Medical College of Wisconsin
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Activation of sensory-motor areas in sentence comprehension. Cereb Cortex 2010 Feb;20(2):468-78

Date

06/24/2009

Pubmed ID

19546154

Pubmed Central ID

PMC2803740

DOI

10.1093/cercor/bhp115

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-74249099743 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   130 Citations

Abstract

The sensory-motor account of conceptual processing suggests that modality-specific attributes play a central role in the organization of object and action knowledge in the brain. An opposing view emphasizes the abstract, amodal, and symbolic character of concepts, which are thought to be represented outside the brain's sensory-motor systems. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which the participants listened to sentences describing hand/arm action events, visual events, or abstract behaviors. In comparison to visual and abstract sentences, areas associated with planning and control of hand movements, motion perception, and vision were activated when understanding sentences describing actions. Sensory-motor areas were activated to a greater extent also for sentences with actions that relied mostly on hands, as opposed to arms. Visual sentences activated a small area in the secondary visual cortex, whereas abstract sentences activated superior temporal and inferior frontal regions. The results support the view that linguistic understanding of actions partly involves imagery or simulation of actions, and relies on some of the same neural substrate used for planning, performing, and perceiving actions.

Author List

Desai RH, Binder JR, Conant LL, Seidenberg MS

Author

Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin




MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adult
Arm
Brain Mapping
Cerebral Cortex
Female
Frontal Lobe
Functional Laterality
Humans
Imitative Behavior
Language
Language Tests
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Movement
Nerve Net
Psychomotor Performance
Speech Perception
Temporal Lobe
Verbal Behavior
Visual Cortex
Visual Perception
Young Adult