Object color knowledge representation occurs in the macaque brain despite the absence of a developed language system.

Animals guide their behaviors through internal representations of the world in the brain. We aimed to understand how the macaque brain stores such general world knowledge, focusing on object color knowledge. Three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments were conducted in macaque monkeys: viewing chromatic and achromatic gratings, viewing grayscale images of their familiar fruits and vegetables (e.

Processing Language Partly Shares Neural Genetic Basis with Processing Tools and Body Parts.

Language is an evolutionarily salient faculty for humans that relies on a distributed brain network spanning across frontal, temporal, parietal, and subcortical regions. To understand whether the complex language network shares common or distinct genetic mechanisms, we examined the relationships between the genetic effects underlying the brain responses to language and a set of object domains that have been suggested to coevolve with language: tools, faces (indicating social), and body parts (indicating social and gesturing). Analyzing the twin datasets released by the Human Connectome Project that had functional magnetic resonance imaging data from human twin subjects (monozygotic and dizygotic) undergoing language and working memory tasks contrasting multiple object domains (198 females and 144 males for the language task; 192 females and 142 males for the working memory task), we identified a set of cortical regions in the frontal and temporal cortices and subcortical regions whose activity to language was significantly genetically influenced.

Vision matters for shape representation: Evidence from sculpturing and drawing in the blind.

Shape is a property that could be perceived by vision and touch, and is classically considered to be supramodal. While there is mounting evidence for the shared cognitive and neural representation space between visual and tactile shape, previous research tended to rely on dissimilarity structures between objects and had not examined the detailed properties of shape representation in the absence of vision. To address this gap, we conducted three explicit object shape knowledge production experiments with congenitally blind and sighted participants, who were asked to produce verbal features, 3D clay models, and 2D drawings of familiar objects with varying levels of tactile exposure, including tools, large nonmanipulable objects, and animals.

Separable amygdala activation patterns in the evaluations of robots.

Given the increasing presence of robots in everyday environments and the significant challenge posed by social interactions with robots, it is crucial to gain a deeper understanding into the social evaluations of robots. One potentially effective approach to comprehend the fundamental processes underlying controlled and automatic evaluations of robots is to probe brain response to different perception levels of robot-related stimuli. Here, we investigate controlled and automatic evaluations of robots based on brain responses during viewing of suprathreshold (duration: 200 ms) and subthreshold (duration: 17 ms) humanoid robot stimuli.

Neural correlates of an illusionary sense of agency caused by virtual reality.

Sense of agency (SoA) is the sensation that self-actions lead to ensuing perceptual consequences. The prospective mechanism emphasizes that SoA arises from motor prediction and its comparison with actual action outcomes, while the reconstructive mechanism stresses that SoA emerges from retrospective causal processing about the action outcomes. Consistent with the prospective mechanism, motor planning regions were identified by neuroimaging studies using the temporal binding (TB) effect, a behavioral measure often linked to implicit SoA.

Neuroplastic changes in functional wiring in sensory cortices of the congenitally deaf: A network analysis.

Congenital sensory deprivation induces significant changes in the structural and functional organisation of the brain. These are well-characterised by cross-modal plasticity, in which deprived cortical areas are recruited to process information from non-affected sensory modalities, as well as by other neuroplastic alterations within regions dedicated to the remaining senses. Here, we analysed visual and auditory networks of congenitally deaf and hearing individuals during different visual tasks to assess changes in network community structure and connectivity patterns due to congenital deafness.

Functional connectome through the human life span.

The lifespan growth of the functional connectome remains unknown. Here, we assemble task-free functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data from 33,250 individuals aged 32 postmenstrual weeks to 80 years from 132 global sites. We report critical inflection points in the nonlinear growth curves of the global mean and variance of the connectome, peaking in the late fourth and late third decades of life, respectively.

A social-semantic working-memory account for two canonical language areas.

Language and social cognition are traditionally studied as separate cognitive domains, yet accumulative studies reveal overlapping neural correlates at the left ventral temporoparietal junction (vTPJ) and the left lateral anterior temporal lobe (lATL), which have been attributed to sentence processing and social concept activation. We propose a common cognitive component underlying both effects: social-semantic working memory. We confirmed two key predictions of our hypothesis using functional MRI.

