Neural Representation of Visual Concepts in People Born Blind

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2018 Dec 12

PMID 30531889

Citations 15

Authors

Ella Striem-Amit

Xiaoying Wang

Yanchao Bi

Alfonso Caramazza

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

How do we represent information without sensory features? How are abstract concepts like "freedom", devoid of external perceptible referents, represented in the brain? Here, to address the role of sensory information in the neural representation of concepts, we used fMRI to investigate how people born blind process concepts whose referents are imperceptible to them because of their visual nature ("rainbow", "red"). Activity for these concepts was compared to that of sensorially-perceptible referents ("rain"), classical abstract concepts ("justice") and concrete concepts ("cup"), providing a gradient between fully concrete and fully abstract concepts in the blind. We find that anterior temporal lobe (ATL) responses track concept perceptibility and objecthood: preference for imperceptible object concepts was found in dorsal ATL, for abstract (non-object, non-referential) concepts in lateral ATL, and for perceptible concepts in medial ATL. These findings point to a new division-of-labor among aspects of ATL in representing conceptual properties that are abstract in different ways.

Citing Articles

Object color knowledge representation occurs in the macaque brain despite the absence of a developed language system.

Zhao M, Xin Y, Deng H, Zuo Z, Wang X, Bi Y PLoS Biol. 2024; 22(10):e3002863.

PMID: 39466847 PMC: 11542842. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002863.

What we mean when we say semantic: Toward a multidisciplinary semantic glossary.

Reilly J, Shain C, Borghesani V, Kuhnke P, Vigliocco G, Peelle J Psychon Bull Rev. 2024; 32(1):243-280.

PMID: 39231896 PMC: 11836185. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-024-02556-7.

Longitudinal stability of individual brain plasticity patterns in blindness.

Amaral L, Thomas P, Amedi A, Striem-Amit E Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024; 121(32):e2320251121.

PMID: 39078671 PMC: 11317565. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2320251121.

Longitudinal stability of individual brain plasticity patterns in blindness.

Amaral L, Thomas P, Amedi A, Striem-Amit E bioRxiv. 2023; .

PMID: 37986779 PMC: 10659359. DOI: 10.1101/2023.11.01.565196.

Spoken language processing activates the primary visual cortex.

Seydell-Greenwald A, Wang X, Newport E, Bi Y, Striem-Amit E PLoS One. 2023; 18(8):e0289671.

PMID: 37566582 PMC: 10420367. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289671.

References

Mellem M, Jasmin K, Peng C, Martin A . Sentence processing in anterior superior temporal cortex shows a social-emotional bias. Neuropsychologia. 2016; 89:217-224. PMC: 5384858. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.06.019. View

Coutanche M, Thompson-Schill S . Creating Concepts from Converging Features in Human Cortex. Cereb Cortex. 2014; 25(9):2584-93. PMC: 4537422. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhu057. View

Barca L, Burani C, Arduino L . Word naming times and psycholinguistic norms for Italian nouns. Behav Res Methods Instrum Comput. 2002; 34(3):424-34. DOI: 10.3758/bf03195471. View

Jackson R, Hoffman P, Pobric G, Lambon Ralph M . The Semantic Network at Work and Rest: Differential Connectivity of Anterior Temporal Lobe Subregions. J Neurosci. 2016; 36(5):1490-501. PMC: 4737765. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2999-15.2016. View

Katja Wiemer-Hastings K, Xu X . Content differences for abstract and concrete concepts. Cogn Sci. 2011; 29(5):719-36. DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_33. View

Murphy K, Bodurka J, Bandettini P . How long to scan? The relationship between fMRI temporal signal to noise ratio and necessary scan duration. Neuroimage. 2006; 34(2):565-74. PMC: 2223273. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.09.032. View

Martin C, Douglas D, Newsome R, Man L, Barense M . Integrative and distinctive coding of visual and conceptual object features in the ventral visual stream. Elife. 2018; 7. PMC: 5832413. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.31873. View

Blundo C, Ricci M, Miller L . Category-specific knowledge deficit for animals in a patient with herpes simplex encephalitis. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2010; 23(8):1248-68. DOI: 10.1080/02643290600896449. View

Kiefer M, Pulvermuller F . Conceptual representations in mind and brain: theoretical developments, current evidence and future directions. Cortex. 2011; 48(7):805-25. DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2011.04.006. View

10.

Bi Y, Wei T, Wu C, Han Z, Jiang T, Caramazza A . The role of the left anterior temporal lobe in language processing revisited: Evidence from an individual with ATL resection. Cortex. 2010; 47(5):575-87. DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2009.12.002. View

11.

Loiselle M, Rouleau I, Nguyen D, Dubeau F, Macoir J, Whatmough C . Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in patients with selective anterior temporal lobe resection and in patients with selective amygdalo-hippocampectomy. Neuropsychologia. 2012; 50(5):630-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.12.023. View

12.

Bedny M, Caramazza A . Perception, action, and word meanings in the human brain: the case from action verbs. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2011; 1224:81-95. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06013.x. View

13.

Papagno C, Capasso R, Miceli G . Reversed concreteness effect for nouns in a subject with semantic dementia. Neuropsychologia. 2009; 47(4):1138-48. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.01.019. View

14.

Caramazza A, Shelton J . Domain-specific knowledge systems in the brain the animate-inanimate distinction. J Cogn Neurosci. 1998; 10(1):1-34. DOI: 10.1162/089892998563752. View

15.

Patterson K, Nestor P, Rogers T . Where do you know what you know? The representation of semantic knowledge in the human brain. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2007; 8(12):976-87. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2277. View

16.

Rice G, Lambon Ralph M, Hoffman P . The Roles of Left Versus Right Anterior Temporal Lobes in Conceptual Knowledge: An ALE Meta-analysis of 97 Functional Neuroimaging Studies. Cereb Cortex. 2015; 25(11):4374-91. PMC: 4816787. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhv024. View

17.

Xu Y, Lin Q, Han Z, He Y, Bi Y . Intrinsic functional network architecture of human semantic processing: Modules and hubs. Neuroimage. 2016; 132:542-555. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.03.004. View

18.

Martin A . GRAPES-Grounding representations in action, perception, and emotion systems: How object properties and categories are represented in the human brain. Psychon Bull Rev. 2015; 23(4):979-90. PMC: 5111803. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-015-0842-3. View

19.

Lambon Ralph M, Jefferies E, Patterson K, Rogers T . The neural and computational bases of semantic cognition. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2016; 18(1):42-55. DOI: 10.1038/nrn.2016.150. View

20.

Vigliocco G, Kousta S, Della Rosa P, Vinson D, Tettamanti M, Devlin J . The neural representation of abstract words: the role of emotion. Cereb Cortex. 2013; 24(7):1767-77. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bht025. View