Where the brain appreciates the final state of an event: The neural correlates of telicity

In this study we investigated whether the human brain distinguishes between telic events, that necessar- 26 ily entail a specified endpoint (e.g., reaching), and atelic events with no delimitation or final state (e.g., 27 chasing). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the patterns of neural response 28 associated with verbs denoting telic and atelic events, and found that the left posterior middle temporal 29 gyrus (pMTG), an area consistently engaged by verb processing tasks, showed a significantly higher 30 activation for telic compared with atelic verbs. These results provide the first evidence that the human 31 brain appreciates whether events lead to an end or a change of state. Moreover, they provide an expla- 32 nation to the long-debated question of which verb properties modulate neural activity in the left pMTG, 33 as they indicate that, independently of any other semantic property, verb processing and event knowl- 34 edge in this area are specifically related to the representation of telicity.