A Psychophysiological Interaction Analysis Of The Effect Of Body Movement Learning On The Embodiment Of Chinese Verbs Semantic Comprehension

The view of body-specific semantic understanding suggests that sensory and motor systems play an important role in language and verb processing.Studies have shown that body-motor brain areas are involved in the semantic processing of body-action words,and that the brain areas activated by the semantic understanding of body-action words somehow match those activated by real body movements.Studies on verb embodied semantic understanding have mostly used alphabetic language as experimental material,and there are still many controversial issues in previous studies related to verb embodied semantic understanding that need to be explored in depth in further studies.A single-factor within-subject experimental design with two types of single words(true words and false words)as independent variables was adopted.Twelve subjects were recruited to investigate brain activation and functional connectivity for semantic understanding of Chinese single-word true/false verbs after body movement learning using a physiological-psychological interaction analysis technique to better understand the brain neural network between Chinese verb semantic understanding and body movement learning.It was found that after body movement learning,the process of semantic comprehension of Chinese verb words activated sensorimotor-related brain areas and semantic comprehension-related brain areas,and caused an increase in functional brain connections between sensorimotor-related brain areas and semantic comprehension-related brain areas.The brain regions significantly activated by unlearned pseudowords included bilateral angular gyrus,bilateral middle temporal gyrus,left middle occipital gyrus,right middle frontal gyrus,and left inferior temporal gyrus;The regions significantly activated by learned pseudowords were left and right inferior occipital gyrus,left middle occipital gyrus,left fusiform gyrus,left lingual gyrus,left supplementary motor area,left inferior parietal lobule,left precentral gyrus,right cerebellum,left globus pallidum,left putanmen,and left middle cingulate cortex.That is,presentation of pseudowords before learning activated only semantic comprehension brain areas,and presentation of pseudowords after learning activated sensorimotor-related and semantic comprehension brain areas,confirming the embodied nature of bodily movement verbs in semantic comprehension and the involvement of bodily movement brain areas in semantic processing of bodily movement words.Body movement learning can induce changes in brain functional connectivity patterns,which changed from bilateral middle temporal gyrus-left precentral gyrus and right precentral gyrus-left precentral gyrus to left supraoccipital gyrus-left precentral gyrus for verb single word semantic comprehension tasks before and after body movement learning in the pseudoword > baseline task condition.In conclusion,the present study explains the neural mechanisms underlying the effect of body-motion learning on the embodiment of Chinese verb semantic comprehension,and the results provide empirical support for language learning strategies involving body-motion experience.