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Rapid Neural Dynamics of Verb Semantics: Processing Action, Emotion, and Communication Verbs
Poster Session E, Friday, October 2, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Milena R. Osterloh1,2, Laura A. Ciaccio1,3, Johann Berger1,4, Luigi Grisoni1,5, Friedemann Pulvermüller1,2,6,7; 1Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 2Einstein Center for Neurosciences, Berlin, Germany, 3University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, 4Universitätsklinikum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany, 5Fondazione Istituto di Tecnologia, Ferrara, Italy, 6Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Germany, 7Cluster of Excellence 'Matters of Activity', Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
The meaning of language emerges from semantic representations in the human brain that are continuously shaped by experience and interaction with the external world. Neurophysiological research demonstrates that words are processed rapidly, with semantic categories – and even individual words – eliciting diverging activation patterns across distinct cortical regions (e.g., Carota et al., 2012; Carota et al., 2023; Dreyer & Pulvermüller, 2018; Fernandino et al., 2022; Grisoni et al., 2021; Moseley et al., 2012; Moseley et al., 2013; Pulvermüller et al., 2000; Pulvermüller et al., 2001). To date, evidence for semantic category effects has primarily come from studies of nouns (e.g., action-related words, such as hammer, or visually-related ones such as dog). Verbs are less frequently investigated, and when they are, research often focuses on motor-related action verbs (e.g., kiss, grasp). This leaves more abstract domains, especially those related to emotions (e.g., hate) and communication (e.g., warn), less systematically examined, as are direct comparisons between multiple verb semantic categories within the same experiment. To address this, brain responses were recorded from 40 healthy adult native German speakers (out of 52 recruited; 12 excluded due to excessive artefacts) during a passive reading paradigm using high-density EEG (128 electrodes). We examined 120 German verbs from four semantic categories: Action-Face, Action-Hand, Emotion, and Communication. Stimuli across the semantic categories were tightly controlled for a range of psycholinguistic properties (e.g., length in letters and syllables, wordform and lemma frequency, and bigram/trigram frequency). Using a data-driven approach, we identified 6 time windows of interest based on the peak of the grand-average ERPs of all conditions collapsed together, spanning -100 to 800 ms. Linear mixed-effects models were used within each time window to assess the fixed effects of the main contrast (action vs. emotion/communication), semantic category, and their interactions with topographical factors (laterality and anterior-posterior electrode position), with subject and item as random effects. Brain response differences between action and emotion/communication verbs, alongside finer-grained category-specific differences among them, emerged as early as ~200 ms after word onset. Significant differences were also observed in later time windows around 300 and 400 ms. Moreover, model-based estimates indicated that Action-Hand verbs elicited significantly more positive amplitudes at posterior electrode sites in these early and late latencies compared to the other three semantic categories. Early ERP responses not only differentiate between broad action and emotion/communication domains, but also capture fine-grained semantic distinctions, with particularly strong brain responses for Action-Hand verbs compared to other categories. Ongoing analyses include source localization using high-density EEG data to identify neural generators of both the concrete-abstract contrast and category-specific effects, as well as representational similarity analyses relating grounded semantic ratings to EEG responses.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Lexical Semantics,