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A social-semantic working-memory account for two canonical language areas

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 1980–1997 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Language and social cognition are traditionally studied as separate cognitive domains, yet accumulative studies reveal overlapping neural correlates at the left ventral temporoparietal junction (vTPJ) and the left lateral anterior temporal lobe (lATL), which have been attributed to sentence processing and social concept activation. We propose a common cognitive component underlying both effects: social-semantic working memory. We confirmed two key predictions of our hypothesis using functional MRI. First, the left vTPJ and lATL showed sensitivity to sentences only when the sentences conveyed social meaning; second, these regions showed persistent social-semantic-selective activity after the linguistic stimuli disappeared. We additionally found that both regions were sensitive to the socialness of non-linguistic stimuli and were more tightly connected with the social-semantic-processing areas than with the sentence-processing areas. The converging evidence indicates the social-semantic working-memory function of the left vTPJ and lATL and challenges the general-semantic and/or syntactic accounts for the neural activity of these regions.

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Fig. 1: Social meaning drives sentence effects in the left vTPJ and lATL (Experiment 1).
Fig. 2: Replicating the findings of Experiment 1 using longer and more natural sentential stimuli (Experiment 2).
Fig. 3: Persistent social-semantic-selective neural activity during the delay period (Experiment 3).
Fig. 4: Persistent social-semantic-selective neural activity during the processing of successive sentences (Experiment 4).
Fig. 5: The left vTPJ and lATL are sensitive to the socialness of non-linguistic stimuli (Experiment 5).
Fig. 6: The left vTPJ and lATL have stronger intrinsic connectivity to the social-semantic-processing areas than to the sentence-processing areas (Experiment 6).

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Data availability

All data that support the findings of this study are available from Psychological Science Bank (https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.psych.00138).

Code availability

Custom code that supports the findings of this study is available from Psychological Science Bank (https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.psych.00138).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31871105 to N.L.); the Scientific Foundation of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. E2CX3625CX to X.W. and N.L.); the Scientific Foundation of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. E1CX4725CX to X.W.); the National Science and Technology Innovation 2030 Major Program (grant no. 2021ZD0204104 to Y.B.); and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31925020 to Y.B.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the paper. Experiment 4 in this paper used the CAS-PEAL-R1 face database collected under the sponsor of the Chinese National Hi-Tech Program and ISVISION Tech. Co. Ltd. We thank X. Wang, H. Yang, H. Wen and W. Zhou for assistance in performing the MVPA and DCM analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China

    Guangyao Zhang, Xiuyi Wang, Weiting Shi & Nan Lin

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Guangyao Zhang, Xiuyi Wang, Weiting Shi & Nan Lin

  3. State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Guangyao Zhang & Yanchao Bi

  4. IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Guangyao Zhang & Yanchao Bi

  5. Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Guangyao Zhang & Yanchao Bi

  6. Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Yangwen Xu

  7. Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Jixing Li

  8. Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China

    Yanchao Bi

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Contributions

G.Z. and N.L. conceived the study. G.Z., N.L. and W.S. developed the methods. G.Z. performed the investigation and the data analysis. N.L. supervised the work. G.Z. and N.L. wrote the initial draft. All authors reviewed and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Nan Lin.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Moritz Wurm, David Kemmerer and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary Figures 1–5, Tables 1–26 and description of the methods and results of the location-based analyses of Neurosynth and the methods and results of the behavioural analysis.

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Zhang, G., Xu, Y., Wang, X. et al. A social-semantic working-memory account for two canonical language areas. Nat Hum Behav 7, 1980–1997 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01704-8

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