The neurobiology of sentence production has been largely understudied compared to the neurobiology of sentence comprehension, due to difficulties with experimental control and motion-related artifacts in neuroimaging. We studied the neural response to constituents of increasing size and specifically focused on the similarities and differences in the production and comprehension of the same stimuli. Participants had to either produce or listen to stimuli in a gradient of constituent size based on a visual prompt. Larger constituent sizes engaged the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and middle temporal gyrus (LMTG) extending to inferior parietal areas in both production and comprehension, confirming that the neural resources for syntactic encoding and decoding are largely overlapping. An ROI analysis in LIFG and LMTG also showed that production elicited larger responses to constituent size than comprehension and that the LMTG was more engaged in comprehension than production, while the LIFG was more engaged in production than comprehension. Finally, increasing constituent size was characterized by later BOLD peaks in comprehension but earlier peaks in production. These results show that syntactic encoding and parsing engage overlapping areas, but there are asymmetries in the engagement of the language network due to the specific requirements of production and comprehension.

中文翻译：

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语言产生和理解的神经生物学基础设施的共性和不对称性

与句子理解的神经生物学相比，句子产生的神经生物学在很大程度上没有得到充分研究，这是由于神经成像中实验控制和运动相关伪影的困难。我们研究了对不断增加的成分的神经反应，并特别关注相同刺激的产生和理解的异同。参与者必须根据视觉提示产生或聆听成分大小梯度的刺激。较大的成分大小使左侧额下回 (LIFG) 和颞中回 (LMTG) 在生产和理解方面都延伸到顶下区域，证实了句法编码和解码的神经资源在很大程度上是重叠的。LIFG 和 LMTG 的 ROI 分析还表明，生产对成分大小的反应大于对理解的反应，并且 LMTG 更多地参与理解而不是生产，而 LIFG 更多地参与生产而不是理解。最后，成分大小增加的特点是理解中出现较晚的 BOLD 峰值，但生产中出现较早的峰值。这些结果表明，句法编码和解析涉及重叠区域，但由于生产和理解的特定要求，语言网络的参与存在不对称性。成分大小增加的特点是理解中出现较晚的 BOLD 峰值，但生产中的峰值较早。这些结果表明，句法编码和解析涉及重叠区域，但由于生产和理解的特定要求，语言网络的参与存在不对称性。成分大小增加的特点是理解中出现较晚的 BOLD 峰值，但生产中的峰值较早。这些结果表明，句法编码和解析涉及重叠区域，但由于生产和理解的特定要求，语言网络的参与存在不对称性。