Inflection in action: Semantic motor system activation to noun- and verb-containing phrases is modulated by the presence of overt grammatical markers

Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Cook, Clare; Hauk, Olaf

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.12.020

Cited by 35 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…This implies similar modality-grounded mechanisms of lexicosemantic representation formation operating in the human brain for different lexical classes. This result is in line with a recent fMRI study comparing English action nouns and verbs, which used additional words for lexical disambiguation (28), as well as with recent behavioral and TMS results indicating motor cortex role in noun processing (27,35). Importantly, while fMRI and behavioral approaches lack the temporal resolution to address the timing of motor cortex involvement, the current MEG study shows its near-instant character.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Automatic ultrarapid activation and inhibition of cortical motor systems in spoken word comprehension

Shtyrov

Butorina

Nikolaeva

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

118

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To address the hotly debated question of motor system involvement in language comprehension, we recorded neuromagnetic responses elicited in the human brain by unattended actionrelated spoken verbs and nouns and scrutinized their timecourse and neuroanatomical substrates. We found that already very early on, from ∼80 ms after disambiguation point when the words could be identified from the available acoustic information, both verbs and nouns produced characteristic somatotopic activations in the motor strip, with words related to different body parts activating the corresponding body representations. Strikingly, along with this category-specific activation, we observed suppression of motorcortex activation by competitor words with incompatible semantics, documenting operation of the neurophysiological principles of lateral/surround inhibition in neural word processing. The extremely early onset of these activations and deactivations, their emergence in the absence of attention, and their similar presence for words of different lexical classes strongly suggest automatic involvement of motor-specific circuits in the perception of actionrelated language.embodied cognition | lexical semantics | magnetoencephalography | MEG | mismatch negativity T he old debate on localization of cognitive functions in the brain was recently reinvigorated with the advent of a concept of mirror neurons and a closely related framework of grounded cognition (1-8). The mirror neuron theory stemmed from a seminal discovery of neurons that activate equally when a specific action is performed by the tested individual or when observing the same action performed by others, giving a strong neurophysiological proof for the concept of comprehension and learning through simulation (for a review, see ref. 1). This is enabled by the presence of perception-action circuits in the brain that can provide motor areas with multimodal sensory information (2). An array of findings in mirror neuron and related research strongly suggest that the motor system is not merely a "slave" or an "output" of any central processing, but that it also takes an active role in perception and comprehension of external events. In cognitive science, which had suggested the emergence of concepts from individual experiences long before these neurophysiological discoveries (3-5), a similar strand of research led to a more general framework of "grounding" (or "embodiment") of cognitive functions and representations in bodily sensations and actions, which was supported through a range of behavioral and neurophysiological experiments (6-8).Nowhere these approaches resonated more than in the neuroscience of language. Following breakthrough neurological studies of the 19th century (9, 10), the human language function was for many decades confined to a small set of cortical areas in the left hemisphere. More recent research, however, challenged these views in favor of linguistic representations distributed over a range of brain areas, which span beyond the core language cortices of B...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Automatic ultrarapid activation and inhibition of cortical motor systems in spoken word comprehension

Shtyrov

Butorina

Nikolaeva

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

118

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“…Research has shown that the involvement of the motor system in action language processing is not homogeneous, and that it can be modulated by a number of different factors. Specifically, studies have examined the linguistic characteristics that modulate motor/premotor activation during action language processing, such as grammatical categories (e.g., Boulenger, Décoppet, Roy, Paulignan, & Nazir, 2007 ;Fargier & Laganaro, 2015 ;Pulvermüller, Cook, & Hauk, 2012), degree of abstractness (e.g., Aziz-Zadeh & Damasio, 2008;Desai et al, 2013;Glenberg et al, 2008;Troyer, Curley, Miller, Saygin, & Bergen, 2014), or semantic context of action sentences (e.g., Aravena et al, 2012). However, only few studies have explored the potential relationship between action language processing and motor imagery (Papeo et al, 2012 ;Tomasino et al, 2008Willems et al, 2009 ;Yang & Shu, 2014) or motor skills Peck et al, 2009).…”

