ABSTRACT
Within the past few decades, a considerable amount of research has explored the neural correlates of retrieval of conceptual (semantic)1 knowledge for concrete entities such as animals, fruits/ vegetables, tools, and persons (Arguin, Bub, & Dudek, 1996; Cappa, Perani, Schnur, Tettamanti, & Fazio, 1998; Caramazza & Shelton, 1998; Chao, Haxby, & Martin, 1999; A. R. Damasio, Damasio, Tranel, & Brandt, 1990; H. Damasio, Tranel, Grabowski, Adolphs, & Damasio, in press; Gainotti & Silveri, 1996; Gerlach, Law, Gade, & Paulson, 1999; Hart & Gordon, 1992; Hillis & Caramazza, 1991; Laiacona, Barbarotto, & Capitani, 1993; Martin, Wiggs, Ungerleider, & Haxby, 1996; Perani, Schnur, Tettamanti, GornoTempini, Cappa, & Fazio, 1999; Sartori, Job, Miozza, Zaco, & Marchiori, 1993; Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1997a; Warrington &
McCarthy, 1994; Warrington & Shallice, 1984; forreviews, see Caramazza, 1998, 2000; Forde &Humphreys, 1999; Humphreys & Forde, 2001;Saffran & Schwartz, 1994; Saffran & Sholl, 1999).Comparatively less work has addressed the neuralunderpinnings for the retrieval of conceptualknowledge for actions, although interest in thistopic is gradually increasing (e.g., Chatterjee,Southwood, & Basilico, 1999; Grézes, & Decety,2001; Kable, Lease-Spellmeyer, & Chatterjee, 2002; Martin, Ungerleider, & Haxby, 2000; seealso the recent Special Issues of CognitiveNeuropsychology, Vol. 15, 1998, and Brain andCognition, Vol. 44,2000, that focused on the cognitive neuroscience of actions). The current articlereports a new investigation of the neural structuresthat mediate the retrieval of conceptual knowle dgefor actions.
