Poster No:
1005
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Natalia Egorova-Brumley1, Marie Spehar1
Institutions:
1University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
First Author:
Co-Author:
Introduction:
The concepts represented by abstract words, such as pain, are fundamental to the human experience and therefore to communication. Investigations into how these words are learnt and mentally represented have been hindered by the subjectivity and variability of their meanings across individuals. Informed by the general theories of word learning (McClelland et al., 1995; Davis & Gaskell, 2009), we hypothesised that pain and sensory word neural representations would be both disembodied in heteromodal language cortices (Binder et al., 2009) and embodied in the physical experiences that comprise their meanings (Hauk et al., 2004).
Methods:
The word learning paradigm utilising experimental pain methods in this study involved the presentation of written pseudowords with heat stimuli of varying intensities (painful, innocuous, and absent). It enabled the creation of abstract words with controlled sensory meanings. The acquisition of these words in 29 right-handed participants (10 male, mean age = 23.9 ± 4.3 years) was evaluated using semantic judgement tasks on 2 consecutive days, with task-fMRI used to examine their cortical representations after a night of sleep.
Results:
All words were successfully learned, with the behavioural tasks revealing significantly better learning for words denoting painful compared sensory experiences. One day after learning, significant activation in the fusiform gyrus was observed in response to all pseudowords. Furthermore, activation for pain-related words was observed in areas commonly associated with tactile and painful stimulus perception.
Conclusions:
In addition to demonstrating that word meanings can be acquired from sensory contexts, these results provide preliminary evidence of rapidly emerging distributions of cortical activation that are consistent with abstract word meanings being both disembodied and embodied in sensory experiences.
Language:
Language Comprehension and Semantics 1
Learning and Memory:
Learning and Memory Other
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI)
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Perception: Pain and Visceral 2
Keywords:
FUNCTIONAL MRI
HIGH FIELD MR
Language
Pain
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Binder, J. R., Desai, R. H., Graves, W. W., & Conant, L. L. (2009). Where is the semantic system? A critical review and meta-analysis of 120 functional neuroimaging studies. Cerebral Cortex, 19(12), 2767-2796. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhp055
Davis, M. H., & Gaskell, M. G. (2009). A complementary systems account of word learning: Neural and behavioural evidence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1536), 3773-3800. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0111
Hauk, O., Johnsrude, I., & Pulvermüller, F. (2004). Somatotopic representation of action words in human motor and premotor cortex. Neuron, 41(2), 301-307. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(03)00838-9
McClelland, J. L., McNaughton, B. L., & O’Reilly, R. C. (1995). Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Psychological Review, 102(3), 419-457. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.102.3.419