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Words and actions: What is the connection between linguistic and motor functions?
July 31, 2013 by NewsBot
According to some neuroscientists the linguistic and the motor systems are strictly “tied up”. That is to say, for instance, that to understand the word “drinking” our brain sets in motion the same cerebral structures used to perform the action of drinking. This assumption is connected to the theories of embodied cognition, according to which the nature of the human mind in the final analysis is modeled upon the body, its shape, the way it interacts with the world, and so on. Some studies, however, have called into question the dependence of the linguistic system on the motor one, actually uncovering a dissociation between the two domains. Now researchers have put to the test a theoretical model to account for such inconsistencies.