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Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala

Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Aryani, Arash, Hsu, Chun‐Ting, Jacobs, Arthur M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6864889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31444898
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24772
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author Aryani, Arash
Hsu, Chun‐Ting
Jacobs, Arthur M.
author_facet Aryani, Arash
Hsu, Chun‐Ting
Jacobs, Arthur M.
author_sort Aryani, Arash
collection PubMed
description Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their non‐iconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language.
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spelling pubmed-68648892020-06-12 Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala Aryani, Arash Hsu, Chun‐Ting Jacobs, Arthur M. Hum Brain Mapp Research Articles Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their non‐iconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019-08-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6864889/ /pubmed/31444898 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24772 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Aryani, Arash
Hsu, Chun‐Ting
Jacobs, Arthur M.
Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
title Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
title_full Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
title_fullStr Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
title_full_unstemmed Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
title_short Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
title_sort affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6864889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31444898
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24772
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