Semantic Systems

项目摘要。 概念或语义知识是指关于对象、动作、关系、自我、文化和 包括单词和短语的含义。这种知识的使用在日常生活中是普遍和自动的。 日常活动，如沟通，识别和使用对象，社会交往和决策 关键在于概念知识。这种复杂而广泛分布的 系统对生活质量有严重影响。几种神经和精神疾病是 与该系统受损相关，包括中风失语症、痴呆、颞叶 癫痫精神分裂症和自闭症了解这个系统的结构和组织， 在这些个体中，它被破坏的具体方式对于开发更好的治疗和康复至关重要 战略布局这项研究的目的是了解这些信息的结构和使用，它的神经基础， 以及神经病理学对其造成损害的方式。在这里，我们关注的是一个大脑区域， 作为概念系统的核心组成部分出现：前颞叶。这个大脑区域 二十多年来，不仅在语义学方面，而且在许多其他领域， 例如社会认知、句子处理以及熟悉的人和地方的命名。这产生了一个 一系列丰富而复杂的调查结果，其中一些往往很难相互协调。洞察 这一区域的功能可以阐明其在各种功能中的作用，这显然是非常有价值的。使用 神经影像学、经颅磁刺激和对中风患者的研究，我们检查了 这是一个新的理论，可以解释与前颞叶有关的许多发现。拟议 实验将揭示新的组织和功能，这一核心语义区在健康和 大脑受损

Project Summary Abstract. Conceptual or semantic knowledge refers to information about objects, actions, relations, self, culture, and includes meanings of words and phrases. The use of this knowledge is pervasive and automatic in daily life. Everyday activities such as communication, recognition and use of objects, social interactions, and decision making are crucially reliant on conceptual knowledge. Impairment of this complex and widely distributed system has serious consequences for quality of life. Several neurological and psychiatric disorders are associated with the impairment of this system, including stroke with aphasia, dementias, temporal lobe epilepsy, schizophrenia, and autism. Understanding the structure and organization of this system, and the specific ways it is disrupted in these individuals, is critical for developing better treatments and rehabilitation strategies. The goal of this research is to understand the structure and use of this information, its neural basis, and the ways in which it can be impaired by neuropathology. Here, we focus on a brain region that has emerged as a core component of the conceptual system: anterior temporal lobe. This brain region has been the subject of intense research for over two decades not just in semantics, but in a number of other domains such as social cognition, sentence processing, and naming of familiar people and places. This has generated a rich and complex set of findings, some of which are often difficult to reconcile with each other. Insights into the function of this region that can shed light on its role in myriad functions would clearly be very valuable. Using neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and studies of patients with stroke, we examine predictions of a novel theory that can account for many findings relating to the anterior temporal lobe. The proposed experiments will shed new light on the organization and function of this core semantic region in the healthy and impaired brain.