Body-part-specific Representations of Semantic Noun Categories

摘要

Word meaning processing in the brain involves ventrolateralntemporal cortex, but a semantic contribution of the dorsalnstream, especially frontocentral sensorimotor areas, has beenncontroversial. We here examine brain activation during passivenreading of object-related nouns from different semantic categories,nnotably animal, food, and tool words, matched for anrange of psycholinguistic features. Results show ventral streamnactivation in temporal cortex along with category-specific activationnpatterns in both ventral and dorsal streams, including sensorimotornsystems and adjacent pFC. Precentral activationnreflected action-related semantic features of the word categories.nCortical regions implicated in mouth and face movementsnwere sparked by food words, and hand area activationnwas seen for tool words, consistent with the actions implicatednby the objects the words are used to speak about. Furthermore,ntool words specifically activated the right cerebellum, and foodnwords activated the left orbito-frontal and fusiform areas. Wendiscuss our results in the context of category-specific semanticndeficits in the processing of words and concepts, along withnprevious neuroimaging research, and conclude that specificndorsal and ventral areas in frontocentral and temporal cortexnindex visual and affective–emotional semantic attributes ofnobject-related nouns and action-related affordances of theirnreferent objects. ■