Decoding the information structure underlying the neural representation of concepts. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2022 Feb 08;119(6)
Date
02/05/2022Pubmed ID
35115397Pubmed Central ID
PMC8832989DOI
10.1073/pnas.2108091119Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85124059714 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 119 CitationsAbstract
The nature of the representational code underlying conceptual knowledge remains a major unsolved problem in cognitive neuroscience. We assessed the extent to which different representational systems contribute to the instantiation of lexical concepts in high-level, heteromodal cortical areas previously associated with semantic cognition. We found that lexical semantic information can be reliably decoded from a wide range of heteromodal cortical areas in the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortex. In most of these areas, we found a striking advantage for experience-based representational structures (i.e., encoding information about sensory-motor, affective, and other features of phenomenal experience), with little evidence for independent taxonomic or distributional organization. These results were found independently for object and event concepts. Our findings indicate that concept representations in the heteromodal cortex are based, at least in part, on experiential information. They also reveal that, in most heteromodal areas, event concepts have more heterogeneous representations (i.e., they are more easily decodable) than object concepts and that other areas beyond the traditional "semantic hubs" contribute to semantic cognition, particularly the posterior cingulate gyrus and the precuneus.
Author List
Fernandino L, Tong JQ, Conant LL, Humphries CJ, Binder JRAuthors
Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of WisconsinLeonardo Fernandino PhD Associate Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Jiaqing Tong PhD Postdoctoral Researcher 3 in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultBrain Mapping
Cognition
Concept Formation
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Parietal Lobe
Semantics
Temporal Lobe
Young Adult
