Sports experience changes the neural processing of action language

Abstract

Experience alters behavior by producing enduring changes in the neural processes that support performance. For example, performing a specific action improves the execution of that action via changes in associated sensory and motor neural circuitry, and experience using language improves language comprehension by altering the anatomy and physiology of perisylvian neocortical brain regions. Here we provide evidence that specialized (sports) motor experience enhances action-related language understanding by recruitment of left dorsal lateral premotor cortex, a region normally devoted to higher-level action selection and implementation-even when there is no intention to perform a real action. Experience playing and watching sports has enduring effects on language understanding by changing the neural networks that subserve comprehension to incorporate areas active in performing sports skills. Without such experience, sport novices recruit lowerlevel sensory-motor regions, thought to support the instantiation of movement, during language processing, and activity in primary motor areas does not help comprehension. Thus, the language system is sufficiently plastic and dynamic to encompass expertiserelated neural recruitment outside core language networks.expertise ͉ premotor ͉ action planning ͉ motor stimulation ͉ comprehension

Are the motor features of verb meanings represented in the precentral motor cortices? Yes, but within the context of a flexible, multilevel architecture for conceptual knowledge

“…There are even a few hints that the laterality of the neural responses to verbs for unimanual actions (e.g., scribble) varies according to the handedness of the participants, such that mainly left-hemisphere motor areas are engaged in right-handers, whereas mainly righthemisphere motor areas are engaged in left-handers (Willems et al, 2010a). These results suggest that the distinctive motor features of verb meanings may be coded in the precentral motor cortices in ways that reflect individual differences in how the designated types of actions tend to be performed (for additional data consistent with this view see Beilock et al, 2008;Lyons et al, 2010). Further research is needed, however, to elucidate exactly how the neural coding of the motor features of verb meanings relates to the neural coding of not only the execution, but also the observation and imagination, of the matching kinds of actions within the frontal lobes (for steps in this direction see Willems et al, 2010b;MoodyTriantis et al, 2014;Rueschemeyer et al, 2014).…”

A word in the hand: action, gesture and mental representation in humans and non-human primates

“…Using fMRI, Beilock et al [17] measured the comprehension and processing of language related either to ice-hockey movements or to everyday actions. Half of the participants had extensive experience playing ice hockey; the other half had none.…”

The functional neuroanatomy of actions

“…52 Consequently, only words referring to this subset of actions will engage the motor system. 53 Because we can speak about and understand actions with which we do not have motor experience-like "slithering snake" or "swarming bees"-motor attributes may make a lesser contribution to the meanings of actions than visual ones. However, the relative weightings of different types of sensory and motor information to action concepts remains an open question.…”