Spoken language processing activates the primary visual cortex.

Primary visual cortex (V1) is generally thought of as a low-level sensory area that primarily processes basic visual features. Although there is evidence for multisensory effects on its activity, these are typically found for the processing of simple sounds and their properties, for example spatially or temporally-congruent simple sounds. However, in congenitally blind individuals, V1 is involved in language processing, with no evidence of major changes in anatomical connectivity that could explain this seemingly drastic functional change.

Neural substrate underlying the learning of a passage with unfamiliar vocabulary and syntax.

Speech comprehension is a complex process involving multiple stages, such as decoding of phonetic units, recognizing words, and understanding sentences and passages. In this study, we identify cortical networks beyond basic phonetic processing using a novel passage learning paradigm. Participants learn to comprehend a story composed of syllables of their native language, but containing unfamiliar vocabulary and syntax.

Simple shape feature computation across modalities: convergence and divergence between the ventral and dorsal visual streams.

Shape processing, whether by seeing or touching, is pivotal to object recognition and manipulation. Although the low-level signals are initially processed by different modality-specific neural circuits, multimodal responses to object shapes have been reported along both ventral and dorsal visual pathways. To understand this transitional process, we conducted visual and haptic shape perception fMRI experiments to test basic shape features (i.

Early language exposure affects neural mechanisms of semantic representations.

One signature of the human brain is its ability to derive knowledge from language inputs, in addition to nonlinguistic sensory channels such as vision and touch. How does human language experience modulate the mechanism by which semantic knowledge is stored in the human brain? We investigated this question using a unique human model with varying amounts and qualities of early language exposure: early deaf adults who were born to hearing parents and had reduced early exposure and delayed acquisition of any natural human language (speech or sign), with early deaf adults who acquired sign language from birth as the control group that matches on nonlinguistic sensory experiences. Neural responses in a semantic judgment task with 90 written words that were familiar to both groups were measured using fMRI.

Gravity matters for the neural representations of action semantics.

The dynamic relationship between the neural representation of action word semantics and specific sensorimotor experience remains controversial. Here, we temporarily altered human subjects' sensorimotor experience in a 15-day head-down tilt bed rest setting, a ground-based analog of microgravity that disproportionally affects sensorimotor experiences of the lower limbs, and examined whether such effector-dependent activity deprivation specifically affected the neural processes of comprehending verbs of lower-limb actions (e.g.

Pulvinar Response Profiles and Connectivity Patterns to Object Domains.

Distributed cortical regions show differential responses to visual objects belonging to different domains varying by animacy (e.g., animals vs tools), yet it remains unclear whether this is an organization principle also applying to the subcortical structures.

Brain intrinsic connection patterns underlying tool processing in human adults are present in neonates and not in macaques.

Tool understanding and use are supported by a dedicated left-lateralized, intrinsically connected network in the human adult brain. To examine this network's phylogenetic and ontogenetic origins, we compared resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) among regions subserving tool processing in human adults to rsFC among homologous regions in human neonates and macaque monkeys (adolescent and mature). These homologous regions formed an intrinsic network in human neonates, but not in macaques.

The Role of Visual Experience in Individual Differences of Brain Connectivity.

Visual cortex organization is highly consistent across individuals. But to what degree does this consistency depend on life experience, in particular sensory experience? In this study, we asked whether visual cortex reorganization in congenital blindness results in connectivity patterns that are particularly variable across individuals, focusing on resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) patterns from the primary visual cortex. We show that the absence of shared visual experience results in more variable RSFC patterns across blind individuals than sighted controls.

Different computational relations in language are captured by distinct brain systems.

A critical way for humans to acquire information is through language, yet whether and how language experience drives specific neural semantic representations is still poorly understood. We considered statistical properties captured by 3 different computational principles of language (simple co-occurrence, network-(graph)-topological relations, and neural-network-vector-embedding relations) and tested the extent to which they can explain the neural patterns of semantic representations, measured by 2 functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments that shared common semantic processes. Distinct graph-topological word relations, and not simple co-occurrence or neural-network-vector-embedding relations, had unique explanatory power for the neural patterns in the anterior temporal lobe (capturing graph-common-neighbors), inferior frontal gyrus, and posterior middle/inferior temporal gyrus (capturing graph-shortest-path).

