Comprehending Prehending: Neural Correlates of Processing Verbs with Motor Stems

Abstract

The interaction between language and action systems has become an increasingly interesting topic of discussion in cognitive neuroscience. Several recent studies have shown that processing of action verbs elicits activation in the cerebral motor system in a somatotopic manner. The current study extends these findings to show that the brain responses for processing of verbs with specific motor meanings differ not only from that of other motor verbs, but, crucially, that the comprehension of verbs with motor meanings (i.e., greifen, to grasp) differs fundamentally from the processing of verbs with abstract meanings (i.e., denken, to think). Second, the current study investigated the neural correlates of processing morphologically complex verbs with abstract meanings built on stems with motor versus abstract meanings (i.e., begreifen, to comprehend vs. bedenken, to consider). Although residual effects of motor stem meaning might have been expected, we see no evidence for this in our data. Processing of morphologically complex verbs built on motor stems showed no differences in involvement of the motor system when compared with processing complex verbs with abstract stems. Complex verbs built on motor stems did show increased activation compared with complex verbs built on abstract stems in the right posterior temporal cortex. This result is discussed in light of the involvement of the right temporal cortex in comprehension of metaphoric or figurative language.

Embodied language in first- and second-language speakers: Neural correlates of processing motor verbs

“…Planned pair-wise comparisons indicated that simple cognate motor verbs elicited more activation in the S2 ROI than simple cognate nonmotor verbs (t¼ 2.94, p o.01), whereas complex motor and nonmotor verbs did not differ (t¼ À.20, p¼ .84). These results suggest that motor-related activations are only seen with simple verbs and not with opaque complex verbs, replicating Rüschemeyer et al's (2007) findings.…”

“…However, they can also be used as a tool to investigate whether morphologically complex words are decomposed into their constituent parts or processed holistically during comprehension. As far as we know, this approach has so far only been used in Rüschemeyer et al's (2007) study on German as L1. In this study, morphologically complex derivations (i.e.…”

“…With the Cognate Verb subdesign, we first aimed at a replication of the interaction between Complexity and Motor-Relatedness reported by Rüschemeyer et al (2007) for L1 speakers. For L2 speakers, this subdesign allowed us to investigate whether L2 speakers show a similar pattern as L1 speakers.…”

“…To create these ROIs, we selected the peaks of activation reported by Rüschemeyer et al (2007) for the interaction between Complexity and Motor-Relatedness in the left postcentral gyrus and the left parietal operculum (S2). However, since the postcentral gyrus peak reported by Rüschemeyer et al (2007) is slightly more posterior than what is usually reported for motor words (Hauk et al, 2004;Postle et al, 2008;Willems, Toni, Hagoort, & Casasanto, 2009), we also created a more anterior ROI. As our study was a partial replication of Rüschemeyer et al's study, we also based this ROI on peaks of activation reported by the former study, but this time for the Simple Motor versus Non-Motor contrast.…”

“…Noppeney, Josephs, Kiebel, Friston, and Price (2005) found activations in the aIPC for semantic decisions to motor verbs relative to non-motor words. In a visual lexical decision fMRI study, Rüschemeyer, Brass, and Friederici (2007) reported not only activations in left precentral gyrus and central sulcus as well as bilateral postcentral gyrus in response to German simple handrelated motor verbs (e.g., werfen 'throw') versus non-motor verbs (e.g., denken 'think'), but also in left parietal operculum (S2). In contrast, a comparison of these same motor and non-motor verbs embedded as stems in complex verbs with a non-motor meaning (e.g., werfen in entwerfen 'design' -denken in bedenken 'consider') revealed no activations in sensorimotor (i.e.…”