Neville H J, Bavelier D, Corina D, Rauschecker J, Karni A, Lalwani A, Braun A, Clark V, Jezzard P, Turner R
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1227, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 Feb 3;95(3):922-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.95.3.922.
Cerebral organization during sentence processing in English and in American Sign Language (ASL) was characterized by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 4 T. Effects of deafness, age of language acquisition, and bilingualism were assessed by comparing results from (i) normally hearing, monolingual, native speakers of English, (ii) congenitally, genetically deaf, native signers of ASL who learned English late and through the visual modality, and (iii) normally hearing bilinguals who were native signers of ASL and speakers of English. All groups, hearing and deaf, processing their native language, English or ASL, displayed strong and repeated activation within classical language areas of the left hemisphere. Deaf subjects reading English did not display activation in these regions. These results suggest that the early acquisition of a natural language is important in the expression of the strong bias for these areas to mediate language, independently of the form of the language. In addition, native signers, hearing and deaf, displayed extensive activation of homologous areas within the right hemisphere, indicating that the specific processing requirements of the language also in part determine the organization of the language systems of the brain.
通过在4T场强下使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）对英语和美国手语（ASL）句子处理过程中的大脑组织特征进行了研究。通过比较以下三组结果评估耳聋、语言习得年龄和双语能力的影响：（i）听力正常的单语英语母语者；（ii）先天性遗传性耳聋的ASL母语手语者，他们很晚才通过视觉方式学习英语；（iii）听力正常的双语者，他们是ASL母语手语者和英语使用者。所有组，包括听力正常和耳聋的，在处理其母语（英语或ASL）时，左半球经典语言区域内均表现出强烈且重复的激活。耳聋受试者阅读英语时，这些区域未显示激活。这些结果表明，自然语言的早期习得对于这些区域介导语言的强烈偏向表达很重要，而与语言形式无关。此外，听力正常和耳聋的母语手语者在右半球内同源区域均表现出广泛激活，表明语言的特定处理需求也在一定程度上决定了大脑语言系统的组织。
