NEURAL CORRELATES OF LEXICAL PROCESSING--ENGLISH & ASLSL

来自神经科患者的损害和来自 用正电子发射计算机断层扫描研究的正常人表明，正常的脑电活动过程 检索表示具体实体的词依赖于多个 位于经典大脑半球之外的左侧大脑半球区域 语言区。此外，在大系统的层面上，有 似乎是一种耐人寻味的原则性关系 解剖区域和要命名的物品的种类。在这些基础上绘制 发现，我们已经开发了一套关于神经基础的假设 词汇提取的过程。在本计划中，我们建议 研究英语和美国手语中的这些假设 (ASL)，使用相同的方法-功能成像-并且相同 范式-[15-O]H2O-PET活化研究。该计划带来了 来自两个机构、不同专业领域的调查人员聚集在一起， 和不同的人类群体，听力正常，耳聋，神经学 病人。这里提出的调查结果承诺 拓宽目前有限的关于神经生物学的知识 语言。这些新知识对于加深对 听力正常的人和聋人都有沟通障碍，而且 对于制定有效的康复战略是不可或缺的 以听觉和手语为基础的失语症患者。《知识》 在这里聚集还可以用来约束正在进行的理论和 词汇的语言和认知方面的经验性工作。

Preliminary evidence from neurological patients with lesions and from normal individuals studied with PET, suggests that the normal process of retrieving words which denote concrete entities depends on multiple regions of the left cerebral hemisphere located outside the classic language areas. Moreover, at the level of large-scale systems, there appears to be an intriguing and principled relationship between the anatomical region and the kind of item being named. Drawing on these findings, we have developed a set of hypotheses regarding the neural basis of the process of lexical retrieval. In this Program, we propose to investigate these hypotheses in both English and American Sign Language (ASL), using the same approach - functional imaging - and the same paradigm - [15-O] H2O - PET activation studies. The Program brings together investigators from two institutions, diverse fields of expertise, and diverse human populations of normal hearing, deaf, and neurological patients. Results from the investigations proposed here promise to broaden the currently limited knowledge available on the neurobiology of language. Such new knowledge is critical to further the understanding of communication disorders in both the normally hearing and the deaf, and is indispensable for the development of effective rehabilitation strategies for aphasics in both auditory-based and sign languages. The knowledge gathered here can also be used to constrain ongoing theoretical and empirical work on the linguistic and cognitive aspects of the lexicon.