The grounding of abstract concepts in vision and action

语义长期记忆中的概念是人类认知的重要组成部分，因为它们确立了语言和思维的意义。传统上，概念被指定为不同于知觉或运动系统的非固定的精神实体。最近的特定通道方法提出，概念基本上是以感知和行动为基础的。对于像锤子这样的具体概念，已经演示了特定于形态的概念的基础。然而，对于像真理这样的抽象概念，非标准符号表征的假设在很大程度上具有无可置疑的教条般的地位。以往关于感觉-运动系统参与抽象概念加工的证据并不一致，因此质疑扎根的认知理论的普遍性。这些不一致可能反映了感觉或运动通道对抽象单词概念表征的未知不同贡献。因此，在这个项目中，我们通过首先指定抽象概念的内容来开发一种新的经验方法。然后，我们测试视觉或动作相关的抽象概念是否在相应的通道特定系统中被处理。在第一系列实验中，我们通过事件相关电位(ERPs)和功能磁共振成像(FMRI)测量抽象单词识别过程中的大脑活动，研究抽象概念在人脑感觉和运动系统中的基础。ERPs的高时间分辨率补充了fMRI的高空间分辨率，并使我们能够区分对抽象单词的感觉-运动活动反映的是早期对概念特征的获取还是后来的意象。用ERPs或fMRI测量大脑活动可能会揭示感觉-运动系统的活动，这只起到表面现象的作用。因此，第二系列实验通过经颅磁刺激(TMS)和行为干扰实验来测试视觉和运动表征在抽象概念加工中的功能作用。扎根认知理论认为，在概念习得过程中，概念表征是通过感觉运动区皮层细胞组件的基于学习的形成来建立的。抽象物理概念依赖经验的可塑性将在第三个系列实验中用功能磁共振成像进行评估。我们调查了专家物理学家和初学者(物理二年级学生)抽象物理概念的神经关联和内容。通过这些相辅相成的实验，我们希望对抽象概念的感觉和运动表征的作用有新的见解。此外，我们将能够确定特定于通道的陈述如何有助于专家的卓越表现。因此，我们的研究将产生新的结果，影响到心理学和认知神经科学以外的领域，如教育和教学。

Concepts held in semantic long-term memory are important building blocks of human cognition because they establish the meaning of language and thought. Traditionally, concepts are specified as amodal mental entities different from the perceptual or motor systems. More recent modality-specific approaches propose that concepts are essentially grounded in perception and action. For concrete concepts such as hammer, a modality-specific grounding of concepts has been demonstrated. However, for abstract concepts like truth the assumption of an amodal symbolic representation holds a largely unquestioned dogma-like status. Previous evidence regarding an involvement of the sensory-motor systems in the processing of abstract concepts is inconsistent thereby questioning the generality of grounded cognition theories. These inconsistencies could reflect an unknown varying contribution of sensory or motor modalities to the conceptual representation of abstract words. In this project, we therefore develop a new empirical approach by first specifying the content of abstract concepts. We then test whether visual or action-related abstract concepts are processed in the corresponding modality-specific system. In the first series of experiments, we investigate the grounding of abstract concepts in the sensory and motor systems of the human brain by measuring brain activity with event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during abstract word recognition. The high temporal resolution of ERPs complements the high spatial resolution of fMRI and allows us to distinguish whether sensory-motor activity in response to abstract words reflects early access to conceptual features or later imagery. Measurements of brain activity with ERPs or fMRI might reveal activity in the sensory-motor system, which only plays an epiphenomenal role. The second series of experiments therefore tests with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and behavioral interference experiments the functional role of visual and motor representations for the processing of abstract concepts. Grounded cognition theories predict that conceptual representations are established by the learning-based formation of cortical cell assemblies in sensory-motor areas during the course of concept acquisition. Experience-dependent plasticity of abstract physical concepts will be assessed in the third series of experiments with fMRI. We investigate the neural correlates and the content of abstract physical concepts in expert physicists and beginners (2nd year physics students). With these complementary lines of experiments, we expect to gain novel insights into the role of sensory and motor representations for abstract concepts. Moreover, we will be able to determine how modality-specific representations contribute to excellence in experts. Our research thus will yield new results that will influence fields beyond psychology and cognitive neuroscience such as education and teaching.