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.

语言是我们签名的人类认知技能。但是，关于大脑的许多关键问题 语言和特定皮质区域在语言行为中的作用尚未得到解答。最近的研究 在人的大脑中表现出很高的解剖和功能变异性，因此表明传统 小组分析 - 在过去的大多数语言研究中应用 - 可能不是最佳的。在 最近几年，我开发了新技术 - 从成功的fMRI方法中采用 视觉研究 - 在功能上“定位”大脑区域对高级语言处理敏感。这 方法已经产生了一些重要的结果。例如，我证明了支持的地区 高级语言处理几乎没有或没有对几种非语言功能的反应 以前曾主张用语言共享认知和神经机械，包括算术处理， 一般的工作记忆，一般认知控制或音乐处理。此外，我发现 词汇和句法表示在人的思想和大脑中紧密整合：任何大脑区域 这对单词级含义敏感也对组合敏感（即句法和组成 语义）信息。在接下来的三年中，我将以这些结果以及先前的工作为基础 心理语言学和理论语言学，以了解我们执行的计算和 我们在语言处理过程中构建的表示，并提供大脑的详细表征 这些计算和表示的区域。我的工作将保持在两个左右 有关语言系统功能架构的基本问题：i） 处理特定于域的机制或它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，我现在开始研究皮质组织的变化 在发育和获得性语言障碍中的语言。