Abstract
Spoken language is an innate ability of the human being and represents the most widespread mode of social communication. The ability to share concepts, intentions and feelings, and also to respond to what others are feeling/saying is crucial during social interactions. A growing body of evidence suggests that language evolved from manual gestures, gradually incorporating motor acts with vocal elements. In this evolutionary context, the human mirror mechanism (MM) would permit the passage from “doing something” to “communicating it to someone else.” In this perspective, the MM would mediate semantic processes being involved in both the execution and in the understanding of messages expressed by words or gestures. Thus, the recognition of action related words would activate somatosensory regions, reflecting the semantic grounding of these symbols in action information. Here, the role of the sensorimotor cortex and in general of the human MM on both language perception and understanding is addressed, focusing on recent studies on the integration between symbolic gestures and speech. We conclude documenting some evidence about MM in coding also the emotional aspects conveyed by manual, facial and body signals during communication, and how they act in concert with language to modulate other’s message comprehension and behavior, in line with an “embodied” and integrated view of social interaction.
Highlights
We will firstly discuss recent behavioral and neurophysiological studies confirming the essential role of sensorimotor brain areas in language processing, facing the controversial issues and reviewing recent results that suggest an extended view of embodied theories
We will discuss this hypothesis, providing evidences about the gestural origin of language, focusing on studies investigating the functional relation between manual gesture and speech and the neural circuits involved in their processing and production
We propose that MM guides every-day interactions in recognizing emotional states in others, decoding body and non-verbal signals together with language, influencing and integrating the communicative content in the complexity of a social interaction
Summary
The hypothesis of language as “embodied” in sensory and motor experience has been widely discussed in the field cognitive neuroscience. We will firstly discuss recent behavioral and neurophysiological studies confirming the essential role of sensorimotor brain areas in language processing, facing the controversial issues and reviewing recent results that suggest an extended view of embodied theories We will discuss this hypothesis, providing evidences about the gestural origin of language, focusing on studies investigating the functional relation between manual gesture and speech and the neural circuits involved in their processing and production. The presentation of a congruent manual symbolic gesture as prime stimulus increased hand M1 excitability in the earlier phase of semantic processing and speeded word comprehension These results confirmed that the semantic access to abstract concepts may be mediated by sensorimotor areas when the latter are grounded in a familiar motor context. Further studies should consider potential integration of neuroscience research with promising fields investigating the issue at molecular level
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