MAY 03, 2016

A Brain Dictionary

WRITTEN BY: Carmen Leitch

Semantic memory is the memory of general things like culture, words, self, people and relationships. However, little is known about the organization of these networks. Using functional MRI technology, scientists at UC Berkeley determined what areas of the brain responded to specific words and figured out where the words in our head are located. Groups of words tend to cluster to certain areas based on meaning.

They found that these locations were largely consistent across individuals, and could be coalesced into a "Brain Dictionary." An interactive map they created allows us to investigate the organization of the vast dictionaries inside our heads.