scholarly journals Distinctive responses in anterior temporal lobe and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during categorization of semantic information

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsushi Matsumoto ◽  
Takahiro Soshi ◽  
Norio Fujimaki ◽  
Aya S. Ihara
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Marine Mammals ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobe ◽  
Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Semantic Categorization ◽  
Target Words

AbstractSemantic categorization is a fundamental ability in language as well as in interaction with the environment. However, it is unclear what cognitive and neural basis generates this flexible and context dependent categorization of semantic information. We performed behavioral and fMRI experiments with a semantic priming paradigm to clarify this. Participants conducted semantic decision tasks in which a prime word preceded target words, using names of animals (mammals, birds, or fish). We focused on the categorization of unique marine mammals, having characteristics of both mammals and fish. Behavioral experiments indicated that marine mammals were semantically closer to fish than terrestrial mammals, inconsistent with the category membership. The fMRI results showed that the left anterior temporal lobe was sensitive to the semantic distance between prime and target words rather than category membership, while the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was sensitive to the consistency of category membership of word pairs. We interpreted these results as evidence of existence of dual processes for semantic categorization. The combination of bottom-up processing based on semantic characteristics in the left anterior temporal lobe and top-down processing based on task and/or context specific information in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is required for the flexible categorization of semantic information.

scholarly journals Neural Pattern Change During Encoding of a Narrative Predicts Retrospective Duration Estimates

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Lositsky ◽  
Janice Chen ◽  
Daniel Toker ◽  
Christopher J Honey ◽  
Jordan L Poppenk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Entorhinal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Medial Temporal Lobes ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobe ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
Pattern Change ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
The Right

What mechanisms support our ability to estimate durations on the order of minutes? Behavioral studies in humans have shown that changes in contextual features lead to overestimation of past durations. Based on evidence that the medial temporal lobes and prefrontal cortex represent contextual features, we related the degree of fMRI pattern change in these regions with people's subsequent duration estimates. After listening to a radio story in the scanner, participants were asked how much time had elapsed between pairs of clips from the story. Our ROI analysis found that the neural pattern distance between two clips at encoding was correlated with duration estimates in the right entorhinal cortex and right pars orbitalis. Moreover, a whole-brain searchlight analysis revealed a cluster spanning the right anterior temporal lobe. Our findings provide convergent support for the hypothesis that retrospective time judgments are driven by 'drift' in contextual representations supported by these regions.

scholarly journals Anterior temporal lobe morphometry predicts categorization ability

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Garcin ◽  
M. Urbanski ◽  
M. Thiebaut De Schotten ◽  
R. Levy ◽  
E. Volle
Keyword(s):  
White Matter ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Temporal Region ◽  
List Type ◽  
Semantic Matching ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobe ◽  
Anterior Portion ◽  
Semantic Categorization ◽  
The Right ◽  
Shape Categorization

AbstractCategorization is the mental operation by which the brain classifies objects and events. It is classically assessed using semantic and non-semantic matching or sorting tasks. These tasks show a high variability in performance across healthy controls and the cerebral bases supporting this variability remain unknown. In this study we performed a voxel-based morphometry study to explore the relationships between semantic and shape categorization tasks and brain morphometric differences in 50 controls. We found significant correlation between categorization performance and the volume of the grey matter in the right anterior middle and inferior temporal gyri. Semantic categorization tasks were associated with more rostral temporal regions than shape categorization tasks. A significant relationship was also shown between white matter volume in the right temporal lobe and performance in the semantic tasks. Tractography revealed that this white matter region involved several projection and association fibers, including the arcuate fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, uncinate fasciculus, and inferior longitudinal fasciculus. These results suggest that categorization abilities are supported by the anterior portion of the right temporal lobe and its interaction with other areas.HighlightsAnterior temporal lobe morphometry correlates with categorization performancesSemantic is associated with a more rostral temporal region than shape categorizationSemantic categorization performances are associated with right temporal connections

scholarly journals Neural pattern change during encoding of a narrative predicts retrospective duration estimates

eLife ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Lositsky ◽  
Janice Chen ◽  
Daniel Toker ◽  
Christopher J Honey ◽  
Michael Shvartsman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Entorhinal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Medial Temporal Lobes ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobe ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
Pattern Change ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
The Right

What mechanisms support our ability to estimate durations on the order of minutes? Behavioral studies in humans have shown that changes in contextual features lead to overestimation of past durations. Based on evidence that the medial temporal lobes and prefrontal cortex represent contextual features, we related the degree of fMRI pattern change in these regions with people’s subsequent duration estimates. After listening to a radio story in the scanner, participants were asked how much time had elapsed between pairs of clips from the story. Our ROI analyses found that duration estimates were correlated with the neural pattern distance between two clips at encoding in the right entorhinal cortex. Moreover, whole-brain searchlight analyses revealed a cluster spanning the right anterior temporal lobe. Our findings provide convergent support for the hypothesis that retrospective time judgments are driven by 'drift' in contextual representations supported by these regions.

Prefrontal cortex afferents to the anterior temporal lobe in theMacaca fascicularismonkey

2015 ◽  
Vol 523 (17) ◽  
pp. 2570-2598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Mohedano-Moriano ◽  
Mónica Muñoz-López ◽  
Ernesto Sanz-Arigita ◽  
Palma Pró-Sistiaga ◽  
Alino Martínez-Marcos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobe

scholarly journals Convolutional neural networks reveal topic-level representations of sentences in medial prefrontal cortex, lateral anterior temporal lobe, precuneus, and angular gyrus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Acunzo ◽  
Daniel Mark Low ◽  
scott fairhall
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobe ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Final Layer

When reading a sentence, individual words can be combined to create more complex meaning. In this study, we sought to uncover brain regions that reflect the representation of meaning at the sentence level, as opposed to only the meaning of their individual constituent words. Using fMRI, we recorded the neural activity of participants while reading sentences. We constructed sentence topic-level representations using the final layer of a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained to classify Wikipedia sentences into broad semantic categories. This model was contrasted with word-level sentence representations constructed using the average of the word embeddings constituting the sentence. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that the medial prefrontal cortex, lateral anterior temporal lobe, precuneus, and angular gyrus more strongly represent sentence topic-level, compared to word-level, meaning, uncovering the important role of these semantic system regions in the representation of integrated meaning. Conversely, these results validate the capacity of CNNs to capture human sentence-level representations.

scholarly journals Timecourse and convergence of abstract and concrete knowledge in the anterior temporal lobe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Vignali ◽  
Y. Xu ◽  
J. Turini ◽  
O. Collignon ◽  
D. Crepaldi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Anterior Temporal Lobe ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Feature Spaces ◽  
Semantic Hub ◽  
Late Stages ◽  
The Brain

AbstractHow is conceptual knowledge organized and retrieved by the brain? Recent evidence points to the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) as a crucial semantic hub integrating both abstract and concrete conceptual features according to a dorsal-to-medial gradient. It is however unclear when this conceptual gradient emerges and how semantic information reaches the ATL during conceptual retrieval. Here we used a multiple regression approach to magnetoencephalography signals of spoken words, combined with dimensionality reduction in concrete and abstract semantic feature spaces. Results showed that the dorsal-to-medial abstract-to-concrete ATL gradient emerges only in late stages of word processing: Abstract and concrete semantic information are initially encoded in posterior temporal regions and travel along separate cortical pathways eventually converging in the ATL. The present finding sheds light on the neural dynamics of conceptual processing that shape the organization of knowledge in the anterior temporal lobe.

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