Friday Lunch Seminar (English)
March 31, 2023
12:15 〜 13:00
(On-line)
Apply for participation from here by noon, March 30.
You will be notified of participation details by e-mail on March 30.
Talk Title: Brain mechanisms of symbol cognition in language/ arithmetic/drawing and in referential/emotive semantics
Michiru Makuuchi
Chief
Section of Neuropsychology
Research institute of National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities
Host PI: Aya Ihara
Abstract:
This presentation consists of two parts. In part (1), I will present a discussion of symbols, a superordinate category that encompasses language, mathematics, and drawing, based on functional brain experiments. In section 2, I will discuss the neural basis of the two categories of semantics.
(1)First, we define symbols and their syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Next, I will explain hierarchy, which is considered to be the most important property of language, and describe experiments suggesting that the Broca’s area is the brain mechanism that processes the hierarchical structure of sentences. Our studies further suggested that hierarchical structure building in mathematics and drawing activates Broca’s area.
(2)The meaning of language can be classified into two types that differ greatly in nature. The first type is the referential language, which describes facts objectively and can be compared with the event to determine its truth-value, enabling scientific cognition. The other is called emotive language in which there is no event to determine its truth-value, and it expresses subjective and emotional judgments such as “beautiful,” “good,” or “painful”, serving as a language for ethics as well as literature and poetry. To investigate the brain bases of refernetial and emotive language using fMRI, we compared the two languages in sentences describing pain. We asked participants to imagine the degree of pain based on the event or pain expressed in the sentence and to rate it on a 4-point scale.
(a) I hit my foot in the kitchen on Monday. (referential language)
(b) I had a headache on Monday. (emotive language)
Brain activation was observed in the inferior frontal gyrus, posterior superior temporal sulcus, precuneus, and parahippocampal gyrus of the left hemisphere for referential language, and in the right supramarginal gyrus for emotional language. In summary, the present study suggests that referential language is processed in the left hemisphere, while emotive language is processed in the right hemisphere.