Congruent Embodied Representations for Visually Presented Actions and Linguistic Phrases Describing Actions

SummaryThe thesis of embodied semantics holds that conceptual representations accessed during linguistic processing are, in part, equivalent to the sensory-motor representations required for the enactment of the concepts described 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Here, using fMRI, we tested the hypothesis that areas in human premotor cortex that respond both to the execution and observation of actions—mirror neuron areas 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18—are key neural structures in these processes. Participants observed actions and read phrases relating to foot, hand, or mouth actions. In the premotor cortex of the left hemisphere, a clear congruence was found between effector-specific activations of visually presented actions and of actions described by literal phrases. These results suggest a key role of mirror neuron areas in the re-enactment of sensory-motor representations during conceptual processing of actions invoked by linguistic stimuli.