The Embodied Syntax of Tools: mechanisms of the reciprocal impact between tool use and syntactic structures in language – SYNTOOL

Can motor training ameliorate syntax in language? Language indeed leverages the sensorimotor circuits handling perception and action to process linguistic sounds and word meaning. Yet, evidence was scant for embodied syntax, the function processing sentence structures. Recently, we revealed that planning to use a mechanical tool and understanding sentences with complex structures activate the same brain regions within the Basal Ganglia, crucially prompting similar patterns of neural activations. On the one hand, indeed, tool use requires integrating an external object as a body part and embedding its functional structure in the motor program. On the other, syntax handles embedded structures in language and their hierarchies. This ground-breaking discovery bolsters the hypothesis that tool use and language share neural resources reflecting a common syntax. In line with this prediction, we unveiled that training to use a tool improves comprehension of sentences with a complex structure; reciprocally, training to process these sentences improves tool use.
The overarching goal of this interdisciplinary project is to identify the critical sensorimotor and linguistic ingredients for the reciprocal boosting between tool use and language, by combining innovative behavioral, kinematic and neuroimaging methods.
Achieving this aim will not only provide crucial information about the cognitive processes and neural substrates underlying tool incorporation, but also allow to model their mechanistic link with syntactic processes in language, at the behavioral as well as neural level. Beyond its theoretical significance, the outcome of this project will lead to a major shift in strategies of linguistic learning and rehabilitation. Boosting linguistic abilities through life-span is societally fundamental, so as to provide better quality education, smoother societal integration, especially in times of mass migration, and to reduce inequalities in the society of the future.