Scientists Identify Brain's Concept Control Core

Van Cutter Romney writes "Scientists have identified the part of the brain which matches words to objects. While scanning brains from people who suffer from Semantic Dementia they have found that the front end of the temporal lobe seems to be crucial to conceptual application. A better understanding on how this part of the brain works can help develop therapies to counteract Semantic Dementia — the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's disease."

Comments

I think they've got it!

[ColdWetDog]

Semantic dementia that is. FTFA:

"People have been talking about how the brain encodes concepts for 150 years. We believe we have found it,"

What they supposedly found was WHERE the brain encodes semantic functioning. No mention of how. Maybe the Reuter's journalist took it out of context or just doesn't understand what fMRI (functional MRI - go look it up on Google) does. We've known for a long time that parts of the temoporal lobe have to do with language parsing.

Note to editors: Can we have something more detailed than an incorrect, mangled edit of a PR blurb? This says roughly nothing.

Now, I'm off to take my happy pills for the morning. Back later. Hope this all works out.

Re:I think they've got it!

[lawpoop]

The *only* thing we can know about the brain these days is where stuff happens. AFAICT, we dont' have any theory* about how exactly the brain works or what 'thought' ( or even memory ) is. We do have some hypotheses, but nothing that even remotely explains behavior, or has created a model that has anywhere near the ability of a cockroach.

Until we have such a theory, *all* headlines should read "Scientists discover *where* $mental_phenomenon takes place."

* 'Theory' in the scientific sense -- a hypothesis tested through falsifiable experiment.

Re:I think they've got it!

[radtea]

What they supposedly found was WHERE the brain encodes semantic functioning. No mention of how.

Furthermore, semantic functioning is not conceptual encoding.

Non-humans have concepts: abstract categories whose members they treat indifferently. When a dog that has been house-trained is in a house different from the house it was trained in, it has no difficulty understanding that it isn't supposed to crap on the floor. It has a concept of "house" whose members can be identified by their particulars, but which are all treated in a common way.

Indeed, if other species didn't have some conceptual ability, it is very unlikely we would have any. Evolution works primarily by elaboration, so without some elaborative material to operate on it is very unlikely a species with our conceptual powers would arise. It would be like a planet of snakes suddenly evolving a species of sprinters.

Human reasoning ability comes from a combination of pre-existing capabilities: the aforementioned conceptual capacity we share with many other species, and the equally wide-spread capacity to use symbols such as sounds to refer to other things, like a predator approaching. In humans evolution has enhanced the ability to use symbols so that any symbol can refer to anything, including concepts.

Re:yes, but

[neonprimetime]

Well, it does have a pretty decent up-time. About 70 years on average?