Sharing mental simulations and stories: hippocampal contributions to discourse integration.
Sharing mental simulations and stories: hippocampal contributions to discourse integration.
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分享心理模拟和故事：海马对话语整合的贡献。
DOI：
10.1016/j.cortex.2014.09.004
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Verfaellie,Mieke
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Race,Elizabeth;Keane,MargaretM;Verfaellie,Mieke
越来越多的证据表明，对未来和过去的心理模拟依赖于海马体支持的共同过程。然而，目前尚不清楚海马体是否也支持与他人分享这些心理模拟的能力。最近，有人提出，大脑中的语言和与语言相关的结构对于交流与直接环境无关的信息特别重要，并且确实特别进化，以便人类可以与他人分享他们对未来和过去的精神时间旅行。本研究通过检查内侧颞叶损伤的健忘症患者的话语，调查海马支持的过程是否是有效沟通一个人的心理模拟内容所必需的。在实验一中，我们通过测量低层次的语篇衔接和高层次的语篇连贯来测试患者是否能产生关于未来和过去事件的整合语篇。在健忘症患者对新的未来事件和经历过的过去事件的叙述中，这两项指标都有惊人的下降。为了研究这些缺陷是否只是反映了叙事内容的同时减少，在实验2中，我们研究了患者关于图片的口头叙事中的话语整合状态，其中包含与对照组相同数量的叙事内容。当患者根据图片进行叙述时，也会出现话语衔接和连贯性缺陷，这些缺陷并不取决于海马体外神经损伤的存在。总之，这些结果揭示了健忘症患者普遍存在的语言整合缺陷，这种缺陷不仅限于关于过去或未来的话语，而且不仅仅是次要的叙述内容的减少。更广泛地说，这项研究表明，海马支持整合的个人叙事元素到连贯和凝聚力的话语时，构建复杂的口头帐户，并在有效的信息交流中发挥了关键作用。
Accumulating evidence suggests that mental simulation of the future and past relies on common processes supported by the hippocampus. However, it is currently unknown whether the hippocampus also supports the ability to share these mental simulations with others. Recently, it has been proposed that language and language-related structures in the brain are particularly important for communicating information not tied to the immediate environment, and indeed specifically evolved so that humans could share their mental time travels into the future and the past with others. The current study investigated whether processes supported by the hippocampus are necessary for effectively communicating the contents of one's mental simulations by examining the discourse of amnesic patients with medial temporal lobe damage. In Experiment 1 we tested whether patients can produce integrated discourse about future and past events by measuring lower-level discourse cohesion and higher-level discourse coherence. Striking reductions in both measures were observed in amnesic patients' narratives about novel future events and experienced past events. To investigate whether these deficits simply reflected concurrent reductions in narrative content, in Experiment 2 we examined the status of discourse integration in patients' verbal narratives about pictures, which contained an equivalent amount of narrative content as controls'. Discourse cohesion and coherence deficits were also present when patients generated narratives based on pictures, and these deficits did not depend on the presence of neural damage outside the hippocampus. Together, these results reveal a pervasive linguistic integration deficit in amnesia that is not limited to discourse about the past or the future and is not simply secondary to reductions in narrative content. More broadly, this study demonstrates that the hippocampus supports the integration of individual narrative elements into coherent and cohesive discourse when constructing complex verbal accounts, and plays a critical role in the effective communication of information to others.