The way in which a person's body and their surroundings interacts also allows for specific brain functions to develop and in the future to be able to act.
[2] Embodied semantics is one of two theories concerning the location and processing of sensory motors inputs within the human brain.
Correlation learning links the word and object circuits, resulting in an embodied object-semantic relationship.
For example, the color, shape, size, smell, and sound associated with the word “cat” would be integrated at the same semantic hub.
Each potential semantic hub is activated to a specific degree according to the category that the perceived word belongs to.
For example, category specificity is greatest close to the piriform and anterior insular olfactory cortex.
In the gustatory cortex in the anterior insula and frontal operculum, taste words such as “sugar” lead to a stronger activation.
[10] In one experiment, researchers hypothesized that if reading an object word also activates a location that is linked to that noun, then the following action response should be compatible with that association.
The results of this study displayed that participants were faster to respond when the location of the word and the action they had to perform were similar.
[8] These findings suggest that the assumption of embodied theories that abstract concepts, as well as concrete ones, are grounded in the sensorimotor system may not be true.
However, in contrast, other research has found motor cortex activation for the metaphorical usage of action verbs.
One such study investigated cortical activation during comprehension of literal and idiomatic sentences using Magnetoencephalography (MEG).
During a silent reading task, participants were presented with stimuli which included both literal and metaphorical arm-related action verbs, e.g. “Mary caught the fish” versus “Mary caught the sun”, and also literal and metaphorical leg-related action verbs, e.g. “Pablo jumped on the armchair” versus “Pablo jumped on the bandwagon”.
[7] Hauk and colleagues found that reading words associated with foot, hand, or mouth actions (examples: kick, pick, lick) activated by motor areas adjacent or overlapping with areas activated by making actions with the hand, foot, or mouth.
[13] Additionally, neurolinguist Tettmanti and colleagues found that listening to action related sentences activated the premotor cortex in a somatotopic fashion.
Aziz-Zadeh and colleagues localized foot, hand, and mouth premotor regions of interest in each subject by having subjects watch actions associated with each effector and read phrases associated with the foot, hand, and mouth.
Rizzolatti and colleagues have suggested that action plan (manipulating, reaching) is more important than the actual effector involved.
The study found there was indeed activation of the motor cortices whilst listening to sentences expressing foot/leg and hand/arm actions.
Specifically, the results showed that listening to hand-action-related sentences prompted a decrease of MEP amplitude recorded from hand muscles and listening to foot-action-related sentences prompted a decrease of MEP amplitude recorded from foot muscle.
[17] Other studies have tried to understand the ACE phenomenon by examining the modulation of motor resonance during language comprehension.
Overall, the researchers have concluded that motor resonance is quite immediate and short-lived and that duration of the effect is modified by linguistic context.
[20] These studies have concluded that activation of motor decisions occur automatically when exposed to action-related words.
[20] Aziz-Zadeh investigated congruent somatotopic organization of semantic representations for metaphorical sentences in either hemisphere.
Many studies have shown how body movements and speech can be combined to emphasize meaning (often called gesturing).
One study looked at the impact of embodied cognition in a classroom setting to facilitate and enhance language learning.
[23] They studied this further and discovered that it is possible for these children to still benefit from the effects of embodied cognition when they manipulate objects on a computer screen.