At the Core of Pragmatics: The Neural Substrates of Communicative Intentions

In many pragmatic phenomena, there is a discrepancy between the literal meaning and intended meaning. For the study of the neurobiology of pragmatics, this means that full analysis of the processes involved in a communicative exchange should include the processes involved in comprehending the agents' communicative intentions. We discuss the Intention Processing Network (IPN) model, according to which a set of brain areas are involved in comprehending communicative intentions. This model has received support from neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies investigating pragmatic phenomena. We show that the IPN brain areas are engaged in communicative intention processing, regardless of modality used. The relationship between the IPN and the mirror neuron system is discussed. Finally, we argue that pragmatics concerned with ecological contexts needs methodology that is able to monitor the brains of two agents while they interact, overcoming the artificial separation between actor/partner to move toward a communal construction of meaning.