Computer Model Reveals How Brain Represents Meaning

Scientists have taken an important step toward understanding how the human brain codes the meanings of words by creating the first computational model that can predict the unique brain activation patterns associated with names for things that you can see, hear, feel, taste or smell. Researchers previously have shown that they can use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect which areas of the brain are activated when a person thinks about a specific word. A CMU team has taken the next step by predicting these activation patterns for concrete nouns - things that are experienced through the senses - for which fMRI data does not yet exist. The work could eventually lead to the use of brain scans to identify thoughts and could have applications in the study of autism, disorders of thought such as paranoid schizophrenia, and semantic dementias such as Pick's disease.