阐明了特定任务和特定语言的大脑-行为关联。
