title: Deeper insights into semantic relations: an fMRI study of part-whole and functional associations.
abstract: Cognitive neuroscience research on semantics recognizes a distinction between categorical and associated relations. However, associations can be divided further, such as into part-whole and functional relations. We investigated the neural basis of both relations using a picture-word interference task in an fMRI study. While the left supramarginal gyrus and the right inferior temporal sulcus were activated by part-whole over functional relations, the same applies to the right parahippocampal complex contrasting the functional over part-whole relations. The small effect sizes of our analyses have to be interpreted with caution. While the parahippocampal complex might reflect global scene processing across objects, the inferior temporal sulcus might be involved in the perceptual encoding of object related knowledge and the supramarginal gyrus might represent a convergence zone which implements within object related perceptual features. The current study gives a first indication that the neural bases for part-whole and functional relations seem to be distinguishable.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany; JARA Translational Brain Medicine, Jülich - Aachen, Germany. Electronic address: juliane.muehlhaus@rwth-aachen.de.
authors.forename: Juliane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Muehlhaus
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany; Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany; JARA Translational Brain Medicine, Jülich - Aachen, Germany; Section Neurological Cognition Research, Department of Neurology, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Heim
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Information Technology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Fabian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Altenbach
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
authors.forename: Anjan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chatterjee
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany; JARA Translational Brain Medicine, Jülich - Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Ute
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Habel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Katharina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sass
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Associations; Functional relation; Part-whole relation; Picture–word interference paradigm; Semantic facilitation effect; fMRI