Concept Representation Reflects Multimodal Abstraction: A Framework for Embodied Semantics. Cereb Cortex 2016 May;26(5):2018-34
Date
03/10/2015Pubmed ID
25750259Pubmed Central ID
PMC4830284DOI
10.1093/cercor/bhv020Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84965165807 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 179 CitationsAbstract
Recent research indicates that sensory and motor cortical areas play a significant role in the neural representation of concepts. However, little is known about the overall architecture of this representational system, including the role played by higher level areas that integrate different types of sensory and motor information. The present study addressed this issue by investigating the simultaneous contributions of multiple sensory-motor modalities to semantic word processing. With a multivariate fMRI design, we examined activation associated with 5 sensory-motor attributes--color, shape, visual motion, sound, and manipulation--for 900 words. Regions responsive to each attribute were identified using independent ratings of the attributes' relevance to the meaning of each word. The results indicate that these aspects of conceptual knowledge are encoded in multimodal and higher level unimodal areas involved in processing the corresponding types of information during perception and action, in agreement with embodied theories of semantics. They also reveal a hierarchical system of abstracted sensory-motor representations incorporating a major division between object interaction and object perception processes.
Author List
Fernandino L, Binder JR, Desai RH, Pendl SL, Humphries CJ, Gross WL, Conant LL, Seidenberg MSAuthors
Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of WisconsinLeonardo Fernandino PhD Assistant Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
William Gross MD, PhD Assistant Professor in the Anesthesiology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
Acoustic StimulationAdult
Auditory Perception
Brain
Brain Mapping
Color Perception
Concept Formation
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Motion Perception
Multivariate Analysis
Perception
Photic Stimulation
Semantics
Young Adult
