The Categorization of Event Concepts in the Brain: The Case of Telicity. Evidence from fMRI

The question of how event concepts are organized in the brain still has to be fully clarified. The study of the neural correlates of verbs offers a unique opportunity to address this question. Events, in fact, are typically encoded into verb items, in natural languages. Moreover, the use of words (as opposed to pictures or scenes, for instance) allow to investigate event properties, independently of crucial perceptual properties and other cognitive processes involved in the elaboration of images. The role of lexical semantics in modulating neural activity associated with verbs remains unsettled. In this project we assess whether telicity, the property to have a specified endpoint, modulates neural response to verbs in previously identified verb-selective brain regions. To address these question, we use fMRI techniques to compare the patterns of neural activity associated with telic verbs with those associated with atelic verbs, including both states and activities).