Short, simple story (which is tough for an academic!): Sensory brain systems support perceptual knowledge. That is, when you think about apples you activate regions involved in perceiving taste and color. For cotton, you rely more on tactile areas used during touch. And thinking about the sound of a shotgun activates a sound region. These patterns even seem to explain how you understand television when you're watching the Discovery Channel vs Martha Stewart vs This Old House (work we're preparing for publishing). Your brain appears to simulate the experience as if you were right there participating in it whether you're dealing with a word, picture, or video.
Now that "British Empiricist" story only seems to work for perceptual concepts. When things get more abstract, it breaks down (as the Rationalists pointed out). For instance, I would love to figure out how the squishy grey stuff can produce a concept like "infinity". But we're even making centipede steps there. For instance, we have a paper out showing that even for simple facts about animals, the use of language to code knowledge helps to overcome perceptual inadequacies and these facts seem to rely more on the frontal lobe.
That all said, we're going to spend a long time refining all of these accounts and none will fully explain the meanderings of the great philosophers. The point is we are making progress (and answering some philosophical problems) and I could spend the rest of my life simply trying to understand how the brain supports our knowledge of the world.
For more see:
Goldberg, R.F., Perfetti, C.A., Fiez, J.A., Schneider, W. (2007). Selective retrieval of abstract semantic knowledge in the left prefrontal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 3790-3798.
Goldberg, R.F., Perfetti, C.A., Schneider, W. (2006). Distinct and common cortical activations for multimodal semantic categories. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 6, 214-222.
Goldberg, R.F., Perfetti, C.A., Schneider, W. (2006). Perceptual knowledge retrieval activates sensory brain regions. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 4917-4921.
If you'd like a .pdf, send me a note at robg AT psych dot upenn dot edu
Now that "British Empiricist" story only seems to work for perceptual concepts. When things get more abstract, it breaks down (as the Rationalists pointed out). For instance, I would love to figure out how the squishy grey stuff can produce a concept like "infinity". But we're even making centipede steps there. For instance, we have a paper out showing that even for simple facts about animals, the use of language to code knowledge helps to overcome perceptual inadequacies and these facts seem to rely more on the frontal lobe.
That all said, we're going to spend a long time refining all of these accounts and none will fully explain the meanderings of the great philosophers. The point is we are making progress (and answering some philosophical problems) and I could spend the rest of my life simply trying to understand how the brain supports our knowledge of the world.
For more see: Goldberg, R.F., Perfetti, C.A., Fiez, J.A., Schneider, W. (2007). Selective retrieval of abstract semantic knowledge in the left prefrontal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 3790-3798.
Goldberg, R.F., Perfetti, C.A., Schneider, W. (2006). Distinct and common cortical activations for multimodal semantic categories. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 6, 214-222.
Goldberg, R.F., Perfetti, C.A., Schneider, W. (2006). Perceptual knowledge retrieval activates sensory brain regions. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 4917-4921.
If you'd like a .pdf, send me a note at robg AT psych dot upenn dot edu