CATEGORY-SPECIFIC BRAIN ACTIVATION IN FMRI DURING PICTURE NAMING

NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL, computational, and psycholinguistic data suggest t he existence of semantic maps, i.e. localized representations of seman tic information in the brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imag ing, this hypothesis was directly tested with a picture naming task in volving items from four different semantic categories. Small left late ralized fronto-temporal cortical sites of category-specific activation were found when brain activation signals were averaged. Data suggest the existence of multiple maps coding high-level representations of ob jects, such that meaningful distinctions, at least in part, govern the physical distribution of cortical semantic storage.