Abstract
The neural mechanisms subserving the processing of abstract concepts remain largely debated. Even within the embodiment theoretical framework, most authors suggest that abstract concepts are coded in a linguistic propositional format, although they do not completely deny the role of sensorimotor and emotional experiences in coding it. To our knowledge, only one recent proposal puts forward that the processing of concrete and abstract concepts relies on the same mechanisms, with the only difference being in the complexity of the underlying experiences. In this paper, we performed a meta-analysis using the Activation Likelihood Estimates (ALE) method on 33 functional neuroimaging studies that considered activations related to abstract and concrete concepts. The results suggest that (1) concrete and abstract concepts share the recruitment of the temporo-fronto-parietal circuits normally involved in the interactions with the physical world, (2) processing concrete concepts recruits fronto-parietal areas better than abstract concepts, and (3) abstract concepts recruit Broca’s region more strongly than concrete ones. Based on anatomical and physiological evidence, Broca’s region is not only a linguistic region mainly devoted to speech production, but it is endowed with complex motor representations of different biological effectors. Hence, we propose that the stronger recruitment of this region for abstract concepts is expression of the complex sensorimotor experiences underlying it, rather than evidence of a purely linguistic format of its processing.
Highlights
Significant activations were found in the right parietal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus, and prefrontal regions
It is not always clear, whether in the current literature the notion of a language system refers to the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) including Broca’s region [44,52] or to specific high-order regions, namely the “semantic hubs” [33,58,118,119]
The present meta-analysis suggests that abstract concepts and concrete concepts share common neural substrates, including areas classically considered semantic hubs and parieto-frontal structures involved in coding actions
Summary
The embodied approach to language claims that the same neural structures involved in making sensory, motor, and even emotional experiences are involved in understanding the linguistic material related to those experiences [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. At least for language-expressing concrete content, such as nouns of graspable objects or action verbs, several experimental findings have supported this theoretical framework [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32], for a review see [6,33] the embodiment provides less straightforward results in the domain of abstract concepts.
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