“Scientists say they have made an atlas of where words’ meanings are located in the brain. The map shows that words are represented in different regions throughout the brain’s outer layer.”
from the NPR article (with video):
“These maps are remarkably consistent from person to person,” says Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley who led the study. The work appears in the journal Nature.
To make the language maps, Gallant’s team placed seven people in functional MRI scanners. They then played the research subjects two hours of stories from The Moth Radio Hour. Researchers looked at many pea-size areas of the brain to gauge how each responded to words. They found that words with related meanings lit up similar parts of the brain. One area responded to words related to people. Another responded to numbers.
Words meanings could pop up in different places simultaneously. Hearing the word “top” caused regions associated with clothing and appearances to light up. But “top” could also stimulate a region associated with words related to numbers and measurements.
Hearseeno 