Semantic Cognition: Its Nature, its Development and its Neural Basis

Interest in the nature of conceptual knowledge extends back at least to the ancient Greek philosophers. In recent years, there has been a wide range of different approaches to understanding the nature of conceptual knowledge, its development, and its neural basis. In most other work, however, these issues are not all treated together. Instead, workers in philosophy, adult experimental psychology, child development, and cognitive neuroscience have pursued related questions in relative ignorance of each other's efforts. Even within cognitive neuroscience, there has been until recently a relative separation between approaches taken by neuropsychologists, who study the effects of brain disease on cognition in patients, and researchers who study the neural basis of conceptual knowledge in neurologically intact populations, using functional imaging and related methods.