Brain mechanisms underlying human communication
Publication year
2009Number of pages
13 p.
Source
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 3, (2009), article 14ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
SW OZ DCC CO
Taalwetenschap
Former Organization
SW OZ NICI CO
Journal title
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Volume
vol. 3
Languages used
English (eng)
Subject
Action, intention, and motor control; DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 1: Language and Communication; DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 2: Perception, Action and Control; Language in Time and Space; PsycholinguisticsAbstract
Human communication has been described as involving the coding-decoding of a conventional symbol system, which could be supported by parts of the human motor system (i.e. the "mirror neurons system"). However, this view does not explain how these conventions could develop in the first place. Here we target the neglected but crucial issue of how people organize their non-verbal behavior to communicate a given intention without pre-established conventions. We have measured behavioral and brain responses in pairs of subjects during communicative exchanges occurring in a real, interactive, on-line social context. In two fMRI studies, we found robust evidence that planning new communicative actions (by a sender) and recognizing the communicative intention of the same actions (by a receiver) relied on spatially overlapping portions of their brains (the right posterior superior temporal sulcus). The response of this region was lateralized to the right hemisphere, modulated by the ambiguity in meaning of the communicative acts, but not by their sensorimotor complexity. These results indicate that the sender of a communicative signal uses his own intention recognition system to make a prediction of the intention recognition performed by the receiver. This finding supports the notion that our communicative abilities are distinct from both sensorimotor processes and language abilities.
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- Academic publications [227437]
- Electronic publications [107154]
- Faculty of Arts [28543]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [28417]
- Open Access publications [76295]
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