Is your coffee ‘not hot’ or ‘cold’? Observing how the brain processes negated adjectives

Negating an adjective by placing ‘not’ in front of it affects the way our brains interpret its meaning, mitigating but not entirely inverting our interpretation of its definition. In a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, Arianna Zuanazzi at New York University, US, and colleagues offer insight into how the brain represents changes of meaning over time and offer new methods for further linguistic research. Negating an adjective by placing ‘not’ in front of it affects the way our brains interpret its meaning, mitigating but not entirely inverting our interpretation of its definition. In a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, Arianna Zuanazzi at New York University, US, and colleagues offer insight into how the brain represents changes of meaning over time and offer new methods for further linguistic research. Other Molecular & Computational biology Phys.org – latest science and technology news stories