In the “Concluding remarks” of his paper Pulvermuller includes the following statement:
“. . . widespread cortical regions and cortico-cortical long-distance connections provide the machinery for holding together and integrating semantic representations and circuits.”
I would add to this important point that, indeed, these connections in the neural networks of the brain transmit semantic information instantiated within linguistic neural codes consisting of the amplitudes and frequencies of spike trains of action potentials. Nerve impulses are quite undifferentiated throughout the brain and cannot be directly interpreted as mountain scenes, the beauty of music, creative expressions in composition and art and the like. It is in the province of the immaterial cognitive mind that such interpretations are generated from neural codes learned in a lifetime and archived in memory. I address this point in detail in my books and blogs. This article gives no credit to the immaterial mind interactive with the material synaptic networks of the human brain. The author’s reference to “semantic hubs” is consistent with the function of the cognitive mind.