How do we represent information without sensory features? How are abstract concepts like "freedom", devoid of external perceptible referents, represented in the brain? Here, to address the role of sensory information in the neural representation of concepts, we used fMRI to investigate how people born blind process concepts whose referents are imperceptible to them because of their visual nature ("rainbow", "red"). Activity for these concepts was compared to that of sensorially-perceptible referents ("rain"), classical abstract concepts ("justice") and concrete concepts ("cup"), providing a gradient between fully concrete and fully abstract concepts in the blind. We find that anterior temporal lobe (ATL) responses track concept perceptibility and objecthood: preference for imperceptible object concepts was found in dorsal ATL, for abstract (non-object, non-referential) concepts in lateral ATL, and for perceptible concepts in medial ATL. These findings point to a new division-of-labor among aspects of ATL in representing conceptual properties that are abstract in different ways.

中文翻译：

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盲人出生后视觉概念的神经表示。

我们如何在没有感官特征的情况下表示信息？缺少外部感知对象的抽象概念（如“自由”）如何在大脑中表示？在这里，为了解决感官信息在概念的神经表示中的作用，我们使用功能磁共振成像来研究人们是如何出生盲目的过程概念的，这些对象由于其视觉特性（“彩虹”，“红色”）而无法被其感知。将这些概念的活动与感官感知的对象（“雨”），古典抽象概念（“正义”）和具体概念（“杯子”）的活动进行了比较，从而在盲人中提供了完全具体的概念和完全抽象的概念之间的梯度。我们发现前颞叶（ATL）响应跟踪概念的可感知性和客观性：在背侧ATL中发现了不可感知的对象概念，在外侧ATL中发现了抽象的（非对象，非引用）概念，在内侧ATL中发现了可感知的概念。这些发现表明，ATL在代表以不同方式抽象的概念属性方面在各方面之间进行了新的分工。