Pathways to lexical ambiguity: fMRI evidence for bilateral fronto-parietal involvement in language processing

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• 作者：Ekaterini Klepousniotou^a ; ^b ; ¹ ; ^{ekaterini.klepousniotou@mail.mcgill.ca" class="auth_mail} ; ^{e.klepousniotou@leeds.ac.uk" class="auth_mail} ; Vincent L. Gracco^b ; ^c ; G. Bruce Pike^a ; ^b
• 关键词：Event-related fMRI ; Lexical ambiguity ; Homonymy ; Polysemy ; Metaphor ; BROCA&rsquo ; S area 44 ; Supramarginal gyrus ; Inferior parietal lobule
• 刊名：Brain and Language
• 出版年：April, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：131
• 期：Complete
• 页码：56-64
• 全文大小：756 K

文摘

Numerous functional neuroimaging studies reported increased activity in the pars opercularis and the pars triangularis (Brodmann鈥檚 areas 44 and 45) of the left hemisphere during the performance of linguistic tasks. The role of these areas in the right hemisphere in language processing is not understood and, although there is evidence from lesion studies that the right hemisphere is involved in the appreciation of semantic relations, no specific anatomical substrate has yet been identified. This event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study compared brain activity during the performance of language processing trials in which either dominant or subordinate meaning activation of ambiguous words was required. The results show that the ventral part of the pars opercularis both in the left and the right hemisphere is centrally involved in language processing. In addition, they highlight the bilateral co-activation of this region with the supramarginal gyrus of the inferior parietal lobule during the processing of this type of linguistic material. This study, thus, provides the first evidence of co-activation of Broca鈥檚 region and the inferior parietal lobule, succeeding in further specifying the relative contribution of these cortical areas to language processing.