What's unique about unique entities? An fMRI investigation of the semantics of famous faces and landmarks.

ABSTRACT: Famous people and artifacts are referred to as "unique entities" (UEs) due to the unique nature of the knowledge we have about them. Past imaging and lesion experiments have indicated that the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) as having a special role in the processing of UEs. It has remained unclear which attributes of UEs were responsible for the observed effects in imaging experiments. In this study, we investigated what factors of UEs influence brain activity. In a training paradigm, we systematically varied the uniqueness of semantic associations, the presence/absence of a proper name, and the number of semantic associations to determine factors modulating activity in regions subserving the processing of UEs. We found that a conjunction of unique semantic information and proper names mod

SUBMITTER: Ross LA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3412440 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature