生物谷报道：香港大学4月7日公布，该校“脑与认知科学国家重点实验室”首次从人类脑部活动模式证明语言与颜色认知有直接关系。
香港大学研究人员去年向17名研究对象展示多对涂有颜色的方格，要求他们回答每对方格内的颜色是否相同。方格内的颜色有红、蓝等“容易命名”的，也有“难以命名”的。
进行问答的同时，研究人员利用磁共振影像扫描器对研究对象进行大脑扫描。
研究结果显示，研究对象就两类颜色进行辨认时，均引发脑皮层主管辨认颜色部位的活动，但在辨认“容易命名”的颜色时，比辨认“难以命名”的颜色更明显和强烈地激发脑部主管词汇检索部位的活动。换言之，某种颜色在某种语言中是否有独立命名，与语言检索和颜色认知有密切关联。
语言可能影响思维和认知的假设最先由语言学家沃尔夫在1956年提出，却一直未有确切证据证实或否定。香港大学语言学教授谭力海表示，这项研究结果是一项重大突破，为“沃尔夫假说”提供了神经机理的实质证据。
这项研究结果3月份发表在美国《国家科学院院刊》（PNAS）上。（生物谷援引新华网）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Published online on March 3, 2008, 10.1073/pnas.0800055105
PNAS | March 11, 2008 | vol. 105 | no. 10 | 4004-4009
SOCIAL SCIENCES / BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / PSYCHOLOGY / NEUROSCIENCE
Language affects patterns of brain activation associated with perceptual decision
Li Hai Tan,, Alice H. D. Chan,, Paul Kay,¶,||, Pek-Lan Khong,, Lawrance K. C. Yip, and Kang-Kwong Luke,,
Department of Linguistics, State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong; ¶Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; ||International Computer Science Institute, 1947 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94704; and Department of Radiology, Queen Mary Hospital, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
Contributed by Paul Kay, January 23, 2008 (received for review November 5, 2007)
Well over half a century ago, Benjamin Lee Whorf [Carroll JB (1956) Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)] proposed that language affects perception and thought and is used to segment nature, a hypothesis that has since been tested by linguistic and behavioral studies. Although clear Whorfian effects have been found, it has not yet been demonstrated that language influences brain activity associated with perception and/or immediate postperceptual processes (referred hereafter as "perceptual decision"). Here, by using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that brain regions mediating language processes participate in neural networks activated by perceptual decision. When subjects performed a perceptual discrimination task on easy-to-name and hard-to-name colored squares, largely overlapping cortical regions were identified, which included areas of the occipital cortex critical for color vision and regions in the bilateral frontal gyrus. Crucially, however, in comparison with hard-to-name colored squares, perceptual discrimination of easy-to-name colors evoked stronger activation in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule, two regions responsible for word-finding processes, as demonstrated by a localizer experiment that uses an explicit color patch naming task. This finding suggests that the language-processing areas of the brain are directly involved in visual perceptual decision, thus providing neuroimaging support for the Whorf hypothesis.
color | neuroimaging | linguistic relativity | lateralization | Whorf
