fMRI investigations of the functional architecture of the language system

语言系统功能架构的功能磁共振成像研究

• 批准号: 8754821
• 负责人: Evelina Fedorenko
• 金额: $ 24.89万
• 依托单位: MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-04-01 至 2017-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8754821
• 关键词: Acquired Language Disorders; Adopted; Animal Communication; Architecture; Area; Arithmetic; Base of the Brain; Basic Science; Behavior; Brain; Brain region; Cognitive; Comprehension; Concept Formation; Conflict (Psychology); Data; Development; Diagnosis; Epilepsy; Foundations; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Human; Image; Individual; Investigation; Language; Language Disorders; Lead; Linguistics; Mentors; Methods; Mind; Operative Surgical Procedures; Patients; Phase; Postoperative Period; Process; Production; Psycholinguistics; Publishing; Recovery; Reporting; Research; Resolution; Role; Semantics; Sensory; Short-Term Memory; Solid; Specificity; Speech; System; Techniques; Temporal Lobe; Vision research; Visual; Visual Cortex; Work; abstracting; clinically relevant; cognitive control; combinatorial; executive function; follow-up; frontal lobe; improved; interest; language processing; lexical; millimeter; phonology; programs; relating to nervous system; response; skills; syntax; tool; tumor

Language is our signature human cognitive skill. Yet, many critical questions regarding the brain basis of language and the role of specific cortical regions in linguistic behavior remain unanswered. Recent research demonstrated high anatomical and functional variability in human brains, thus suggesting that traditional group analyses - applied in the vast majority of the past language studies - may not be optimal. Over the last few years, I developed new techniques - adopted from fMRI methods that have been successful in vision research - to functionally "localize" brain regions sensitive to high-level linguistic processing. This approach has already yielded some important results. For example, I demonstrated that regions that support high-level linguistic processing show little or no response to several non-linguistic functions that have been previously argued to share cognitive and neural machinery with language, including arithmetic processing, general working memory, general cognitive control or musical processing. Furthermore, I discovered that lexical and syntactic representations are tightly integrated in the human mind and brain: any brain region that is sensitive to word-level meanings is also sensitive to combinatorial (i.e., syntactic and compositional semantic) information. Over the next three years, I will build on these results, as well as on prior work in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, to understand the computations we perform and the representations we build during language processing, and to provide a detailed characterization of the brain regions underlying these computations and representations. My work will remain centered around two fundamental questions about the functional architecture of the language system: i) does language processing engage domain-specific mechanisms or does it rely on more general-purpose machinery; and ii) what is the internal functional organization of the language system? In addition to characterizing the language system in healthy individuals, I am now beginning to examine changes in the cortical organization of language in developmental and acquired language disorders.

语言是我们标志性的人类认知技能。然而，关于大脑基础的许多关键问题 语言以及特定皮层区域在语言行为中的作用仍未得到解答。最近的研究 证明了人类大脑的高度解剖学和功能变异性，从而表明传统的 过去绝大多数语言研究中应用的群体分析可能不是最佳的。超过 过去几年，我开发了新技术——采用了功能磁共振成像方法，这些方法在 视觉研究——功能性地“定位”对高级语言处理敏感的大脑区域。这 方法已经取得了一些重要成果。例如，我证明了支持的区域 高级语言处理对一些非语言功能表现出很少或没有反应 之前认为与语言共享认知和神经机制，包括算术处理， 一般工作记忆、一般认知控制或音乐处理。此外，我发现 词汇和句法表征紧密结合在人类思维和大脑中：任何大脑区域 对词级含义敏感的对组合（即句法和组合）也敏感 语义）信息。在接下来的三年里，我将在这些成果以及之前的工作的基础上继续努力 心理语言学和理论语言学，了解我们执行的计算和 我们在语言处理过程中建立的表征，并提供大脑的详细特征 这些计算和表示的基础区域。我的工作仍将围绕两个 关于语言系统功能架构的基本问题：i) 语言是否 处理涉及特定领域的机制还是依赖于更通用的机制；和 ii) 语言系统的内部功能组织是什么？除了表征 健康个体的语言系统，我现在开始检查皮质组织的变化 发育性语言障碍和获得性语言障碍中的语言。