„The Hierarchy within the Brain“ – A fMRI Study of Neuroanatomical Correlation of Semantic Structures of Superordination in Contrast to Synonymy

This fMRI study looks for anatomical correlations to the semantic structure of super- and subordination. A homogeneous group of eleven students was presented a series of 1000 words during an MRI. A series of 820 nonsense words consisting of random consonants was the baseline. At irregular times in between two sequential meaningful words were shown. The students had to decide whether these two words were in a meaningful order. Three groups of words were shown: Words with a concrete vs. abstract content and largest semantic distance, synonyms and terms in relation of hyponymy and superordination. The following lin…