Creating number semantics through finger movement perception

Communication, language and conceptual knowledge related to concrete objects may rely on the sensory–motor systems from which they emerge. How abstract concepts can emerge from these systems is however still unknown. Here we report a functional interaction between a specific meaningful finger movement, such as a finger grip closing, and a concept as abstract as numerical magnitude. Participants were presented with Arabic digits to recall before or after they perceived a biological or non-biological hand movement. The results show that perceiving a grip closing slows down the processing of large magnitude numbers. Importantly, we show that this motor-to-semantic interaction differs from the reverse semantic-to-motor interaction, and that it does not result from a general movement amplitude processing as it is only observed for biological hand movements. These results demonstrate the functional link between number meaning and goal-directed finger movements, and show how abstract concept semantics can emerge from the sensory–motor circuits of the brain.