Is Broca's area involved in the processing of passive sentences? An event-related fMRI study.
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether activation in Broca's area is greater during the processing of passive versus active sentences in the brains of healthy subjects. Twenty Japanese native speakers performed a visual sentence comprehension task in which they were asked to read a visually presented sentence and to identify the agent or the patient in the sentence by pressing a button. We found that the processing of passive sentences elicited no greater activation than that of active sentences in Broca's area. However, passive sentences elicited greater activation than active sentences in the left frontal operculum and the inferior parietal lobule. Thus, our neuroimaging results suggest that deficits in the comprehension of passive sentences in Japanese aphasics are induced not by lesions to Broca's area, but to the left frontal operculum and/or the inferior parietal lobule.
Yokoyama
Satoru
S
Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai-shi, Miyagi-ken 980-8576, Japan. yokoyama@idac.tohoku.ac.jp
Watanabe
Jobu
J
Iwata
Kazuki
K
Ikuta
Naho
N
Haji
Tomoki
T
Usui
Nobuo
N
Taira
Masato
M
Miyamoto
Tadao
T
Nakamura
Wataru
W
Sato
Shigeru
S
Horie
Kaoru
K
Kawashima
Ryuta
R
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012660:Semantics