Section: Involvement Of Sma In Action Language Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of medial premotor areas in action language processing in relation to motor skills

Courson

Macoir

Tremblay

2017

Cortex

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The literature reports that the supplementary motor area (SMA) and pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) are involved in motor planning and execution, and in motor-related cognitive functions such as motor imagery. However, their specific role in action language processing remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated the impact of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over SMA and pre-SMA during an action semantic analogy task (SAT) in relation with fine motor skills (i.e., manual dexterity) and motor imagery abilities in healthy non-expert adults. The impact of rTMS over SMA (but not pre-SMA) on reaction times (RT) during SAT was correlated with manual dexterity. Specifically, results show that rTMS over SMA modulated RT for those with lower dexterity skills. Our results therefore demonstrate a causal involvement of SMA in action language processing, as well as the existence of inter-individual differences in this involvement. We discuss these findings in light of neurolinguistic theories of language processing.

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“…A number of fMRI and PET studies have shown that sensory-motor areas become active during language comprehension, mostly in the action domain (Hauk et al, 2004; Tettamanti et al, 2005; Aziz-Zadeh et al, 2006; Kemmerer et al, 2008; Boulenger et al, 2009; Raposo et al, 2009; Willems et al, 2010b; Hauk and Pulvermüller, 2011; Pulvermüller et al, 2011), but also for auditory (Kiefer et al, 2008), visual (Pulvermüller and Hauk, 2006; Simmons et al, 2007; Hauk et al, 2008a), and olfactory-gustatory concepts (Gonzalez et al, 2006; Barros-Loscertales et al, 2012), and for a mixture of those (Noppeney and Price, 2002, 2003; Hauk et al, 2008a; Kiefer et al, 2012). …”

Section: Review Of the Empirical Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Body of Evidence: What Can Neuroscience Tell Us about Embodied Semantics?

Hauk¹,

Tschentscher²

2013

Front. Psychology

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Semantic knowledge is based on the way we perceive and interact with the world. However, the jury is still out on the question: to what degree are neuronal systems that subserve acquisition of semantic knowledge, such as sensory-motor networks, involved in its representation and processing? We will begin with a critical evaluation of the main behavioral and neuroimaging methods with respect to their capability to define the functional roles of specific brain areas. Any behavioral or neuroscientific measure is a conflation of representations and processes. Hence, a combination of behavioral and neurophysiological interactions as well as time-course information is required to define the functional roles of brain areas. This will guide our review of the empirical literature. Most research in this area has been done on semantics of concrete words, where clear theoretical frameworks for an involvement of sensory-motor systems in semantics exist. Most of this evidence still stems from correlational studies that are ambiguous with respect to the behavioral relevance of effects. Evidence for causal effects of sensory-motor systems on semantic processes is still scarce but evolving. Relatively few neuroscientific studies so far have investigated the embodiment of abstract semantics for words, numbers, and arithmetic facts. Here, some correlational evidence exists, but data on causality are mostly absent. We conclude that neuroimaging data, just as behavioral data, have so far not disentangled the fundamental link between process and representation. Future studies should therefore put more emphasis on the effects of task and context on semantic processing. Strong conclusions can only be drawn from a combination of methods that provide time-course information, determine the connectivity among poly- or amodal and sensory-motor areas, link behavioral with neuroimaging measures, and allow causal inferences. We will conclude with suggestions on how this could be accomplished in future research.

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Inflection in action: Semantic motor system activation to noun- and verb-containing phrases is modulated by the presence of overt grammatical markers

Cited by 35 publications

References 91 publications

Automatic ultrarapid activation and inhibition of cortical motor systems in spoken word comprehension

Automatic ultrarapid activation and inhibition of cortical motor systems in spoken word comprehension

Role of medial premotor areas in action language processing in relation to motor skills

The Body of Evidence: What Can Neuroscience Tell Us about Embodied Semantics?

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