Retrieval of word meaning from the semantic system and its integration with context are often assumed to be shared by spoken and written words. How is modality-independent semantic processing manifested in the brain, spatially and temporally? Time-sensitive neuroimaging allows tracking of neural activation sequences. Use of semantically related versus unrelated word pairs or sentences ending wi...

Everyday communication is accompanied by visual information from several sources, including co-speech gestures, which provide semantic information listeners use to help disambiguate the speaker's message. Using fMRI, we examined how gestures influence neural activity in brain regions associated with processing semantic information. The BOLD response was recorded while participants listened to s...

7 1 TMS interferes with lexical-semantic retrieval in left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior middle temporal gyrus: Evidence from cyclical picture naming Abstract We used TMS to investigate the contribution of left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) to lexical/semantic selection and retrieval processes using a cyclical naming paradigm. Participants named...

We used TMS to investigate the contribution of left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) to lexical/semantic selection and retrieval processes using a cyclical naming paradigm. Participants named pictures that were presented repeatedly across six cycles, either in semantically related or unrelated sets. Previous research has suggested that selection demands a...

In this study, we used electroencephalography to investigate the influence of discourse-level semantic coherence on electrophysiological signatures of local sentence-level processing. Participants read groups of four sentences that could either form coherent stories or were semantically unrelated. For semantically coherent discourses compared to incoherent ones, the N400 was smaller at sentence...

We used rapid, event-related fMRI to identify the neural systems underlying object semantics. During scanning, subjects silently read rapidly presented word pairs (150 msec, SOA = 250 msec) that were either unrelated in meaning (ankle-carrot), semantically related (fork-cup), or identical (crow-crow). Activity in the left posterior region of the fusiform gyrus and left inferior frontal cortex w...

In the present study we introduce a novel task for the quantitative assessment of both originality and speed of individual associations. This 'BAG' (Bridge-the-Associative-Gap) task was used to investigate the relationships between creativity and paranormal belief. Twelve strong 'believers' and 12 strong 'skeptics' in paranormal phenomena were selected from a large student population (n > 350)....

Abstract Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, but do they influence comprehension in simultaneous interpreters, and if so, is this modulated by interpreting (SI) and/or experience? In a picture-matching task, 24 professional interpreters translators were exposed to utterances accompanied semantically matching representational gestures, unrelated pragmatic or no while...

This paper reports on our ongoing work regarding opinion mining from Web-based discussion forums in the realm of the Understanding Advertising (UAd) project. Our approach to opinion mining is to first RDFise discussion forums in SIOC, and in a second phase to interlink the so created data with linked datasets such as DBpedia. We are confident that this should allow a market researcher to formul...

Visual world studies show that upon hearing a word in target-absent visual context containing related and unrelated items, toddlers adults briefly direct their gaze toward phonologically before shifting semantically visually ones. We present neural network model processes dynamic unfolding phonological representations of words maps them to static internal lexical, semantic, representations. The...