Neural Bases of Verb-Argument Processing

动词论元处理的神经基础

• 批准号: 8642637
• 负责人: Michael Walsh Dickey
• 金额: $ 32.21万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-04-01 至 2016-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8642637
• 关键词: Adult; Anterior; Aphasia; Area; Base of the Brain; Brain; Brain Injuries; Cereals; Cerebral hemisphere; Communication impairment; Comprehension; Consensus; Data; Dorsal; Event; Eye Movements; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Goals; Hearing; Impairment; Knowledge; Language; Language Development; Left; Lesion; Measures; Methods; Monitor; Output; Participant; Pathway interactions; Pattern; Performance; Plant Roots; Play; Process; Property; Reading; Recruitment Activity; Research; Role; Semantics; Stream; System; Testing; Ursidae Family; Visual; Work; base; combinatorial; drinking; hemisphere damage; improved; language comprehension; language processing; novel; object recognition; parallel processing; relating to nervous system; research study; semantic processing; theories

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although we know a great deal about language comprehension, we know much less about how it is implemented in the brain. This proposal tests two hypotheses about how verbs and their arguments (e.g. their subjects and objects) are processed in the brain, which have important implications for which aspects of verb-argument processing might be preserved vs. impaired among adults with aphasia. This research has three aims: (1) To increase our understanding of the multiple brain systems that work together to accomplish verb-argument processing, and how their situation in the brain might relate to their different functions (coarse- vs. fine-grained processing; prediction vs. integration); (2) To test our hypotheses' predictions that adults with aphasia will be less likely to predict upcoming words in general, but will still generate a special class of argument-specific predictions if they have a undamaged right hemisphere (RH) or posterior left hemisphere (LH); and (3) To understand the consequences that distributing language processing across multiple brain systems has on verb-argument comprehension. The proposal includes five experiments. Experiment 1 will test the localization of the brain systems underlying the prediction of likely event participants and arguments by comparing the performance of participants with aphasia due to LH damage (either anterior only or extending to posterior areas) to that of unimpaired participants in a visual world experiment. Experiment 2 will use this paradigm to test whether predictions for arguments vs. likely event participants have different properties and are generated by different brain systems. Experiments 3 will monitor the eye movements of both unimpaired adults and adults with aphasia while they are reading to determine which brain systems are quickly sensitive to impossible arguments, in order to test our hypothesis that there are semantically vacuous argument-specific predictions that can be satisfied by any word that results in a possible event interpretation. Experiment 4 will use the same method to investigate whether there is competition between the output of the different brain systems recruited during verb-argument comprehension. Experiment 5 gathers fMRI data from unimpaired participants to provide converging evidence regarding the localization of predictions for arguments and likely event participants and the interpretation of verb- argument combinations. The overarching goal of this work is to improve our understanding of the neurolinguistic processes underlying verb-argument processing and their impairment following brain damage.

描述(申请人提供)：虽然我们知道很多关于语言理解的知识，但我们对语言理解是如何在大脑中执行的知之甚少。这一建议测试了两个关于动词及其论元(例如，它们的主语和宾语)在大脑中如何处理的假说，这两个假说对失语症成人患者动词论元处理的哪些方面可能被保留或受损具有重要意义。这项研究有三个目的：(1)增加我们对共同完成动词论元处理的多个大脑系统的理解，以及它们在大脑中的情况如何与它们不同的功能有关(粗粒度处理与细粒度处理；预测与整合)；(2)检验我们的假设，即患有失语症的成年人总体上不太可能预测即将到来的单词，但如果他们的右半球(RH)或左脑后部(LH)没有受损，仍将产生一类特殊的论元特定预测；以及(3)了解跨多个大脑系统分布语言处理对动词论元理解的影响。该提案包括五个实验。实验1将测试大脑系统的本地化，以预测可能的事件参与者和论点，通过比较由于左脑损伤(仅限于前部或延伸到后部)而患有失语症的参与者和视觉世界中未受损伤的参与者的表现 做实验。实验2将使用这一范式来测试对论点和可能事件参与者的预测是否具有不同的性质，并且是由不同的大脑系统产生的。实验3将监测正常成年人和失语症成年人在阅读时的眼球运动，以确定哪些大脑系统对不可能的论点迅速敏感，以检验我们的假设，即存在语义上空洞的论点特定预测，任何导致可能的事件解释的单词都可以满足这一假设。实验4将使用相同的方法来研究动词论元理解过程中不同大脑系统的输出之间是否存在竞争。实验5收集了未受损参与者的fMRI数据，为论元和可能的事件参与者的预测本地化以及动词-论元组合的解释提供了一致的证据。这项工作的首要目标是提高我们对动词论元加工的神经语言学过程及其在脑损伤后的损害的理解。