How Your Brain Groups Words

When you say or hear a concrete noun, such as “apple”, what happens in your mind? Even without seeing a physical apple in front of you, your brain is drawing up an image of an apple, maybe the last one you ate or saw in the stores or on TV. A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon used an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance image) machine to find out. Rather than using complex transparent concepts, like “honesty”, the team used simple words that convey physical, everyday objects to see which parts of the brain was activated. The goal was to see how the brain functions when we think of an object, rather than just trying to see an object in our mind. The brain was activated in many different parts for the simplest words, showing a complex, networked effect for even the easiest thoughts.