CLASP
The Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability

The human language network within the broader architecture of the human mind and brain

Link to the recorded talk

Although many animal species have the ability to generate complex thoughts, only humans can share such thoughts with one another, via language. My research aims to understand i) the system that supports our linguistic abilities, including its neural implementation, and ii) the relationship between the language system and the rest of the human cognitive arsenal. I use behavioral, fMRI, and genotyping methods in healthy adults and children, intracranial recordings from the cortical surface in patients undergoing pre- or intra-surgical mapping (ECoG), and studies of individuals with developmental and acquired damage.

I will begin by introducing the “language network”, a set of interconnected brain regions that support language comprehension and production. With a focus on the subset of this network dedicated to high-level linguistic processing, I will then consider the relationship between language and non-linguistic cognition. Based on data from fMRI studies and investigations of patients with severe aphasia, I will argue that the language network is functionally selective for language processing over a wide range of non-linguistic processes that have been previously argued to share computational demands with language, including arithmetic, executive functions, music, and action/gesture observation. This network plausibly stores our linguistic knowledge, which can be used for both interpreting and generating linguistic utterances. Time permitting, I will speculate on the relationship between the language network and other networks, including, critically, the domain-general executive system, and the system that supports social cognition.

Relevant readings: https://evlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Fedorenko_et_al_2011PNAS.pdfhttps://evlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Blank_et_al_2014_JNeurophys.pdfhttps://evlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Fedorenko%26_Varley_2016_ANYAS.pdf