Separable effects of semantic priming and imageability on word processing in human cortex

Understanding the neural representation of semantic concepts is at the core of understanding human knowledge and experience. Competing cognitive theories suggest that these neural representations are based on either a unitary semantic code or on multiple semantic codes. We contrasted these theories using event-related fMRI in a semantic priming study. Pairs of words were presented that were either semantically related or unrelated and were either high or low imageable. The unitary view predicts that there should be little or no difference between neural activity evoked by high and low imageable words when presented in a related context, but large differences in neural activity when there is an unrelated context. In contrast to this view, we provide evidence for functionally and anatomically separable effects of context and imageability in human cortex, suggesting that semantic knowledge consists of multiple representational codes.