ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to review some of the major theoretical and empirical developments that have taken place in the branch of cognitive neuroscience that investigates abstract concepts. From an experimental perspective, this area of inquiry is still in its infancy, and much less has been learned about the neural bases of abstract concepts than about the neural bases of object concepts and action concepts. However, the pace of research has been accelerating in recent years, and an increasing amount of exciting, high-quality work is being done. The first section of the following survey discusses the major cognitive and neural distinctions
between concrete and abstract concepts. It begins by summarizing several prominent theoretical models, and then it covers an assortment of findings from PET, fMRI, aphasia, and rTMS. The second section parallels the corresponding sections of Chapters 10 and 11 by invoking once again the hypothesis that the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) house a semantic hub that binds and organizes the disparate conceptual features of words. As we will see, evidence that the ATLs do in fact contribute to abstract concepts comes from many sources. Finally, the third section parallels the corresponding sections of Chapters 10 and 11 by exploring the neural underpinnings of two specific domains of abstract concepts-in particular, emotions and numbers.
