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# Concepts and Categories: A Cognitive Neuropsychological Perspective

## Details

**Authors** Mahon and Caramazza

**Year** 2009

**Publisher** Annual Review of Psychology

**Discipline** Neuroscience

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163532) 
10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163532

## In authors' words

### Abstract

One of the most provocative and exciting issues in cognitive science is how neural specificity for semantic categories of common objects arises in the functional architecture of the brain. More than two decades of research on the neuropsychological phenomenon of category-specific semantic deficits has generated detailed claims about the organization and representation of conceptual knowledge. More recently, researchers have sought to test hypotheses developed on the basis of neuropsychological evidence with functional imaging. From those two fields, the empirical generalization emerges that object domain and sensory modality jointly constrain the organization of knowledge in the brain. At the same time, research within the embodied cognition framework has highlighted the need to articulate how information is communicated between the sensory and motor systems, and processes that represent and generalize abstract information. Those developments point toward a new approach for understanding category specificity in terms of the coordinated influences of diverse regions and cognitive systems.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

Neuroscientific perspective of categories.

### What they found (results)

They determined that concept organization in the brain is a multifaceted issue that reaches on many different regions of the brain. They went further to extrapolate that “human behavior arises due to the integration of multiple cognitive processes that individually operate over distinct types of knowledge.” They also argued that our ability to organize concepts is grounded in the physical world.

## Commentary

### In short

Progress in understanding the causes of category specificity in one region of the brain, or one functional component of a cognitive model, will require an understanding of how category specificity is realized throughout the whole brain and throughout the whole cognitive model.

### In more detail

Mahon and Caramazza, 2009, through their review of research from the intersection of concepts and categories, were interested in the organization and “functional architecture” of the brain, and used people with brain damage as their subjects to better understand this idea. They determined that concept organization in the brain is a multifaceted issue that reaches on many different regions of the brain. They went further to extrapolate that “human behavior arises due to the integration of multiple cognitive processes that individually operate over distinct types of knowledge.” They also argued that our ability to organize concepts is grounded in the physical world. The importance of further research was highly emphasized, as they stated that, “progress in understanding the causes of category specificity in one region of the brain, or one functional component of a cognitive model, will require an understanding of how category specificity is realized throughout the whole brain and throughout the whole cognitive model.”

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**How to cite this** Mahon and Caramazza (2009). Concepts and Categories: A Cognitive Neuropsychological Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology.