Caplan D, Alpert N, Waters G
Massachusetts General Hospital, Neuropsychology Laboratory, Boston MA, 02114, USA.
J Cogn Neurosci. 1998 Jul;10(4):541-52. doi: 10.1162/089892998562843.
Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to determine regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) as a function of the syntactic form and propositional density of sentences. rCBF increased in the left pars opercularis, part of Broca's area, when subjects processed syntactically more complex sentences. There were no differences in rCBF in the perisylvian association cortex traditionally associated with language processing when subjects made plausibility judgments about sentences with two propositions as compared to sentences with one proposition, but rCBF increased in infero-posterior brain regions. These results suggest that there is a specialization of neural tissue in Broca's area for constructing aspects of the syntactic form of sentences to determine sentence meaning. They also suggest that this specialization is separate from the brain systems that are involved in utilizing the meaning of a sentence that has been understood to accomplish a task.
正电子发射断层扫描（PET）被用于确定局部脑血流量（rCBF）与句子的句法形式和命题密度之间的函数关系。当受试者处理句法上更复杂的句子时，左侧岛盖部（布罗卡区的一部分）的rCBF增加。当受试者对含有两个命题的句子与含有一个命题的句子进行合理性判断时，传统上与语言处理相关的颞叶周围联合皮层的rCBF没有差异，但脑后部区域的rCBF增加。这些结果表明，布罗卡区的神经组织专门用于构建句子的句法形式以确定句子含义。它们还表明，这种专门化与参与利用已理解的句子含义来完成任务的脑系统是分开的。
