Helenius P, Salmelin R, Service E, Connolly J F
Brain Research Unit, Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland.
Brain. 1998 Jun;121 ( Pt 6):1133-42. doi: 10.1093/brain/121.6.1133.
The time course and cortical basis of reading comprehension were studied using magnetoencephalography. The cortical structures implicated most consistently with comprehension were located in the immediate vicinity of the left auditory cortex, where final words totally inappropriate to the overall sentence context evoked enduring activation starting approximately 250 ms and lasting up to 600 ms after word onset. Contextually appropriate but unexpected words produced weaker activation which terminated earlier. Highly anticipated words totally failed to activate this area, suggesting that the conceptual network became involved only if unexpected information was detected during the primary word identification process. We propose that the point in time (350 ms after word onset) where the response to appropriate but unexpected endings started to diverge from those to contextually inappropriate endings reflects the boundary between understanding a single word and the meaning of a whole sentence.
利用脑磁图研究了阅读理解的时间进程和皮层基础。与理解最一致相关的皮层结构位于左听觉皮层附近，在该区域，与整体句子语境完全不相关的最终词汇在单词出现后约250毫秒开始引发持续激活，并持续长达600毫秒。语境合适但出乎意料的单词产生的激活较弱，且终止较早。高度可预测的单词完全未能激活该区域，这表明只有在初级单词识别过程中检测到意外信息时，概念网络才会参与进来。我们提出，在单词出现后350毫秒这个时间点，对合适但出乎意料的结尾的反应开始与对语境不合适的结尾的反应出现分歧，这反映了理解单个单词和整个句子意义之间的界限。
