This paper combines research results and analyses from two independent fields of research: cognitive neuroscience and linguistic typology. The specific areas to be discussed concern category specific impairments, or deficits, on the one hand and the noun class system in Bantu languages, especially in Kiswahili, on the other. Both of these deal with categories of things, or nouns, in linguistic terms. The major point of this paper is to point out an overlap in the types of semantic categories evidenced in both fields, and to see to what extent the theories that have been suggested within neuroscience are applicable to the corresponding semantic categories in Bantu noun class systems.