ArticleNature human behaviour2021
Reverse-engineering the cortical architecture for controlled semantic cognition.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed.
- Controlled Retrieval Relies on Directed Interactions between Semantic Control Regions and Visual Cortex: MEG Evidence from Oscillatory Dynamics.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation enhances semantic memory by modulating brain morphology, neurochemistry and neural dynamics.Nature communications · 2026Article
- From cortical and white matter structure to meaning: a brain-constrained neural network of semantic grounding in action and perception.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Prefrontal and Cerebellar Contributions to Semantic Memory Retrieval.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Controlled Semantic Cognition: Precision Recordings Converge With in Silico Experiments to Reveal the Inner Workings of the Anterior Temporal Lobe Hub.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Review
- The neural bases of frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia subtypes: insights from activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses of 8057 patients.Brain communications · 2026Review
- Understanding the mind-brain relationship through focal neurodegenerative pathology.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025Review
- Abstract word dropout and cross-speaker misalignment of word concreteness are features of conversation in aging.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025Article
- The inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus: bridging phylogeny, ontogeny and functional anatomy.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2025Review
- Coordinating multiple mental faculties during learning.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- What we mean when we say semantic: Toward a multidisciplinary semantic glossary.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Mapping the task-general and task-specific neural correlates of speech production: Meta-analysis and fMRI direct comparisons of category fluency and picture naming.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Using drawings and deep neural networks to characterize the building blocks of human visual similarity.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Semantic processing in older adults is associated with distributed neural activation which varies by association and abstractness of words.GeroScience · 2024Article
- The impact of bilateral versus unilateral anterior temporal lobe damage on face recognition, person knowledge and semantic memory.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- A neuroanatomical and cognitive model of impaired social behaviour in frontotemporal dementia.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2024Review
- Decoding Semantics from Dynamic Brain Activation Patterns: From Trials to Task in EEG/MEG Source Space.eNeuro · 2024Article
- Representational similarity learning reveals a graded multidimensional semantic space in the human anterior temporal cortex.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- Semantic-specific and domain-general mechanisms for integration and update of contextual information.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Neurobiological mechanisms for language, symbols and concepts: Clues from brain-constrained deep neural networks.Progress in neurobiology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We employ a reverse-engineering approach to illuminate the neurocomputational building blocks that combine to support controlled semantic cognition: the storage and context-appropriate use of conceptual knowledge. By systematically varying the structure of a computational model and assessing the functional consequences, we identified the architectural properties that best promote some core functions of the semantic system. Semantic cognition presents a challenging test case, as the brain must achieve two seemingly contradictory functions: abstracting context-invariant conceptual representations across time and modalities, while producing specific context-sensitive behaviours appropriate for the immediate task. These functions were best achieved in models possessing a single, deep multimodal hub with sparse connections from modality-specific regions, and control systems acting on peripheral rather than deep network layers. The reverse-engineered model provides a unifying account of core findings in the cognitive neuroscience of controlled semantic cognition, including evidence from anatomy, neuropsychology and functional brain imaging.
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