Categorical and thematic knowledge representation in the brain: Neural correlates of taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations

Sachs, Olga; Weis, Susanne; Krings, Timo; Huber, Walter; Kircher, Tilo

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.08.015

Cited by 83 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The thalamus and precuneus have both been shown to exhibit increased activity in a categorization task (Sachs et al, 2008). The extra thalamus activity in the present study may reflect the increased attentional demands that overall similarity sorting is believed to require.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 46%

The neural basis of overall similarity and single-dimension sorting

2009

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The ability to group stimuli into meaningful categories is fundamental to natural behavior. Raw perceptions would be useless without an ability to classify items as, for example, threat or food. Previous work suggests that people have a tendency to group stimuli either on the basis of a single dimension or by overall similarity (e.g., Milton, F.N., Longmore, C.A., and Wills, A.J. (2008). Processes of overall similarity sorting in free classification. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform, 34, 676–692.). It has recently been suggested that overall similarity sorting can engage similar rule-based processes to single-dimension sorting and, in addition, requires greater use of working memory (Milton, F.N., and Wills, A.J. (2004). The influences of stimulus properties on category construction. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn, 30, 407–415.). These\ud predictions were tested in an event-related fMRI study of spontaneous categorization. Results showed a striking overlap of activation between overall similarity and single-dimension sorting indicating engagement of common neural processes. Furthermore, overall similarity sorting recruited additional activity in bilateral precuneus, right cuneus, left cerebellum, left postcentral gyrus, right thalamus and right ventrolateral frontal cortex (VLFC). Our findings suggest that overall similarity sorting can be the result of rule-based processes and highlight a potential role for right VLFC in integrating multi-dimensional sensory information to form conceptual categories

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 46%

The neural basis of overall similarity and single-dimension sorting

2009

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“…Kalénine et al (2009) demonstrated an advantage of taxonomic over thematic relationships regarding both RTs and accuracy on a matching task, while Sachs et al (2008a) failed to highlight any difference between thematic and taxonomic conditions on these two measures in a forced-choice category construction task. Contrasted results were also highlighted in studies using implicit lexical-decision priming tasks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

When the zebra loses its stripes but is still in the savannah: Results from a semantic priming paradigm in semantic dementia

Merck¹,

Jonin²,

Laisney

et al. 2014

Neuropsychologia

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“…Additional support for the proposal that color category effects in the MFG reflect categorization at a conceptual level is that the region has been implicated in categorical processing in other domains, such as phonetic categorization (34), categorization of dot patterns (35), categorical spatial memory (36), semantic categories (37,38), categorical uncertainty (39), and taxonomic categorization (40). Learned-object categories have also been found to be represented in a region homologous to the MFG in macaques (41).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Categorical encoding of color in the brain

Bird¹,

Berens²,

Horner

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The areas of the brain that encode color categorically have not yet been reliably identified. Here, we used functional MRI adaptation to identify neuronal populations that represent color categories irrespective of metric differences in color. Two colors were successively presented within a block of trials. The two colors were either from the same or different categories (e.g., "blue 1 and blue 2" or "blue 1 and green 1"), and the size of the hue difference was varied. Participants performed a target detection task unrelated to the difference in color. In the middle frontal gyrus of both hemispheres and to a lesser extent, the cerebellum, blood-oxygen level-dependent response was greater for colors from different categories relative to colors from the same category. Importantly, activation in these regions was not modulated by the size of the hue difference, suggesting that neurons in these regions represent color categorically, regardless of metric color difference. Representational similarity analyses, which investigated the similarity of the pattern of activity across local groups of voxels, identified other regions of the brain (including the visual cortex), which responded to metric but not categorical color differences. Therefore, categorical and metric hue differences appear to be coded in qualitatively different ways and in different brain regions. These findings have implications for the long-standing debate on the origin and nature of color categories, and also further our understanding of how color is processed by the brain.categorization | functional magnetic resonance imaging | chromatic

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Categorical and thematic knowledge representation in the brain: Neural correlates of taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations

Cited by 83 publications

References 37 publications

The neural basis of overall similarity and single-dimension sorting

The neural basis of overall similarity and single-dimension sorting

When the zebra loses its stripes but is still in the savannah: Results from a semantic priming paradigm in semantic dementia

Categorical encoding of color in the brain

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