Nevertheless, previous research studies have actually associated the activity of these regions in language tasks to basic semantic and/or syntactic processing, whereas their activity in social tasks is associated to social concept activation.
New Hypothesis and Methodology
In this research study, the scientists checked an unique hypothesis that the activity of the left vTPJ and lATL in language and social tasks are both due to a typical cognitive element– i.e., social-semantic working memory.
Using fMRI experiments, they validated that these regions were sensitive to sentences just if the sentences conveyed social meaning. In addition, these regions showed relentless social-semantic-selective activity after the linguistic stimuli disappeared and were sensitive to the sociality of nonlinguistic stimuli.
These areas were more firmly connected to the social-semantic-processing locations than to the sentence-processing locations.
Ramifications and Support
The results indicate that the left vTPJ and lATL are not particular to language processing and contribute to language comprehension through social-semantic working memory.
” Since the 1990s, it has been regularly observed that the left vTPJ and lATL are delicate to sentence processing. Our findings were quite unexpected,” said Prof. LIN, matching author of the study.
These findings are most likely to force a major reconsideration of the practical company of the cortical language network, and they also make an important brand-new contribution to the field of social neuroscience, according to a reviewer for Nature Human Behaviour.
Recommendation: “A social-semantic working-memory account for two canonical language areas” by Guangyao Zhang, Yangwen Xu, Xiuyi Wang, Jixing Li, Weiting Shi, Yanchao Bi and Nan Lin, 21 September 2023, Nature Human Behaviour.DOI: 10.1038/ s41562-023-01704-8.
This research study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Scientific Foundation of the Institute of Psychology, and the National Science and Technology Innovation 2030 Major Program.
An innovative research study exposes that 2 essential brain areas, formerly thought to be committed to language processing, are in fact more involved in social-semantic working memory, challenging traditional views on language and social cognition.
A study performed by Professor LIN Nan and his team at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences exposed that while processing sentences, the brain activity in 2 canonical language areas, particularly the left forward temporoparietal junction (vTPJ) and the lateral anterior temporal lobe (lATL), is associated with social-semantic working memory rather than language processing per se.
The research study was just recently released in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
Linking Language and Social Cognition
Language and social cognition are 2 deeply interrelated capabilities of the human species however have actually typically been studied as two separate domains. Both sentence processing and social jobs can stimulate neural activity in the left vTPJ and lATL, recommending that the function of these regions may connect language understanding with social cognition.