Poster C49, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 10:45 am – 12:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
The role of motor activation during action verb processing: an EEG study
Ana Zappa1,3, Dierdre Bolger1,4, Cheryl Frenck-Mestre1,2,3,4;1Aix-Marseille Université, 2Centre National de Recherche Scientifque, 3Laboratoire Parole et Langage, 4Institute of Language, Communication and the Brain
Neuroimaging and behavioral evidence points to the recruitment of sensorimotor systems during linguistic processing. However, the timing and functionality of this activation remains elusive. In the current study we used an ACE paradigm to manipulate motor and semantic compatibility while measuring participants’ cortical activity using EEG. Participants listened to third-person action sentences indicating a movement away from or towards the subject of the sentence. (Emilie a pris son verre de vin et l’a bu [Emilie picked up her glass of wine and drank it]). In a sensibility judgment task, they accepted sentences by performing a compatible or incompatible action, i.e. by moving their hand either away from or towards their body. We measured motor-related cortical activity, as reflected by desynchronization in the µ frequency bands (8-12 Hz), and ERP language related components during the auditory processing of action sentences at frontal, central and centro-parietal electrodes. Contrary to previous studies using EEG to measure the neurophysiological correlates of the ACE, Erp analyses showed a greater negative deflection of the N400 for compatible versus incompatible trials, suggesting an inhibitory effect of compatible motor processes on action verb comprehension. We are currently investigating whether our results also provide evidence of action-related µ suppression at centro-parietal sites during action-sentence processing, and whether this activation varies as a function of condition (Compatible/Incompatible). Greater action-related µ suppression during action sentence processing for compatible versus incompatible action-language sentences would bolster the claim that action language and motor processes use shared neural circuits. On a large scale, this study adds to an important new vein in cognition research which, rather than focusing on the embodiment vs. disembodied debate, prioritizes determining the exact role of motor activation in cognition.
Themes: Multisensory or Sensorimotor Integration, Meaning: Lexical Semantics
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)