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Related Experiment Videos

Noun imageability and the temporal lobes.

R J Wise1, D Howard, C J Mummery

  • 1MRC Cyclotron Unit, Imperial College School of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK. richard.wise@csc.mrc.ac.uk

Neuropsychologia
|April 25, 2000
PubMed
Summary

Brain imaging reveals that noun imageability influences activity in temporal lobe regions, particularly the perirhinal cortex. This suggests sensory experiences are crucial for understanding object nouns.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Understanding how the brain processes word meaning is key to cognitive science.
  • Previous research linked left mid-fusiform gyrus activation to single word processing, but its precise role remains debated.
  • The neural basis for distinguishing between concrete (imageable) and abstract (less imageable) nouns requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate brain activity patterns associated with processing nouns of varying imageability using positron emission tomography (PET).
  • To identify specific brain regions involved in accessing semantic representations of concrete versus abstract nouns.
  • To explore the functional significance of temporal lobe activations in relation to sensory experience and word acquisition.

Main Methods:

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  • Employed positron emission tomography (PET) across three experiments to measure brain activity.
  • Participants heard or read nouns with differing levels of imageability.
  • Analyzed brain activation patterns in relation to noun imageability and semantic processing.

Main Results:

  • Increased brain activity correlated with noun imageability was observed in the left mid-fusiform gyrus, lateral parahippocampal area, and rostral medial temporal lobes (including perirhinal cortex).
  • The rostral medial temporal lobe response to noun imageability represents a novel finding.
  • These regions are reciprocally connected with sensory association cortices, suggesting a role in integrating sensory information for word meaning.

Conclusions:

  • Accessing word meaning relies on heteromodal temporal lobe cortex.
  • Object nouns, learned through sensory experiences, involve ventromedial temporal cortical regions connected to all sensory association areas.
  • The findings highlight the importance of sensory-based learning routes in acquiring the meaning of concrete nouns.