Perception, action, and word meanings in the human brain: the case from action verbs

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Abstract
Among other things, humans talk about what they perceive and do, like “glowing,”“hopping,” and “squeaking.” What is the relationship between our sensory‐motor experiences and word meanings? Does understanding action‐verbs rely on the same neural circuits as seeing and acting? The available evidence indicates that sensory‐motor experience and word meanings are represented in distinct, but interacting systems. Understanding action‐verbs does not rely on early modality‐specific visual or motor circuits. Instead, word comprehension relies on a network of amodal brain regions in the left frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices that represent conceptual and grammatical properties of words. Interactions between word meanings and sensory‐motor experiences occur in higher‐order polymodal brain regions.