Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31313467›Full record

ArticleHuman brain mapping2019

The lexical semantics of adjective-noun phrases in the human brain.

Alona Fyshe, Gustavo Sudre, Leila Wehbe, Nicole Rafidi, Tom M Mitchell

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Human brain mapping, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
18citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

18 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Compositional Complexity in Text and Images.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026
    Article
  2. Decoding the Neural Dynamics of Headed Syntactic Structure Building.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025
    Article
  3. Article
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  5. Article
  6. Dimensionality and Ramping: Signatures of Sentence Integration in the Dynamics of Brains and Deep Language Models.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Same Cause; Different Effects in the Brain.Proceedings of machine learning research · 2022
    Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Deep Artificial Neural Networks Reveal a Distributed Cortical Network Encoding Propositional Sentence-Level Meaning.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021
    Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Studying language in context using the temporal generalization method.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020
    Review
  17. Neural basis of basic composition: what we have learned from the red-boat studies and their extensions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020
    Article
  18. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Alona FysheDepartment of Computing Science & Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.ORCID 0000-0003-4367-0306
Gustavo SudreNational Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
Leila WehbeMachine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Nicole RafidiMachine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Tom M MitchellMachine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Funding

Canadian Institute for Advanced ResearchFoundation for the National Institutes of Health 1r01hd075328-0Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity #31081.1Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

As a person reads, the brain performs complex operations to create higher order semantic representations from individual words. While these steps are effortless for competent readers, we are only beginning to understand how the brain performs these actions. Here, we explore lexical semantics using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings of people reading adjective-noun phrases presented one word at a time. We track the neural representation of single word representations over time, through different brain regions. Our results reveal two novel findings: (a) a neural representation of the adjective is present during noun presentation, but this representation is different from that observed during adjective presentation and (b) the neural representation of adjective semantics observed during adjective reading is reactivated after phrase reading, with remarkable consistency. We also note that while the semantic representation of the adjective during the reading of the adjective is very distributed, the later representations are concentrated largely to temporal and frontal areas previously associated with composition. Taken together, these results paint a picture of information flow in the brain as phrases are read and understood.

Indexed as

Brain MappingReadingSemanticsAdultCerebral CortexComprehensionFemaleHumansMagnetoencephalographyTime Factorslanguage comprehensionmagnetoencephalographysemantic compositionsemantic representations

Identifiers

PMID31313467
PMCPMC6865843

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.