TY - JOUR
T1 - Sensorimotor experience and verb-category mapping in human sensory, motor and parietal neurons
AU - Yang, Ying
AU - Dickey, Michael Walsh
AU - Fiez, Julie
AU - Murphy, Brian
AU - Mitchell, Tom
AU - Collinger, Jennifer
AU - Tyler-Kabara, Elizabeth
AU - Boninger, Michael
AU - Wang, Wei
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017
PY - 2017/7
Y1 - 2017/7
N2 - Semantic grounding is the process of relating meaning to symbols (e.g., words). It is the foundation for creating a representational symbolic system such as language. Semantic grounding for verb meaning is hypothesized to be achieved through two mechanisms: sensorimotor mapping, i.e., directly encoding the sensorimotor experiences the verb describes, and verb-category mapping, i.e., encoding the abstract category a verb belongs to. These two mechanisms were investigated by examining neuronal-level spike (i.e. neuronal action potential) activities from the motor, somatosensory and parietal areas in two human participants. Motor and a portion of somatosensory neurons were found to be involved in primarily sensorimotor mapping, while parietal and some somatosensory neurons were found to be involved in both sensorimotor and verb-category mapping. The time course of the spike activities and the selective tuning pattern of these neurons indicate that they belong to a large neural network used for semantic processing. This study is the first step towards understanding how words are processed by neurons.
AB - Semantic grounding is the process of relating meaning to symbols (e.g., words). It is the foundation for creating a representational symbolic system such as language. Semantic grounding for verb meaning is hypothesized to be achieved through two mechanisms: sensorimotor mapping, i.e., directly encoding the sensorimotor experiences the verb describes, and verb-category mapping, i.e., encoding the abstract category a verb belongs to. These two mechanisms were investigated by examining neuronal-level spike (i.e. neuronal action potential) activities from the motor, somatosensory and parietal areas in two human participants. Motor and a portion of somatosensory neurons were found to be involved in primarily sensorimotor mapping, while parietal and some somatosensory neurons were found to be involved in both sensorimotor and verb-category mapping. The time course of the spike activities and the selective tuning pattern of these neurons indicate that they belong to a large neural network used for semantic processing. This study is the first step towards understanding how words are processed by neurons.
KW - Action verbs
KW - Concept-to-concept mapping
KW - Experience-to-concept mapping
KW - Human neuron spikes
KW - Semantic grounding
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85019731831&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.04.021
DO - 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.04.021
M3 - Article
C2 - 28575757
AN - SCOPUS:85019731831
SN - 0010-9452
VL - 92
SP - 304
EP - 319
JO - Cortex
JF - Cortex
ER -