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.

语言是人类特有的认知技能。然而，关于大脑基础的许多关键问题