Outside the ‘Core System’: Embodiment of Meaning and the Motor Cortex

Abstract

The identification of the mechanism underlying the brain-language relationship is crucial for the study of language, and for the understanding of fundamental aspects of human cognition. The traditional view of the relationship between the brain and language is based on the idea that the particular functions of language are served by particular areas of language processing. This view was supported by the study of cases of acquired aphasia and the associated brain autopsies. With the development of advanced technologies allowing the study of language in the living brain, our understanding of the neurological foundation of language was revolutionised. A new outlook on language behaviour suggests that the relationship between the brain and language is far more complex than the traditional model implies. The contemporary theory of embodiment cognition predicts the importance of the motor cortex in language comprehension, by showing in a sophisticated way how cognition is grounded in specific neurological structures of the physical processing mechanism. However brain and language studies are surrounded, to this day, by conflicting opinions regarding the functional role of the motor areas in language comprehension. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to confirm the statement that motor areas of the brain functionally participate in the comprehension of word meanings by enhancing the effect of the semantic processing of language. The thesis reports on the results of two relevant studies: “Primary motor cortex functionally contributes to language comprehension: An online rTMS study” (Vukovic, Feurra, Shpektor, Myachykov & Shtyrov, 2017) and “Abstract semantics in the motor system? An event-related fMRI study on passive reading of semantic word categories carrying abstract emotional and mental meaning” (Dreyer & Pulvermüller, 2018), which provide compelling evidence of how motor areas of the brain participate in the processing of action-related words and subcategories of abstract nouns.