ABSTRACT
An outstanding aim of neurosemiotics is to provide a biological account of how multiple types of information are integrated to evoke unified concepts. I address this issue by introducing the hub-and-spoke model, which suggests that concepts arise from connections between modality-specific brain (e.g., visual, motoric) brain regions, converging in a multimodal hub. Evidence from interdisciplinary approaches, including behavioral and neuroimaging studies on healthy and clinical populations, shows that the bilateral anterior temporal lobes afford such a hub, guiding semantic processing through connections with modality-specific regions. This model advances both basic and clinical science by improving our understanding of the neural basis of semantics and, with it, a critical aspect of neurosemiotic processes.
