Bangor University - Brain study to use new method

A pioneering approach is to be applied to a study of the way in which the human mind draws meaning from the world at Bangor University. Guillaume Thierry, deputy head of the school of psychology, will use "neurosemantics" to examine how the brain relates pieces of meaningful information, including images, sounds and spoken or written words, to other bits of information. For example, it will aim to explain how seeing a picture of a leaf almost instantly conjures up concepts such as a tree, autumn, the sound of the wind and even abstract notions such as nature, life and death. Professor Thierry, whose team has won a £750,000 grant from the European Research Council, said: "Why do humans perceive meaning in the world? This is a philosophical question to which we can only hope to begin to find an answer."