title: Conceptual structure: Towards an integrated neuro-cognitive account.
abstract: How are the meanings of concepts represented and processed? We present a cognitive model of conceptual representations and processing - the Conceptual Structure Account (CSA; Tyler & Moss, 2001) - as an example of a distributed, feature-based approach. In a first section, we describe the CSA and evaluate relevant neuropsychological and experimental behavioral data. We discuss studies using linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli, which are both presumed to access the same conceptual system. We then take the CSA as a framework for hypothesising how conceptual knowledge is represented and processed in the brain. This neuro-cognitive approach attempts to integrate the distributed feature-based characteristics of the CSA with a distributed and feature-based model of sensory object processing. Based on a review of relevant functional imaging and neuropsychological data, we argue that distributed accounts of feature-based representations have considerable explanatory power, and that a cognitive model of conceptual representations is needed to understand their neural bases.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, U.K. ; Memory Clinic - Neuropsychology Center, University Hospital Basel, Schanzenstrasse 55, 4031 Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: K I
authors.initials: KI
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Devereux
authors.forename: L K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Tyler