The part of the brain responsible for the way we understand words, meanings and concepts has been revealed as the anterior temporal lobe – a region just in front of the ears.

In a novel experiment, neuroscientists pinpointed the exact region of the brain that is responsible for encoding semantic memory, which is disrupted in certain forms of dementia.

Semantic dementia is the second most common form of dementia in under-65s and is associated with significant loss of brain tissue in the temporal lobe. Patients are able to generate speech fluently but lose their knowledge of objects, people and abstract concepts.