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April 3, 20260 citationsOpen Access

The Experiential–Factual Divide: A Universal Geometric Property of Human Language, AI Models, and Brain Organisation

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IAInna Alieksieienko

Key Points

  • The study investigates the geometric partition between experiential and factual concepts in human language and AI models.
  • Analyzed static word embeddings across seven languages using GloVe and fastText.
  • Tested 10 large language models from nine organizations for geometric partition via Grassmann subspace distance.
  • Conducted fMRI validation using a sentence reading and calculation task with a specific brain atlas.
  • Found significant geometric partition in word embeddings with Cohen's d = 0.65–1.12, p < 0.001.
  • Large language models replicated the partition, present in BASE models before reinforcement learning.
  • fMRI results indicated a significant difference in brain activation patterns, t(19) = 3.56, p = 0.002, supporting geometric predictions.

Abstract

We present converging evidence from three independent methodologies that human language encodes a fundamental geometric partition between experiential concepts (pain, love, death, memory, identity, divinity, self-referential processing) and factual concepts (mathematics, geography, physics, history, chemistry). Study 1: Static word embeddings (GloVe + fastText) across 7 typologically diverse languages (EN, UK, ZH, ES, FR, DE, JA). Cohen's d = 0.65–1.12, all p < 0.001. Concreteness confound controlled. Study 2: 10/10 large language models from 9 organisations universally replicate the geometric partition via Grassmann subspace distance. Present in BASE models before RLHF. Absent in randomly initialised networks. Study 3: Real fMRI validation — Brainomics Localizer dataset (n=20, Yeo 7-network atlas). Sentence reading vs. calculation: t(19) = 3.56, p = 0.002. Direction matches LLM geometric predictions. The experiential–factual divide is a universal property of human communicative cognition, inherited by language models from training data, and reflected in the functional architecture of the human brain. Part of the DSAOP series. All data and replication code included.

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Cite This Study

Inna Alieksieienko (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69cf5ea85a333a821460d2c8https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19363812
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