Functional magnetic resonance imaging corresponds to Humphrey perimetry in a patient with pituitary adenoma.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Torben Ellegaard Lund.
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The left posterior middle temporal region, anterior to V5/MT, has been shown to be responsive both to images with implied motion, to simulated motion, and to motion verbs. In this study, we investigated whether sentence context alters the response of the left posterior middle temporal region. 'Fictive motion' sentences are sentences in which an inanimate subject noun, semantically incapable of self movement, is coupled with a motion verb, yielding an apparent semantic contradiction (e.g. 'The path comes into the garden.'). However, this context yields no less activation in the left posterior middle temporal region than sentences in which the motion can be applied to the subject noun. We speculate that the left posterior middle temporal region activity in fictive motion sentences reflects the fact that the hearer applies motion to the depicted scenario by scanning it egocentrically.
Conveying complex mental scenarios is at the heart of human language. Advances in cognitive linguistics suggest this is mediated by an ability to activate cognitive systems involved in non-linguistic processing of spatial information. In this fMRI-study, we compare sentences with a concrete spatial meaning to sentences with an abstract meaning. Using this contrast, we demonstrate that sentence meaning involving motion in a concrete topographical context, whether linked to animate or inanimate subjects nouns, yield more activation in a bilateral posterior network, including fusiform/parahippocampal, and retrosplenial regions, and the temporal-occipital-parietal junction. These areas have previously been shown to be involved in mental navigation and spatial memory tasks. Sentences with an abstract setting activate an extended largely left-lateralised network in the anterior temporal, and inferior and superior prefrontal cortices, previously found activated by comprehension of complex semantics such as narratives. These findings support a model of language, where the understanding of spatial semantic content emerges from the recruitment of brain regions involved in non-linguistic spatial processing.