1月30日，美國研究人員宣布,，人腦語言處理中樞并不位于大腦皮層后部,，科學(xué)界關(guān)于這一問題的認(rèn)識長期以來是“錯誤”的。
論文作者,、美國喬治敦大學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)中心教授約瑟夫·勞施?？水?dāng)天在一份新聞公報中說，100多年的舊理論被推翻,，“教科書將需要改寫”,。
19世紀(jì)末，研究腦損傷和中風(fēng)的德國醫(yī)生韋尼克提出,，人腦語言處理中樞在大腦皮層后部,，位于感知聲音的聽覺皮層之后。這一觀點已被科學(xué)界廣泛接受,，人腦語言處理中樞也因此被稱為韋尼克區(qū),。
但勞施埃克和其同事對使用多種腦成像技術(shù)的115項語言感知研究進(jìn)行評估后認(rèn)為,，真正的韋尼克區(qū)（Wernicke's area Wikipedia）位于聽覺皮層之前,，與前腦僅有3厘米左右的距離。他們的論文本周發(fā)表在《國家科學(xué)院院刊》網(wǎng)絡(luò)版上,。
研究人員介紹說,，自20世紀(jì)90年代認(rèn)識神經(jīng)科學(xué)興起以來，科學(xué)家發(fā)現(xiàn)了有關(guān)韋尼克區(qū)的不少矛盾之處,，但多數(shù)人還是不愿否認(rèn)已有100多年歷史的舊理論,，而這篇“論文就是要讓數(shù)據(jù)和理論之間形成一致”。
確定人腦語言處理中樞真正所在將有重要的臨床價值,。勞施?？苏f：“當(dāng)有病人說不了話或發(fā)生語言理解困難時,，我們現(xiàn)在將能很好地知道哪里受到了傷害。”(生物谷 Bioon.com)
doi:10.1073/pnas.1113427109
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Phoneme and word recognition in the auditory ventral stream
Iain DeWitt and Josef P. Rauschecker
Spoken word recognition requires complex, invariant representations. Using a meta-analytic approach incorporating more than 100 functional imaging experiments, we show that preference for complex sounds emerges in the human auditory ventral stream in a hierarchical fashion, consistent with nonhuman primate electrophysiology. Examining speech sounds, we show that activation associated with the processing of short-timescale patterns (i.e., phonemes) is consistently localized to left mid-superior temporal gyrus (STG), whereas activation associated with the integration of phonemes into temporally complex patterns (i.e., words) is consistently localized to left anterior STG. Further, we show left mid- to anterior STG is reliably implicated in the invariant representation of phonetic forms and that this area also responds preferentially to phonetic sounds, above artificial control sounds or environmental sounds. Together, this shows increasing encoding specificity and invariance along the auditory ventral stream for temporally complex speech sounds.
