Maggie Locke

Functional Neuroanatomy
December 4, 2016
Critique on Huth et al. (2016)

Huth et al. (2016) sought to create a data-driven atlas of the semantic representation of
language in the human cerebral cortex1. To accomplish this goal, fMRI data was collected from
seven subjects who listened to two hours of stories. Researchers grouped words into semantic
categories according to word co-occurrence and used an algorithm to map BOLD responses to
specific voxel regions. A model was successfully created with this voxel-wise modeling
technique. This model was tested with additional stories to evaluate its prediction performance.
This generated atlas of the semantic representation of language in the cortex may be useful in
clinical applications and in understanding the functional anatomical patterning of the language
processing pathway in the brain.
The study succeeds in creating a novel atlas of semantic representation of language with
good predictive power. The strengths of the study are that fMRI has fine spatial resolution which
allows for the differentiation of activated voxels and grouping into categories of meaning.
Previous studies have shown good reproducibility of fMRI in response to story listening2, and
similar consistency was observed in this study. In addition, the atlas in generated from the data
instead of hypothesis-based, which more efficiently maps observed activation to the algorithm-
generated categories. However, the weaknesses lie in that data from only seven subjects was
collected. Given the data driven methodology, the small sample size limits the variability that
might be observed in the general population as well as how generalizable this predictive model
might be. In addition, fMRI is more limited in its temporal resolution. Repeated tasks can be
resolved when delayed by two to three seconds3. However, in this listening task each spoken
word is likely heard for a shorter time period, which makes telling apart differential activation
between words spoken in fast succession difficult.
While the studys utilization of the story telling was an efficient way to present a
listening task, the next steps should be to ascertain whether the activation mapped in the atlas is
specific to language or some other general cognitive representation of meaning. The distinct
parameters of the specific semantic qualities of language measured in the study are not clearly
defined by the authors. It is possible that the activity observed in each specific brain area is
dependent on the context of the story itself rather than the meaning of the words themselves. In
fact, previous work has suggested that brain activation from language may be closely tied to and
modulated by emotions4. Thus, it is necessary to perform additional experiments to determine the
parameters of when this model can be successfully applied. Previous research has shown that
brain activity varies by the context of different narrative segments5. A possible future experiment
would be to play a silent video depicting the same stories heard by the seven subjects and to
record the BOLD activity with fMRI. If the same areas for each semantic category are activated,
the atlas would be a more general cognitive representation of meaning rather than one specific to
languages and specific words.
Another experiment that would test whether the results obtained are a by-product of the
story-telling methodology would be to read out lists of the same words heard in the story except
in a scrambled order and record brain activity of the listeners with fMRI. This experiment would
also determine whether the map developed in Huth et al. (2016) reflects to the semantic qualities
of each specific word or broader language patterns in the sentences and phrases heard.
Additionally, since certain words are dependent on each other, this will be an important
distinction to make. For example, the words rain and bow have very different semantic
meanings separately but combined as a rain-bow it now has a very different meaning. Previous
study has suggested that the interplay between words, phrases, and sentence structure have a
combinatorial processing role6. This combinatorial processing could be explored in greater depth
in future studies as well by varying sentence and word combinations.
The study by Huth et al. (2016) presents an atlas, which is a useful tool to reference
localization of semantic representation from language. The semantic qualities specifically
represented in this atlas are not well-defined, but they can be elucidated with further study. The
aforementioned suggested experiments would help to define the parameters of the application of
the semantic atlas. Further research could also center on elucidating the functional and
anatomical pathways of language processing to build off of the model established in this study.

References
1 Huth, A. G., de Heer, W. A., Griffiths, T. L., Theunissen, F. E. & Gallant, J. L. Natural
speech reveals the semantic maps that tile human cerebral cortex. Nature 532, 453-458,
doi:10.1038/nature17637.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v532/n7600/abs/nature17637.html#supplementary-
information (2016).
2 Maiza, O. et al. Reproducibility of fMRI activations during a story listening task in
patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia research 128, 98-101,
doi:10.1016/j.schres.2011.01.025 (2011).
3 Kim, S. G., Richter, W. & Ugurbil, K. Limitations of temporal resolution in functional
MRI. Magnetic resonance in medicine 37, 631-636 (1997).
4 Fischler, I. & Bradley, M. Event-related potential studies of language and emotion:
words, phrases, and task effects. Progress in brain research 156, 185-203,
doi:10.1016/s0079-6123(06)56009-1 (2006).
5 Xu, J., Kemeny, S., Park, G., Frattali, C. & Braun, A. Language in context: emergent
features of word, sentence, and narrative comprehension. NeuroImage 25, 1002-1015,
doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.12.013 (2005).
6 Graves, W. W., Binder, J. R., Desai, R. H., Conant, L. L. & Seidenberg, M. S. Neural
correlates of implicit and explicit combinatorial semantic processing. NeuroImage 53,
638-646, doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.06.055 (2010).