Minding the facts: a comment on Thompson-Schill et al.'s "A neural basis for category and modality specificity of semantic knowledge".
In this comment on a recent paper by Thompson-Schill et al. (1999) I argue that the authors failed to consider important empirical facts that are at variance with their favored theory of the causes of semantic category-specific deficits. I also argue that the predictions they make about fusiform gyrus activation on the basis of the interactive modality-specific hypothesis of semantic organization do not obviously follow from that model. I point out that simulations are needed in order to derive predictions from the model. Finally, I argue that the fMRI results they obtained are not obviously relevant to our understanding of the causes of semantic category-specific deficits.
Caramazza
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Cognitive Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. caram@wjh.harvard.edu
D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D012660:Semantics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology