title: Nouns, verbs, objects, actions, and abstractions: local fMRI activity indexes semantics, not lexical categories.
abstract: Noun/verb dissociations in the literature defy interpretation due to the confound between lexical category and semantic meaning; nouns and verbs typically describe concrete objects and actions. Abstract words, pertaining to neither, are a critical test case: dissociations along lexical-grammatical lines would support models purporting lexical category as the principle governing brain organisation, whilst semantic models predict dissociation between concrete words but not abstract items. During fMRI scanning, participants read orthogonalised word categories of nouns and verbs, with or without concrete, sensorimotor meaning. Analysis of inferior frontal/insula, precentral and central areas revealed an interaction between lexical class and semantic factors with clear category differences between concrete nouns and verbs but not abstract ones. Though the brain stores the combinatorial and lexical-grammatical properties of words, our data show that topographical differences in brain activation, especially in the motor system and inferior frontal cortex, are driven by semantics and not by lexical class.
authors.affiliation: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences, Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, CB2 7EF, Cambridge, UK; Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Douglas House, 18b Trumpington Road, CB2 8AH, Cambridge, UK. Electronic address: rachel.moseley@cantab.net.
authors.forename: Rachel L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Moseley
authors.affiliation: Brain Language Laboratory, Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: friedemann.pulvermuller@fu-berlin.de.
authors.forename: Friedemann
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pulvermüller
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics
keywords: Embodied meaning; Grammatical category; Lexical category; Semantics; fMRI
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