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Abstract neural representations of category membership beyond information coding stimulus or response

View ORCID ProfileRobert M. Mok, View ORCID ProfileBradley C. Love
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.13.947341
Robert M. Mok
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom
2MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, 15 Chaucer Road, CB2 7EF, United Kingdom
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  • For correspondence: robert.mok@ucl.ac.uk b.love@ucl.ac.uk
Bradley C. Love
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom
3The Alan Turing Institute, United Kingdom
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  • For correspondence: robert.mok@ucl.ac.uk b.love@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

For decades, researchers have debated whether mental representations are symbolic or grounded in sensory inputs and motor programs. Certainly, aspects of mental representations are grounded. However, does the brain also contain abstract concept representations that mediate between perception and action in a flexible manner not tied to the details of sensory inputs and motor programs? Such conceptual pointers would be useful when concept remain constant despite changes in appearance and associated actions. We evaluated whether human participants acquire such representations using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants completed a probabilistic concept learning task in which sensory, motor, and category variables were not perfectly coupled nor entirely independent, making it possible to observe evidence for abstract representations or purely grounded representations. To assess how the learned concept structure is represented in the brain, we examined brain regions implicated in flexible cognition (e.g., prefrontal and parietal cortex) that are most likely to encode an abstract representation removed from sensory-motor details. We also examined sensory-motor regions that might encode grounded sensory-motor based representations tuned for categorization. Using a cognitive model to estimate participants’ category rule and multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data, we found left prefrontal cortex and MT coded for category in absence of information coding for stimulus or response. Because category was based on the stimulus, finding an abstract representation of category was not inevitable. Our results suggest that certain brain areas support categorization behaviour by constructing concept representations in a format akin to a symbol that differs from stimulus-motor codes.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 26, 2020.
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Abstract neural representations of category membership beyond information coding stimulus or response
Robert M. Mok, Bradley C. Love
bioRxiv 2020.02.13.947341; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.13.947341
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Abstract neural representations of category membership beyond information coding stimulus or response
Robert M. Mok, Bradley C. Love
bioRxiv 2020.02.13.947341; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.13.947341

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