Department of Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2021 Apr;48:100925. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100925. Epub 2021 Jan 27.
To date, the neural underpinnings of affective components in language processing in children remain largely unknown. To fill this gap, the present study examined behavioural and neural correlates of children and adults performing the same auditory valence decision task with an event-related fMRI paradigm. Based on previous findings in adults, activations in anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus were expected for both positive and negative valence categories. Recent behavioural findings on valence decisions showed similar ratings and reaction time patterns in children and adults. This finding was successfully replicated in the present study. On a neural level, our analysis of affective language processing showed activations in regions associated with both semantic (superior and middle temporal and frontal) and affective (anterior and posterior cingulate, orbitofrontal and inferior frontal, insula and amygdala) processing. Neural activations in children and adults were systematically different in explicit affective word processing. In particular, adults showed a more distributed semantic network activation while children recruited additional subcortical structures.
迄今为止，儿童语言处理中情感成分的神经基础在很大程度上仍不清楚。为了填补这一空白，本研究使用事件相关 fMRI 范式，考察了儿童和成人执行相同听觉效价判断任务的行为和神经相关性。基于成人的先前发现，预计正性和负性效价类别都会在前扣带回皮质、眶额皮质和左侧额下回产生激活。最近关于效价判断的行为发现表明，儿童和成人的评分和反应时模式相似。本研究成功地复制了这一发现。在神经水平上，我们对情感语言处理的分析显示，与语义（颞上、中回和额回）和情感（前扣带回、后扣带回、眶额回、额下回、岛叶和杏仁核）处理相关的区域都有激活。儿童和成人在明确的情感词汇处理中的神经激活存在系统差异。特别是，成年人表现出更广泛的语义网络激活，而儿童则募集了更多的皮质下结构。
