Predication Drives Verb Cortical Signatures

Hernández, Mireia; Fairhall, Scott L.; Lenci, Alessandro; Baroni, Marco; Caramazza, Alfonso

doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00598

Cited by 20 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…5B, right), outside the region where emblems differ from pantomimes. Weak effects of abstractness/ concreteness are compatible with current results showing comparable activity in the lateral temporal cortex for abstract and concrete words (Bedny et al, 2008;Hernández et al, 2014;, and abstractness/concreteness effects in regions outside this territory (Binder et al, 2009;Straube et al, 2013). In summary, although emblems and pantomimes elicited comparable activity in the largest part of left and right MTG, they differed in two clusters.…”

Section: Pantomimes Versus Emblemssupporting

confidence: 90%

The Large-Scale Organization of Gestures and Words in the Middle Temporal Gyrus

2019

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The middle temporal gyrus (MTG) has been shown to be recruited during the processing of words, but also during the observation of actions. Here we investigated how information related to words and gestures is organized along the MTG. To this aim, we measured the BOLD response in the MTG to video clips of gestures and spoken words in 17 healthy human adults (male and female). Gestures consisted of videos of an actress performing object-use pantomimes (iconic representations of object-directed actions; e.g., playing guitar), emblems (conventional gestures, e.g., thumb up), and meaningless gestures. Word stimuli (verbs, nouns) consisted of video clips of the same actress pronouncing words. We found a stronger response to meaningful compared with meaningless gestures along the whole left and large portions of the right MTG. Importantly, we observed a gradient, with posterior regions responding more strongly to gestures (pantomimes and emblems) than words and anterior regions showing a stronger response to words than gestures. In an intermediate region in the left hemisphere, the response was significantly higher to words and emblems (i.e., items with a greater arbitrariness of the sign-to-meaning mapping) than to pantomimes. These results show that the large-scale organization of information in the MTG is driven by the input modality and may also reflect the arbitrariness of the relationship between sign and meaning.Here we investigated the organizing principle of information in the middle temporal gyrus, taking into consideration the inputmodality and the arbitrariness of the relationship between a sign and its meaning. We compared the middle temporal gyrus response during the processing of pantomimes, emblems, and spoken words. We found that posterior regions responded more strongly to pantomimes and emblems than to words, whereas anterior regions responded more strongly to words than to pantomimes and emblems. In an intermediate region, only in the left hemisphere, words and emblems evoked a stronger response than pantomimes. Our results identify two organizing principles of neural representation: the modality of communication (gestural or verbal) and the (arbitrariness of the) relationship between sign and meanings.

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Section: Pantomimes Versus Emblemssupporting

confidence: 90%

The Large-Scale Organization of Gestures and Words in the Middle Temporal Gyrus

2019

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“…All verbs activated the left posterior temporal cortex relative to nouns, irrespective of the extent of motion. This region is also sensitive to grammatical properties of verbs, such as first versus third person information conveyed by verbs (Papeo & Lingnau, 2015) and transitivity (Hernandez, Fairhall, Lenci, Baroni, & Caramazza, 2014). Rather, it appears to be a verb-specific region, consistent with the finding that it is activated for abstract and concrete verbs for grammatical and semantic tasks (Yu et al, 2012).…”

Section: Verbs and Nouns Have Unique Representationssupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Rather, it appears to be a verb-specific region, consistent with the finding that it is activated for abstract and concrete verbs for grammatical and semantic tasks (Yu et al, 2012). This region is also sensitive to grammatical properties of verbs, such as first versus third person information conveyed by verbs (Papeo & Lingnau, 2015) and transitivity (Hernandez, Fairhall, Lenci, Baroni, & Caramazza, 2014).…”

Section: Verbs and Nouns Have Unique Representationssupporting

confidence: 72%

Neural representation of word categories is distinct in the temporal lobe: An activation likelihood analysis

Faroqi‐Shah¹,

Sebastian²,

Woude³

2018

Human Brain Mapping

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The distinction between nouns and verbs is a language universal. Yet, functional neuroimaging studies comparing noun and verb processing have yielded inconsistent findings, ranging from a complete frontal(verb)-temporal(noun) dichotomy to a complete overlap in activation patterns. The current study addressed the debate about neural distinctions between nouns and verbs by conducting an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps. Two levels of analysis were conducted: simple effects (Verbs vs. Baseline, Nouns vs. Baseline), and direct comparisons (Verbs vs. Nouns, Nouns vs. Verbs). Nouns were uniquely associated with a left medial temporal cluster (BA37). Activation foci for verbs included extensive inferior frontal (BA44-47) and mid-temporal (BA22, 21) regions in the left hemisphere. These findings confirm that the two grammatical classes have distinct neural architecture in supra-modal brain regions. Further, nouns and verbs overlapped in a small left lateral inferior temporal activation cluster (BA37), which is a region for modality-independent, grammatical class-independent lexical representations. These findings are most consistent with the view that as one acquires language, linguistic representations for a lexical category shift from the modality specific cortices which represent prototypical members of that category (e.g., motion for verbs) to abstract amodal representations in close proximity to modality specific cortices.

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“…think; 28] and states [e.g. exist; 29], pointing toward a more general role of lateral temporal cortex in representing predicate structures that capture "what happens" and "what is" [30].…”

Section: Conceptual Action Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two "what" pathways for action and object recognition

Wurm¹,

Caramazza²

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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The ventral visual stream is conceived as a pathway for object recognition. However, we also recognize the actions an object can be involved in. Here, we show that action recognition relies on a pathway in lateral occipitotemporal cortex, partially overlapping and topographically aligned with object representations that are precursors for action recognition. By contrast, object features that are more relevant for object recognition, such as color and texture, are restricted to medial areas of the ventral stream. We argue that the ventral stream bifurcates into lateral and medial pathways for action and object recognition, respectively. This account explains a number of observed phenomena, such as the duplication of object domains and the specific representational profiles in lateral and medial areas.

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Predication Drives Verb Cortical Signatures

Cited by 20 publications

References 50 publications

The Large-Scale Organization of Gestures and Words in the Middle Temporal Gyrus

The Large-Scale Organization of Gestures and Words in the Middle Temporal Gyrus

Neural representation of word categories is distinct in the temporal lobe: An activation likelihood analysis

Two "what" pathways for action and object recognition

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