How neurons make meaning: brain mechanisms for embodied and abstract-symbolic semantics.
By Friedemann Pulvermüller. 2013
546 citations recorded by the source corpus.
How brain structures and neuronal circuits mechanistically underpin symbolic meaning has recently been elucidated by neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and neurocomputational research. Modality-specific 'embodied' mechanisms anchored in sensorimotor systems appear to be relevant, as are 'disembodied' mechanisms in multimodal areas. In this paper, four semantic mechanisms are proposed and spelt out at the level of neuronal circuits: referential semantics, which establishes links between symbols and the objects and actions they are used to speak about; combinatorial semantics, which enables the learning of symbolic meaning from context; emotional-affective semantics, which establishes links between signs and internal states of the body; and abstraction mechanisms for generalizing over a range of instances of semantic meaning. Referential, combinatorial, emotional-affective, and abstract semantics are complementary mechanisms, each necessary for processing meaning in mind and brain.
Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology
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Citations in the corpus
- Pupillometry: Psychology, Physiology, and Function (2018, background): “…this in terms of mental imagery: when participants read a word, they automatically simulate the perceptual properties of the word’s referent (e.g. Pulvermüller, 2013; but see Mahon & Caramazza, 2008 for a different perspective); for example, when participants read ‘sun’, they automatically…”
- The cortical dynamics of speaking: present shortcomings and future avenues (2016, background): “…a speech act: in an early phase of speech preparation (ignition) as representational part of the word assembly (action semantics and motor phonology), and in a later phase (reverberation) to trigger a sequential articulatory plan (e.g. Pulvermuller, 1999, 2005, 2013; Pulvermuller & Fadiga, 2010).”
- Neural Mechanisms of Bidirectional Visuo‐Linguistic Transformation in Interactive Communication (2026, unknown): “Human communication depends on flexible visuo-linguistic transformation: the bidirectional conversion between integrated visual percepts and discrete linguistic codes (Barsalou 2008; Pulvermüller 2013).”