Brain Reflections of Words and Their Meaning

The neurobiological organization of meaningful language units, morphemes and words, has been illuminated by recent metabolic and neurophysiological imaging studies. When humans process words from different categories, sets of cortical areas become active differentially. The meaning of a word, more precisely aspects of its reference, may be crucial for determining which set of cortical areas is involved in its processing. Word-related neuron webs with specific cortical distributions might underlie the observed category-specific differences in brain activity. Neuroscientific principles can explain these differential topographies.