Biomedical subjects

Marion L Kellenbach

Publications and source records attributed to Marion L Kellenbach.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

A pet study of visual and semantic knowledge about objects.

The distinctiveness of temporal lobe regions activated during the retrieval of knowledge regarding structural, colour and associative (encyclopaedic) aspects of familiar objects was investigated using PET. These three types of knowledge were contrasted using well matched tasks requiring the detection, in a series of coloured-in line drawings, of occasional anomalous objects (in the three conditions: structurally incorrect chimeras composed of parts of real objects; inappropriately coloured objects; familiar objects that do not exist in the modern world). Relative to a resting baseline condition, all semantic retrieval tasks yielded extensive bilateral activations in occipital and temporal areas, extending anteriorly on the ventral surface of the brain, plus an area in the right superior parietal lobe. In direct semantic-task comparisons focussing on the temporal lobe: (i) structural relative to associative decisions activated the right posterior middle/inferior temporal gyrus; (ii) colour decisions relative to structural judgements were associated with a region in the right superior temporal gyrus; (iii) the associative decision task selectively activated the left anterior middle/superior temporal gyrus and temporal pole relative to both object structure and colour, and also the homologous right temporal pole relative to colour only. These results indicate that each type of stored knowledge involves at least partially distinct cortical areas, and suggest that both anterior/posterior and left/right temporal regions have specialised roles.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Actions speak louder than functions: the importance of manipulability and action in tool representation.

PET was used to investigate the neural correlates of action knowledge in object representations, particularly the left lateralized network of activations previously implicated in the processing of tools and their associated actions: ventral premotor cortex (VPMCx), posterior middle temporal gyrus (PMTG), and intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Judgments were made about the actions and functions associated with manipulable man-made objects (e.g., hammer); this enabled us to measure activations in response to both explicit and implicit retrieval of knowledge about actions associated with manipulable tools. Function judgments were also made about nonmanipulable artifacts (e.g., traffic light) providing a direct comparison for manipulable objects. Although neither the left VPMCx nor the left PMTG were selective for tool stimuli (nonmanipulable objects also activated these areas relative to a visual control condition), both regions responded more strongly to manipulable objects, suggesting a role for these cortical areas in the processing of knowledge associated with tools. Furthermore, these activations were insensitive to retrieval task, suggesting that visually presented tools automatically recruit both left VPMCx and left PMTG in response to action features that are inherent in tool representations. In contrast, the IPS showed clear selectivity for explicit retrieval of action information about manipulable objects. No regions of cortex were more activated by function relative to action judgments about artifacts. These results are consistent with the brain's preferential responsiveness to how we interact with objects, rather than what they are used for.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

An event-related potential investigation of the relationship between semantic and perceptual levels of representation.

The present study was conducted to investigate relationships between semantic and perceptual levels of representation. A picture-word repetition paradigm was used in which we manipulated the semantic relationship between pictures and words. Experiment 1 involved two types of trials, one with words that had the same meaning as pictures and one with words that were unrelated to pictures. In Experiment 2 we replaced words that were identical in meaning with words that were semantically associated to pictures. In both experiments, visually presented probe stimuli were used to determine the presence of perceptual effects within the visual system, originating from the semantic interaction between words and pictures. In both experiments, conditions with unrelated picture-word pairs generated a search process following the N400 which included activity overlying the visual cortex. Probe stimuli were found to attenuate the amplitude of the search related negativity. The latency of the interaction, which was significant at the time of the N1 response to the probe, suggested that the attempt to find a relationship between the picture and the word involved processing within extrastriate visual areas. UVF probes provided stronger attenuation, possibly because the UVF has direct transmission to the ventral processing stream which is believed to be involved in visual semantic processing. Semantic interactions between matching picture-word pairs in Experiment 1 were found to have an effect on the ERPs to probes presented at the same location as pictures. Probes presented under these conditions showed a stronger P2 over frontal areas followed by a more negative P3 over occipital areas. Although we had expected beforehand to find earlier effects in the latency of the probes' P1 and N1 responses, this result is consistent with the idea that retinotopic levels of object representation are linked with the semantic level of object description. Unlike Experiment 1, same location probes presented in associated picture-word conditions of Experiment 2 did not result in any specific ERP effects on the P2 and P3 components. This suggest that semantic interactions between pictures and words do not automatically propagate to the perceptual level, unless there is direct reference from the word to the visual representation of the object.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

What does the object decision task measure? Reflections on the basis of evidence from semantic dementia.

The authors investigated the impact of semantic knowledge on visual object analysis by assessing the performance of patients with semantic dementia on a different-views object matching test and on 2 object decision tests differing, for example, in whether the nonreal items were nonsense objects or chimeras of 2 real objects. On average, the patients scored normally on both the object matching and the object decision test including nonsense objects but were impaired on the object decision test including chimeras; this latter was also the only visual object test that correlated significantly with degree of semantic impairment. These findings demonstrate that object decision is not a single task or ability and that it is not necessarily independent of conceptual knowledge.

Aged↗

PubMed2002

Neural differentiation of lexico-syntactic categories or semantic features? event-related potential evidence for both.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate whether processing differences between nouns and verbs can be accounted for by the differential salience of visual-perceptual and motor attributes in their semantic specifications. Three subclasses of nouns and verbs were selected, which differed in their semantic attribute composition (abstract, high visual, high visual and motor). Single visual word presentation with a recognition memory task was used. While multiple robust and parallel ERP effects were observed for both grammatical class and attribute type, there were no interactions between these. This pattern of effects provides support for lexical-semantic knowledge being organized in a manner that takes account both of category-based (grammatical class) and attribute-based distinctions.

Adult↗