A study of fMRI measurement of brain activities for the understanding of sound symbolism and common senses

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26540141
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Kansei informatics
• Research Institution: The University of Electro-Communications
• Principal Investigator: TANAKA SHIGERU 電気通信大学, 脳科学ライフサポート研究センター, 特任教授 (70281706)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 音象徴性 / オノマトペ / 脳活動計測 / 磁気共鳴画像法

Outline of Final Research Achievements

To identify active brain regions representing subjective impression expressed by Japanese onomatopoeias based on sound symbolism, we performed fMRI measurements in response to auditory and visual presentations of onomatopoeias. Although we obtained typical patterns of brain activities when onomatopoeias were presented, we did not detect statistically significant differences in fMRI signals between onomatopoeias and standard adjectives and/or adverbs. This result suggests that each onomatopoeia has acquired its own niche in the semantic space spanned by Japanese vocabularies at the same level of adjectives and adverbs, and hence does not have a special characteristic other than the fact that it has emerged from sound symbolism.

Free Research Field

理論神経科学