I am always skeptical of neural correlate studies. The conclusions that are drawn are often bogus and lacking in rigor. The free will experiments are notorious in this regard.

That some part of the brain lights up when some concept is entertained is not surprising to me. We often imagine instances of things when entertaining a concept. However, I would reject the interpretation that the concept is reducible to this brain activity or the neuron(s) involved. Concepts are, by definition, abstract, which is to say, entities that do not exist "in the real" as abstract entities, only as instantiations. For while Alice and Bob may be concrete persons in the real, the concept of "Humanity" does not exist in the real as a concretum. Only Alice and Bob as instance of Humanity do. Thus, Humanity as such only exists in the mind as an abstracted concept.

That's important, because it leads to the question of why abstract concepts can exist in the mind as abstract concepts, and not as concrete instances. The answer involves the presupposition that matter is the instantiating principle. From there, it follows that the mind is only able to entertain so-called "universals" because it is itself not entirely a material faculty. Concepts are not images (as images are concrete and exclude all by the instance they express), and if we want to avoid incoherent and retorsion arguments, the concept must be understood to be a sign whose content is not mere representation. It must be intentional, or else knowledge becomes impossible. Indeed, conventional and iconic signs become impossible without a final intentional terminus.

This isn't to say that I don't think brain studies are worthless. On the contrary. I simply caution against allowing sloppy materialistic metaphysics to corrupt properly empirical conclusions.