Assessing language-induced motor activity through Event Related Potentials and the Grip Force Sensor, an exploratory study

Juárez, Fernanda Pérez-Gay; Labrecque, David; Frak, Victor

doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2019.05.010

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…As expected, AA sentences showed reduced MEP amplitudes when compared to CC sentences, at the sentence level, but only for affirmative sentences. This confirms previous accounts and results showing a greater involvement of the sensorimotor system for concrete words, phrases, and sentences (Jirak et al, 2010;Klepp et al, 2019;Pérez-Gay Juárez et al, 2019;Vukovic et al, 2017). It is believed that abstract words elicit representations composed of linguistic and social information as well as emotional features, in direct contrast with words eliciting concrete representations (Borghi and Cimatti, 2009;Jirak et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Embodied negation and levels of concreteness: A TMS study on German and Italian language processing

et al. 2021

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According to the embodied cognition perspective, linguistic negation may block the motor simulations induced by language processing. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the left primary motor cortex (hand area) of monolingual Italian and German healthy participants during a rapid serial visual presentation of sentences from their own language. In these languages, the negative particle is located at the beginning and at the end of the sentence, respectively. The study investigated whether the interruption of the motor simulation processes, accounted for by reduced motor evoked potentials (MEPs), takes place similarly in two languages differing on the position of the negative marker. Different levels of sentence concreteness were also manipulated to investigate if negation exerts generalized effects or if it is affected by the semantic features of the sentence. Our findings indicate that negation acts as a block on motor representations, but independently from the language and words concreteness level.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Embodied negation and levels of concreteness: A TMS study on German and Italian language processing

et al. 2021

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“…The modulation of grip force by language is currently understood as reflecting the expression of the semantic content of linguistic information. A general conclusion from studies with auditory (e.g., Frak et al, 2010;Da Silva et al, 2018;Juárez et al, 2019) and visual (Blampain et al, 2018) material is that semantic content includes the simulation of motor action (see Liberman and Mattingly, 1985). In the present study, there is an increase in grip force from baseline to the presentation of stimuli, and again with action verb stimuli but only for older subjects.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 56%

“…It also suggests that word class exerts a distinctive impact on motor systems and that maturation of the neural substrate also plays an important role. Recently, we have also shown that there is a correlation between prefrontal P200 activation and grip force modulation in a verb monitoring task, with adult subjects (Juárez et al, 2019) further suggesting the influence of semantic content on action.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…These results with the measurement of grip force were replicated using noun and verb stimuli in isolation or embedded in sentences (Aravena et al, 2012(Aravena et al, , 2014Nazir et al, 2017;Da Silva et al, 2018) and can be taken as evidence that motor phenomena are linked to semantic recognition-expressed as an involuntary motor outflow resulting from language-induced simulation of action. Recently, it was shown, using Event-Related Potentials, that there exists a correlation between semantic discrimination and grip force modulation (Juárez et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Action verbs drive motor activity in adolescents but not in children

Frak

Labrecque

Cohen

2021

Brain and Cognition

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In adults, grip force has reliably been used to investigate motor simulation evoked by linguistic action, suggesting that motor phenomena are linked to semantic action. The parietal and frontal lobes and their connexions are essential neural structures for pragmatic aspects of hand semantic action. In this perspective, the aim of the study was to determine the extent to which two groups of children and adolescents, classically characterized by degree of axonal myelination in fronto-parietal circuits, monitored the occurrence of nouns and manual action verbs presented auditorily while holding a grip force sensor. Differential effects of grip force were seen only in the adolescents when monitoring action verbs. Interestingly, weaker effects of grip force were modulated by noun targets only in the younger children, revealing that the ability to profit from a full semantic representation of verbs is not clearly established in the younger children. Grip force modulation was observed as early as 300 ms post target onset and peaked at the 500-750 ms window of observation for both groups. These group differences are in line with the motor simulation difficulties seen in younger children. The results may also indicate that degree of grip force in response to specific linguistic categories parallels the maturation of the parietal-frontal circuits, including the anterior intra-parietal area which plays a determining role in semantic aspects of hand action.

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“…Most of this evidence comes from research on words denoting bodily actions (e.g., draw, kick), which offered the opportunity to investigate the functional links between language processing and the motor system. Since the seminal work by Hauk and colleagues (Hauk, Johnsrude, & Pulvermüller, 2004) in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), several neuroimaging and behavioral studies reported that (pre)motor brain regions are called upon during processing of action words, either in isolation or embedded in a sentential context, whether literal or figurative (Boulenger, Hauk, & Pulvermüller, 2009;Desai, Binder, Conant, Mano, & Seidenberg, 2011;Fargier et al, 2012;Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002;Pérez-Gay Juárez, Labrecque, & Frak, 2019;Postle, McMahon, Ashton, Meredith, & de Zubicaray, 2008;Pulvermüller, Hauk, Nikulin, & Ilmoniemi, 2005;Rueschemeyer, Lindemann, van Rooij, van Dam, & Bekkering, 2010;Tettamanti et al, 2005;Tremblay & Small, 2011;Vukovic, Feurra, Shpektor, Myachykov, & Shtyrov, 2017;Willems, Toni, Hagoort, & Casasanto, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling better: Tactile verbs speed up tactile detection

Boulenger

Martel

Bouvet

et al. 2020

Brain and Cognition

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Embodiment of action-related language into the motor system has been extensivelydocumented. Yet the case of sensory words, especially referring to touch, remains overlooked.We investigated the influence of verbs denoting tactile sensations on tactile perception. In Experiment 1, participants detected tactile stimulations on their forearm, preceded by tactile or non-tactile verbs by one of three delays (170, 350, 500ms) reflecting different word processing stages. Results revealed shorter reaction times to tactile stimulations following tactile than nontactile verbs, irrespective of delay. To ensure that priming pertained to tactile, and not motor, verb properties, Experiment 2 compared the impact of tactile verbs to both action and nontactile verbs, while stimulations were delivered on the index finger. No priming emerged following action verbs, therefore not supporting the motor-grounded interpretation. Facilitation by tactile verbs was however not observed, possibly owing to methodological changes. Experiment 3, identical to Experiment 2 except that stimulation was delivered to participants' forearm, replicated the priming effect. Importantly, tactile stimulations were detected faster after tactile than after both non-tactile and action verbs, indicating that verbs' tactile properties engaged resources shared with sensory perception. Our findings suggest that language conveying tactile information can activate somatosensory representations and subsequently promote tactile detection.

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Assessing language-induced motor activity through Event Related Potentials and the Grip Force Sensor, an exploratory study

Cited by 19 publications

References 36 publications

Embodied negation and levels of concreteness: A TMS study on German and Italian language processing

Embodied negation and levels of concreteness: A TMS study on German and Italian language processing

Action verbs drive motor activity in adolescents but not in children

Feeling better: Tactile verbs speed up tactile detection

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