Introduction to Cognitive Science (COGSCI 1B)
Lecture 10: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Language II: Semantics

Introduction (0:00)
Introduction to Pulvermuller 2005 (0:36)
The somatotopic map in primary somatosensory cortex (9:15)
The somatotopic map in primary motor cortex (13:01)
Distributed neural assemblies for processing action words (18:23)
EEG: Functional links between speech perception and motor action (25:10)
fMRI: Overlapping areas of activation for reading action words and performing actions (29:00)
TMS: Effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation on motor areas and verb processing (37:01)
Embodied cognition, concrete language, and abstract language (45:03)
Introduction to Glenberg et al. 2008 (56:39)
Experiment 1 and the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE) (1:04:46)
Experiment 2 and increased motor evoked potentials (MEPs) to transfer sentences (1:25:27)
Conclusion (1:36:08)

References

Glenberg, A. M., Sato, M., Cattaneo, L., Riggio, L., Palumbo, D. & Buccino, G. (2008). Processing abstract language modulates motor system activity. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 905-919. https://doi.org/10.1080/1747021070162...

Pulvermuller, F. (2005). Brain mechanisms linking language and action. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 576-582. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1706

Much thanks to Alecia Barnes and Michelle Wolf at DSP Berkeley for providing professionally captioned media for the lectures in this course.