Deeper insights into semantic relations: An fMRI study of part-whole and functional associations

•Facilitation of part-whole and functional relations on single word production.•Differential brain activity within semantic and perceptual areas depends on relation.•Perceptual features of concepts distinguish between part-whole and functional.

Cognitive neuroscience research on semantics recognizes a distinction between categorical and associated relations. However, associations can be divided further, such as into part-whole and functional relations. We investigated the neural basis of both relations using a picture–word interference task in an fMRI study. While the left supramarginal gyrus and the right inferior temporal sulcus were activated by part-whole over functional relations, the same applies to the right parahippocampal complex contrasting the functional over part-whole relations. The small effect sizes of our analyses have to be interpreted with caution. While the parahippocampal complex might reflect global scene processing across objects, the inferior temporal sulcus might be involved in the perceptual encoding of object related knowledge and the supramarginal gyrus might represent a convergence zone which implements within object related perceptual features. The current study gives a first indication that the neural bases for part-whole and functional relations seem to be distinguishable.