Functional neuroanatomy of contextual acquisition of concrete and abstract words

The meaning of a novel word can be acquired by extracting it from linguistic context. Here we simulated word learning of new words associated to concrete and abstract concepts in a variant of the human simulation paradigm that provided linguistic context information in order to characterize the brain systems involved. Native speakers of Spanish read pairs of sentences in order to derive the meaning of a new word that appeared in the terminal position of the sentences. fMRI revealed that learning the meaning associated to concrete and abstract new words was qualitatively different and recruited similar brain regions as the processing of real concrete and abstract words. In particular, learning of new concrete words selectively boosted the activation of the ventral anterior fusiform gyrus, a region driven by imageability, which has previously been implicated in the processing of concrete words

Aprendizaje de palabras nuevas concretas y abstractas

El significado de una palabra nueva puede adquirirse extrayéndolo de un contexto lingüístico, tanto durante la lectura como durante una conversación. Aún no sabemos cómo nuestro cerebro lleva a cabo este proceso de extracción y posterior aprendizaje del significado de nuevas palabras. En esta investigación hemos simulado el aprendizaje de palabras nuevas concretas y abstractas a partir de información contextual verbal, con el fin de caracterizar las regiones cerebrales implicadas durante el curso de este proces

DIKSI DALAM WACANA HUMOR INDONESIA DI MEDIA SOSIAL (Diction in Indonesia Humor Discourse on Sosial Media)

Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan diksi dalam wacana humor di media sosial facebook. Pendekatan penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kualitatif. Data-data penelitian ini adalah diksi dalam wacana humor di media sosial facebook. Sumber datanya berupa wacana humor di media sosial facebook. Data penelitian ini dikumpulkan dengan menggunakan metode dokumentasi dan simak serta dilanjutkan dengan teknik catat. Data penelitian ini dianalisis dengan menggunakan metode padan translasional dan teknik baca markah. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan penggunaan diksi pada wacana humor Indonesia di media sosial meliputi: (1) diksi sehari-hari; (2) kata serapan (Jawa dan Inggris); (3) kata sapaan; (4) kata konotatif; (5) kata konkret; dan (6) kata vulgar. Diksi sehari-hari dalam wacana humor Indonesia merupakan diksi yang paling banyak ditemukan. Temuan ini menunjukkan bahwa diksi keseharian dalam wacana humor berfungsi untuk menjalin keakraban dalam berkomunikasi.This study aims to describe diction in the discourse of humor on Facebook social media. This research approach is descriptive qualitative. The data of this study are diction in the discourse of humor on Facebook social media. The data source is in the form of humorous discourse on Facebook social media. The research data was collected using the documentation and listening method and continued with the note-taking technique. The data of this study were analyzed using translational equivalent methods and marking reading techniques. The results of this study indicate the use of diction in Indonesian humor discourse on social media including (1) daily diction; (2) absorption words (Javanese and English); (3) greetings; (4) connotative words; (5) concrete words; and (6) vulgar words. Daily diction in Indonesian humorous discourse is the most common diction. This finding shows that daily diction in humorous discourse serves to establish intimacy in communication

The neural correlates of semantic richness : Evidence from an fMRI study of word learning

We investigated the neural correlates of concrete nouns with either many or few semantic features. A group of 21 participants underwent two days of training and were then asked to categorize 40 newly learned words and a set of matched familiar words as living or nonliving in an MRI scanner. Our results showed that the most reliable effects of semantic richness were located in the left angular gyrus (AG) and middle temporal gyrus (MTG), where activation was higher for semantically rich than poor words. Other areas showing the same pattern included bilateral precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus. Our findings support the view that AG and anterior MTG, as part of the multimodal network, play a significant role in representing and integrating semantic features from different input modalities. We propose that activation in bilateral precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus reflects interplay between AG and episodic memory systems during semantic retrieval

"Tooth and Truth": Brain Activation During Passive Listening to Concrete and Abstract Nouns

Weiss S, Müller HM, Mertens M, Wörmann FG. "Tooth and Truth": Brain Activation During Passive Listening to Concrete and Abstract Nouns. The Open Behavioral Science Journal. 2011;5(1):37-47.The aim of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to investigate brain activation associated with the auditory perception of concrete and abstract German nouns during a passive listening task. This procedure allows us to investigate inherent linguistic properties common to either concrete or abstract concepts rather than cognitive operations due to the performance of a given specific task. In addition, a new baseline condition (pseudospeech) was used allowing us to monitor language-relevant activation common to both word types besides the pre-lexical analysis of the speech sound. Fixed effects analyses indicated increased activation of left hemispheric ventromedial prefrontal brain regions specifically responsive to the comprehension of concrete nouns by the current participants. This was interpreted in terms of the multisensory representation of concrete nouns comprising not only elicitation of visual images but also of multimodal sensoric and manipulation-related context. In contrast, abstract nouns did not activate any brain region exclusively. Random effects analyses revealed only very slight differences between concrete and abstract nouns in left ventromedial prefrontal brain activation. This suggests that the passive listening task is not suitable to canalize the higher cognitive variability in processing abstract items which seem to result in less coherent brain activation

