Understanding of action-related and abstract verbs in comparison: a behavioral and TMS study

Abstract

Does the comprehension of both action-related and abstract verbs rely on motor simulation? In a behavioral experiment, in which a semantic task was used, response times to hand-action-related verbs were briefer than those to abstract verbs and both decreased with repetition of presentation. In a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experiment, single-pulse stimulation was randomly delivered over hand motor area of the left primary motor cortex to measure cortical-spinal excitability at 300 or 500 ms after verb presentation. Two blocks of trials were run. In each block, the same verbs were randomly presented. In the first block, stimulation induced an increase in motor evoked potentials only when TMS was applied 300 ms after action-related verb presentation. In the second block, no modulation of motor cortex was found according to type of verb and stimulation-delay. These results confirm that motor simulation can be used to understand action rather than abstract verbs. Moreover, they suggest that with repetition, the semantic processing for action verbs does not require activation of primary motor cortex anymore.

Does the motor cortex want the full story? The influence of sentence context on corticospinal excitability in action language processing

“…It should be mentioned that in contrast to our results, several studies have shown the action effect using linguistic stimuli similar to our minimal context condition [29,35]. This is not inconsistent with our results, in that many manual action verbs would activate the motor cortex to a greater extent than non-manual verbs out of context.…”

“…The action effect observed in the present study is consistent with several studies that have shown the involvement of the motor cortex during the reading of action verbs using fMRI [10,33], EEG [25,32,34], behavioral measures [13][14][15][16]25] and TMS [29,[35][36][37][38].…”

Gesture and word analysis: the same or different processes?

“…In contrast, words related to symbolic gestures do not seem to access the motor system Campione et al, 2014). In fact, abstract word comprehension (Scorolli et al, 2012;Sakreida et al, 2013) seems to rely more on linguistic systems whereas action word comprehension seems to rely more on sensorimotor systems (Buccino et al, 2005;Innocenti et al, 2014;Dalla Volta et al, 2014;Kiefer and Pulvermüller, 2012).…”

Does comprehension of symbolic gestures and corresponding-in-meaning words make use of motor simulation?

“…Scorolli et al [10] found M1 activation when TMS applied in an abstract verb condition was delayed (650 ms post-stimulus). In contrast, Innocenti et al [11] found M1 activation 300 ms post stimulus in response to hand-action verbs and no activation 300 and 500 ms post-stimulus in response to abstract verbs. Consequently, it is possible to suppose that cognitive and neural organization of concrete and abstract concepts may be partially distinct.…”