RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Two Forms of Knowledge Representations in the Human Brain
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 691931
DO 10.1101/691931
A1 Wang, Xiaoying
A1 Men, Weiwei
A1 Gao, Jiahong
A1 Caramazza, Alfonso
A1 Bi, Yanchao
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/07/04/691931.abstract
AB Sensory experience shapes what and how knowledge is stored in the brain -- our knowledge about the color of roses depends in part on the activity of color-responsive neurons based on experiences of seeing roses. We study the brain basis of color knowledge in congenitally blind individuals whose color knowledge can only be obtained through language descriptions. We found that some regions support color knowledge only in the sighted. More importantly, a region in the left dorsal anterior temporal lobe supports object color knowledge in both the blind and sighted groups, indicating the existence of a sensory-independent knowledge coding system in both groups. Thus, there are (at least) two forms of object knowledge representations in the human brain: sensory-derived and cognitively-derived knowledge, supported by different brain systems.