2023/12/18 by Julien Dirani, Dirani, Julien, Liina Pylkkänen +1 · 2 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Action Observation and Synchronization #Child and Animal Learning Development #FOS: Biological sciences #Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.10916
openalex publication_date 2023/12/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The semantic knowledge stored in our brains can be accessed from different stimulus modalities. For example, a picture of a cat and the word "cat" both engage similar conceptual representations. While existing research has found evidence for modality-independent representations, their content remains unknown. Modality-independent representations could be abstract, or they might be perceptual or even lexical in nature. We used a novel approach combining word/picture cross-condition decoding with neural network classifiers that learned latent modality-independent representations from MEG data. We then compared these representations to models representing semantic, sensory, and lexical features. Results show that modality-independent representations are not strictly amodal; rather, they also contain visual representations. There was no evidence that lexical properties contributed to the representation of modality-independent concepts. These findings support the notion that perceptual processes play a fundamental role in encoding modality-independent conceptual representations. Conversely, lexical representations did not appear to partake in modality-independent semantic knowledge.