Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Science
Many of us talk with our hands. But some researchers suspect we may listen with our hands, too.
Cognitive scientists had subjects listen to spoken sentences, each in the third person and present tense, such as “John walks to work.” As they listened, the subjects pinched a grip-force sensor.
The researchers found that subjects increased their grip when listening to action words that involved hands or arms, such as scratch, throw or lift. But this response depended on context—grip force was unchanged when the action was negative, as in "Laura did not lift her luggage." The study is in the journal PLoS One. [Pia Aravena et al., Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation]
The results demonstrate how words subtly and selectively induce motor activity. The fact that this motor response depends on context is a testament to our brain's flexibility when processing words.
The study also adds to the growing evidence that sensory-motor and language experiences are linked in the brain. Figuring out this connection could lead to new therapies for speech and language disorders. In the meantime, the next time you tense up over a game of mad libs, do go easy on those verbs.
—Daisy Yuhas
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
See what we're tweeting about
3 Comments
Add CommentALL brain processes are linked, virtually without exception. Isn't this obvious? When you think an action word its associations are activated, motor plans selected. In effect there is no division between thought and action, no shadow. Nor is their action without thought, it works both ways.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI totally agree that all are linked, but I wonder how it is implemented physically in brain? Does that mean every areas are connected to each other through axons and dendrites, directly or indirectly?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs the distance on brain surface meaningful when we talk about function?
Well, I think what you would envisage is that the brain is just a set of different layers and networks of sensors. That's how it all started. A billion years ago the first little worm had a spot of skin that 'itched' when light fell on it (or something). Those couple of cells attached to a couple of muscles that steered said worm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery iteration since then has just been more nerve cells sensing not the environment but each other, an internal environment. The end result is that every part of the brain at least indirectly senses the states of the other parts, and reacts. Different reactions are like locks, only certain keys 'open' those locks, but unlike real locks they're not binary. Every lock opens a little bit to every key (maybe not literally every one, but many). At some level there are layers that combine various inputs and inhibit or enable other outputs.
So the language processing system recognizes a word, and some cognitive/reasoning system recognizes a concept, and some motor system selects an appropriate motor plan related to that concept, and some other supervisor system inhibits that motor plan, recognizing that this is something we heard, not something we decided to do, but inhibition is just one of these locks and keys, it isn't perfect, so a bit of motor planning 'leaks through', maybe there's a 'motor plan test phase' that the cerebellum kicks off that tries a low intensity version of the full plan to make sure it will work, and that slips through. It doesn't matter because it doesn't hurt fitness and maybe even serves as part of a feedback training system that strengths the "clench hand <-> grip tight" association, etc.
Its all layers. Think of every neuron and assemblage as sensing an 'environment'. How they react is tuned by survival over billions of iterations of generations. Note how the most basic neural architecture of a bug and a man is pretty well preserved from some VERY distant ancestor.