Effects of implied physical effort in sensory-motor and pre-frontal cortex during language comprehension

TY - JOUR

T1 - Effects of implied physical effort in sensory-motor and pre-frontal cortex during language comprehension

AU - Moody, Claire L.

AU - Gennari, Silvia P.

PY - 2010/1/1

Y1 - 2010/1/1

N2 - Embodied theories of conceptual knowledge suggest that sensory-motor representations of actions similar to those involved in the performance of the action described are recruited during language comprehension. The extent of this recruitment, however, and the brain mechanisms supporting this process remain unknown. Using fMRI, we investigated these issues by examining how people understand sentences that convey three different degrees of physical effort and by comparing this process to action execution. To understand the effort implied by the stimulus sentences, object and action properties associated with nouns and verbs respectively needed to be integrated: pushing the piano implies more physical effort than pushing the chair. Results indicated that a pre-motor region, which was also active in action execution, was sensitive to the degree of effort implied by the language. Interestingly, the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, a region typically associated with semantic processing, was not active in action execution but was nevertheless modulated by the effort implied. inter-region correlations also suggested that this region was strongly correlated with pre-motor and posterior temporal regions. Overall, results suggest that (a) language understanding elicits action representations retaining a degree of specificity that was previously unsuspected, including unique properties of interactions with objects, and (b) these representations, which result from integrating the words' semantic information, may be Computed within a collaborative neural network that includes the anterior inferior frontal gyrus. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

AB - Embodied theories of conceptual knowledge suggest that sensory-motor representations of actions similar to those involved in the performance of the action described are recruited during language comprehension. The extent of this recruitment, however, and the brain mechanisms supporting this process remain unknown. Using fMRI, we investigated these issues by examining how people understand sentences that convey three different degrees of physical effort and by comparing this process to action execution. To understand the effort implied by the stimulus sentences, object and action properties associated with nouns and verbs respectively needed to be integrated: pushing the piano implies more physical effort than pushing the chair. Results indicated that a pre-motor region, which was also active in action execution, was sensitive to the degree of effort implied by the language. Interestingly, the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, a region typically associated with semantic processing, was not active in action execution but was nevertheless modulated by the effort implied. inter-region correlations also suggested that this region was strongly correlated with pre-motor and posterior temporal regions. Overall, results suggest that (a) language understanding elicits action representations retaining a degree of specificity that was previously unsuspected, including unique properties of interactions with objects, and (b) these representations, which result from integrating the words' semantic information, may be Computed within a collaborative neural network that includes the anterior inferior frontal gyrus. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

KW - HAND-OBJECT INTERACTIONS

KW - INFERIOR FRONTAL-CORTEX

KW - HUMAN BRAIN

KW - SENTENCE COMPREHENSION

KW - WORKING-MEMORY

KW - FUNCTIONAL LOCALIZATION

KW - CORTICAL ORGANIZATION

KW - ACTION REPRESENTATION

KW - ARBITRARY STIMULUS

KW - PREMOTOR CORTICES

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=70349968041&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.065

DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.065

M3 - Article

SN - 1053-8119

VL - 49

SP - 782

EP - 793

JO - Neuroimage

JF - Neuroimage

IS - 1

ER -