Distinct neural systems subserve person and object knowledge - PubMed (original) (raw)

Distinct neural systems subserve person and object knowledge

Jason P Mitchell et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002.

Abstract

Studies using functional neuroimaging and patient populations have demonstrated that distinct brain regions subserve semantic knowledge for different classes of inanimate objects (e.g., tools, musical instruments, and houses). What this work has yet to consider, however, is how conceptual knowledge about people may be organized in the brain. In particular, is there a distinct functional neuroanatomy associated with person knowledge? By using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured neural activity while participants made semantic judgments about people or objects. A unique pattern of brain activity was associated with person judgments and included brain regions previously implicated in other aspects of social-cognitive functioning: medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, intraparietal sulcus, and fusiform gyrus. These regions were generally marked by relatively little change from baseline brain activity for person judgments along with significant deactivations for object judgments. Together, these findings support the notion that person knowledge may be functionally dissociable from other classes of semantic knowledge within the brain.

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Figures

Fig 1.

Fig 1.

Activation maps show brain areas to be more active during Object trials than during Person trials. Regions of modulation included the left inferior prefrontal cortex and the left IT cortex (a), as well as the left posterior parietal and the left insula cortex (b). See Table 1 for the Talairach and Tournoux (49) atlas coordinates.

Fig 2.

Fig 2.

Activation maps show brain areas to be more active during Person trials than during Object trials. Regions of modulation included the left temporal sulcus (a), the dorsal and ventral MPFC (b), the right FuG (c), and the right parietal temporal-occipital junction (d). See Table 2 for the Talairach and Tournoux (49) atlas coordinates.

Fig 3.

Fig 3.

The hemodynamic time courses in the left inferior prefrontal (a) and the left inferior temporal cortex (c) were characterized by activations above baseline for Object trials (filled red squares) and either modest or nonsignificant activations for Person trials (open blue triangles). In contrast, the dorsal medial prefrontal (b) and right lateral parietal cortices (d) were characterized by significant deactivations for Object trials, along with no significant modulations for Person trials, a pattern typical for areas identified in Person > Object comparisons. Time courses were calculated by collapsing across multiple clusters within a neuroanatomical region (except for the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, for which only one cluster was identified). The scale is seconds (one second per hash mark). Error bars display the standard error of the mean.

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