Neural Mechanism Subserving Memory of Chinese Abstract and Concrete Words

The neural mechanism subserving the processing of abstract and concrete words is widely studied in cognitive neuroscience. The previous studies focused on the alphabetic languages, which found that the processing of abstract words relies more on verbal system and the processing of concrete words relies more on perceptual system. This study investigates the brain activity elicited by the abstract and concrete words in the process of the memory encoding with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results are that the memory encoding of the two types of words activates temporal-occipital cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus. Besides, abstract words elicit default mode network additionally while concrete words elicit sensorimotor cortex additionally. The results indicate that the memory of the abstract and concrete words activates verbal and executive control systems, but they also rely on different systems for memory encoding.