Cognitive control and language network connectivity associated with language production in aphasia

Aphasia is the breakdown of language comprehension and production due to an acquired brain injury of the left hemisphere. Investigation of the neurological underpinnings of aphasia have advanced from post-mortem investigation of specific regions in the 1800s to the utilization of brain imaging technology to understand brain networks. These approaches have helped us to appreciate the reorganization of the brain and its networks post stroke, particularly as it relates or is modified for adequate versus impaired performance. Research into neuroplastic changes can elucidate differences between healthy and lesioned brains. Furthermore, identification of adaptive (or maladaptive) neuroplastic changes can also inform diagnostics or aid in monitoring the neuroplastic effects of evidence-based treatment. This study utilized resting state functional MRI to characterize graph theory metrics of language (LN) and cognitive control networks (frontoparietal, FPN) in 21 persons with aphasia (PWA) and 18 healthy controls (HC). This study further investigated the relationship between strength of connectivity and semantic access and errors in PWA during a picture description task. When comparing resting state network connectivity of the LN in PWA vs. HC, many edges (10/14) and node degree hubs (3/3) were common to both groups for the LN, suggesting that an inherent network that remains relatively intact even post-stroke. Analyses yielded similar results for resting state FPN network connectivity with common edges and node degree hubs. When investigating correlations between network edges and language measures, correlations between FPN edges and CIU’s and retracing suggested the importance of right hemisphere and ‘healthy’ edge integrity

Neurocognitive bases of self-monitoring of inner speech in hallucination prone individuals

Verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia patients might be seen as internal verbal productions mistaken for perceptions as a result of over-salient inner speech and/or defective self-monitoring processes. Similar cognitive mechanisms might underpin verbal hallucination proneness in the general population. We investigated, in a non-clinical sample, the cerebral activity associated with verbal hallucinatory predisposition during false recognition of familiar words —assumed to stem from poor monitoring of inner speech—vs. uncommon words. Thirty-seven healthy participants underwent a verbal recognition task. High- and low-frequency words were presented outside the scanner. In the scanner, the participants were then required to recognize the target words among equivalent distractors. Results showed that verbal hallucination proneness was associated with higher rates of false recognition of high-frequency words. It was further associated with activation of language and decisional brain areas during false recognitions of low-, but not high-, frequency words, and with activation of a recollective brain area during correct recognitions of low-, but not high-, frequency words. The increased tendency to report familiar words as targets, along with a lack of activation of the language, recollective, and decisional brain areas necessary for their judgement, suggests failure in the self-monitoring of inner speech in verbal hallucination-prone individuals

Modulating Effects of Contextual Emotions on the Neural Plasticity Induced by Word Learning

Recently, numerous studies have investigated the neurocognitive mechanism of learning words in isolation or in semantic contexts. However, emotion as an important influencing factor on novel word learning has not been fully considered in the previous studies. In addition, the effects of emotion on word learning and the underlying neural mechanism have not been systematically investigated. Sixteen participants were trained to learn novel concrete or abstract words under negative, neutral, and positive contextual emotions over 3 days; then, fMRI scanning was done during the testing sessions on day 1 and day 3. We compared the brain activations in day 1 and day 3 to investigate the role of contextual emotions in learning different types of words and the corresponding neural plasticity changes. Behaviorally, the performance of the words learned in the negative context was lower than those in the neutral and positive contexts, which indicated that contextual emotions had a significant impact on novel word learning. Correspondingly, the functional plasticity changes of the right angular gyrus (AG), bilateral insula, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) induced by word learning were modulated by the contextual emotions. The insula also was sensitive to the concreteness of the learned words. More importantly, the functional plasticity changes of the left inferior frontal gyrus (left IFG) and left fusiform gyrus (left FG) were interactively influenced by the contextual emotions and concreteness, suggesting that the contextual emotional information had a discriminable effect on different types of words in the neural mechanism level. These results demonstrate that emotional information in contexts is inevitably involved in word learning. The role of contextual emotions in brain plasticity for learning is discussed