From words to phrases: neural basis of social event semantic composition.

Events are typically composed of at least actions and entities. Both actions and entities have been shown to be represented by neural structures respecting domain organizations in the brain, including those of social/animate (face and body; person-directed action) versus inanimate (man-made object or tool; object-directed action) concepts. It is unclear whether the brain combines actions and entities into events in a (relative) domain-specific fashion or via domain-general mechanisms in regions that have been shown to support semantic and syntactic composition.

Preference for animate domain sounds in the fusiform gyrus of blind individuals is modulated by shape-action mapping.

In high-level visual areas in the human brain, preference for inanimate objects is observed regardless of stimulation modality (visual/auditory/tactile) and individual's visual experience (sighted/blind) whereas preference for animate entities seems robust mainly in the visual modality. Here, we test a hypothesis explaining this domain difference: Object representations can be activated through nonvisual stimulation when their shapes are systematically related to action system representations, a quality typical of most inanimate objects but of only specific animate entities. We studied functional magnetic resonance imaging activations in congenitally blind and sighted individuals listening to animal, object, and human sounds.

Social and emotion dimensional organizations in the abstract semantic space: the neuropsychological evidence.

An essential aspect of human cognition is supported by a rich reservoir of abstract concepts without tangible external referents (e.g., "honor", "relationship", "direction").

Idiosyncratic Tower of Babel: Individual Differences in Word-Meaning Representation Increase as Word Abstractness Increases.

Humans primarily rely on language to communicate, on the basis of a shared understanding of the basic building blocks of communication: words. Do we mean the same things when we use the same words? Although cognitive neural research on semantics has revealed the common principles of word-meaning representation, the factors underlying the potential individual variations in word meanings are unknown. Here, we empirically characterized the intersubject consistency of 90 words across 20 adult subjects (10 female) using both behavioral measures (rating-based semantic-relationship patterns) and neuroimaging measures (word-evoked brain activity patterns).

Dual coding of knowledge in the human brain.

How does the human brain code knowledge about the world? While disciplines such as artificial intelligence represent world knowledge based on human language, neurocognitive models of knowledge have been dominated by sensory embodiment, in which knowledge is derived from sensory/motor experience and supported by high-level sensory/motor and association cortices. The neural correlates of an alternative disembodied symbolic system had previously been difficult to establish. A recent line of studies exploring knowledge about visual properties, such as color, in visually deprived individuals converge to provide positive, compelling evidence for non-sensory, language-derived, knowledge representation in dorsal anterior temporal lobe and extended language network, in addition to the sensory-derived representations, leading to a sketch of a dual-coding knowledge neural framework.

Common and unique structural plasticity after left and right hemisphere stroke.

Strokes to the left and right hemisphere lead to distinctive behavioral profiles. Are left and right hemisphere strokes (LHS and RHS) associated with distinct or common poststroke neuroplasticity patterns? Understanding this issue would reveal hemispheric neuroplasticity mechanisms in response to brain damage. To this end, we investigated poststroke structural changes (2 weeks to 3 months post-onset) using longitudinal MRI data from 69 LHS and 55 RHS patients and 31 demographic-matched healthy control participants.

Topography of Visual Features in the Human Ventral Visual Pathway.

Visual object recognition in humans and nonhuman primates is achieved by the ventral visual pathway (ventral occipital-temporal cortex, VOTC), which shows a well-documented object domain structure. An on-going question is what type of information is processed in the higher-order VOTC that underlies such observations, with recent evidence suggesting effects of certain visual features. Combining computational vision models, fMRI experiment using a parametric-modulation approach, and natural image statistics of common objects, we depicted the neural distribution of a comprehensive set of visual features in the VOTC, identifying voxel sensitivities with specific feature sets across geometry/shape, Fourier power, and color.