Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

被引：268

作者：

Bedny, Marina ^{[1
,2
]}

Pascual-Leone, Alvaro ^{[2
]}

Dodell-Feder, David ^{[1
]}

Fedorenko, Evelina ^{[1
]}

Saxe, Rebecca ^{[1
]}

机构：

[1] MIT, Dept Brain & Cognit Sci, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

[2] Harvard Univ, Beth Israel Deaconess Med Ctr, Sch Med, Berenson Allen Ctr Noninvas Brain Stimulat, Boston, MA 02215 USA

来源：

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA | 2011年 / 108卷 / 11期

基金：

美国国家卫生研究院;

关键词：

plasticity; language evolution; CROSS-MODAL PLASTICITY; VISUAL-CORTEX; WORKING-MEMORY; HUMAN THALAMUS; BROCAS AREA; ACTIVATION; HUMANS; BRAIN; FMRI; ORGANIZATION;

D O I：

10.1073/pnas.1014818108

中图分类号：

O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];

学科分类号：

07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;

摘要：

Humans are thought to have evolved brain regions in the left frontal and temporal cortex that are uniquely capable of language processing. However, congenitally blind individuals also activate the visual cortex in some verbal tasks. We provide evidence that this visual cortex activity in fact reflects language processing. We find that in congenitally blind individuals, the left visual cortex behaves similarly to classic language regions: (i) BOLD signal is higher during sentence comprehension than during linguistically degraded control conditions that are more difficult; (ii) BOLD signal is modulated by phonological information, lexical semantic information, and sentence-level combinatorial structure; and (iii) functional connectivity with language regions in the left prefrontal cortex and thalamus are increased relative to sighted individuals. We conclude that brain regions that are thought to have evolved for vision can take on language processing as a result of early experience. Innate microcircuit properties are not necessary for a brain region to become involved in language processing.

引用

页码：4429 / 4434

页数：6

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