Functional characterization of the language network of polyglots and hyperpolyglots with precision fMRI.

How do polyglots-individuals who speak five or more languages-process their languages, and what can this population tell us about the language system? Using fMRI, we identified the language network in each of 34 polyglots (including 16 hyperpolyglots with knowledge of 10+ languages) and examined its response to the native language, non-native languages of varying proficiency, and unfamiliar languages. All language conditions engaged all areas of the language network relative to a control condition. Languages that participants rated as higher proficiency elicited stronger responses, except for the native language, which elicited a similar or lower response than a non-native language of similar proficiency.

Differential Tracking of Linguistic vs. Mental State Content in Naturalistic Stimuli by Language and Theory of Mind (ToM) Brain Networks.

Language and social cognition, especially the ability to reason about mental states, known as (ToM), are deeply related in development and everyday use. However, whether these cognitive faculties rely on distinct, overlapping, or the same mechanisms remains debated. Some evidence suggests that, by adulthood, language and ToM draw on largely distinct-though plausibly interacting-cortical networks.

Cross-language semantic parafoveal preview benefits in bilinguals.

The aim of this project was to identify factors contributing to cross-language semantic preview benefits. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals read English sentences with Russian words presented as parafoveal previews. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to present sentences.

The human language system, including its inferior frontal component in "Broca's area," does not support music perception.

Language and music are two human-unique capacities whose relationship remains debated. Some have argued for overlap in processing mechanisms, especially for structure processing. Such claims often concern the inferior frontal component of the language system located within "Broca's area.

Functional characterization of the language network of polyglots and hyperpolyglots with precision fMRI.

How do polyglots-individuals who speak five or more languages-process their languages, and what can this population tell us about the language system? Using fMRI, we identified the language network in each of 34 polyglots (including 16 hyperpolyglots with knowledge of 10+ languages) and examined its response to the native language, non-native languages of varying proficiency, and unfamiliar languages. All language conditions engaged all areas of the language network relative to a control condition. Languages that participants rated as higher-proficiency elicited stronger responses, except for the native language, which elicited a similar or lower response than a non-native language of similar proficiency.

Probabilistic atlas for the language network based on precision fMRI data from >800 individuals.

Two analytic traditions characterize fMRI language research. One relies on averaging activations across individuals. This approach has limitations: because of inter-individual variability in the locations of language areas, any given voxel/vertex in a common brain space is part of the language network in some individuals but in others, may belong to a distinct network.

An investigation across 45 languages and 12 language families reveals a universal language network.

To understand the architecture of human language, it is critical to examine diverse languages; however, most cognitive neuroscience research has focused on only a handful of primarily Indo-European languages. Here we report an investigation of the fronto-temporo-parietal language network across 45 languages and establish the robustness to cross-linguistic variation of its topography and key functional properties, including left-lateralization, strong functional integration among its brain regions and functional selectivity for language processing.

Reduced Language Lateralization in Autism and the Broader Autism Phenotype as Assessed with Robust Individual-Subjects Analyses.

One of the few replicated functional brain differences between individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) controls is reduced language lateralization. However, most prior reports relied on comparisons of group-level activation maps or functional markers that had not been validated at the individual-subject level, and/or used tasks that do not isolate language processing from other cognitive processes, complicating interpretation. Furthermore, few prior studies have examined functional responses in other brain networks, as needed to determine the spatial selectivity of the effect.

The Small and Efficient Language Network of Polyglots and Hyper-polyglots.

Acquiring a foreign language is challenging for many adults. Yet certain individuals choose to acquire sometimes dozens of languages and often just for fun. Is there something special about the minds and brains of such polyglots? Using robust individual-level markers of language activity, measured with fMRI, we compared native language processing in polyglots versus matched controls.

Speech-accompanying gestures are not processed by the language-processing mechanisms.

Speech-accompanying gestures constitute one information channel during communication. Some have argued that processing gestures engages the brain regions that support language comprehension. However, studies that have been used as evidence for shared mechanisms suffer from one or more of the following limitations: they (a) have not directly compared activations for gesture and language processing in the same study and relied on the fallacious reverse inference (Poldrack, 2006) for interpretation, (b) relied on traditional group analyses, which are bound to overestimate overlap (e.

Tracking Colisteners' Knowledge States During Language Comprehension.

When we receive information in the presence of other people, are we sensitive to what they do or do not understand? In two event-related-potential experiments, participants read implausible sentences (e.g., "The girl had a little beak") in contexts that rendered them plausible (e.

Effects of lexical ambiguity on perception: A test of the label feedback hypothesis using a visual oddball paradigm.

We used a visual oddball paradigm to investigate whether a shared verbal label makes two objects belonging to different conceptual categories less perceptually distinct. In Experiment 1, the critical images shared a label as well as some perceptual features referring to the color and the fruit), and in Experiment 2, the critical images shared a label but no perceptual features referring to the animal and the sports equipment). In both experiments comparison images were similar to each of the critical images but they did not share a label.

The effect of semantic transparency on the processing of morphologically derived words: Evidence from decision latencies and event-related potentials.

Decomposition theories of morphological processing in visual word recognition posit an early morpho-orthographic parser that is blind to semantic information, whereas parallel distributed processing (PDP) theories assume that the transparency of orthographic-semantic relationships influences processing from the beginning. To test these alternatives, the performance of participants on transparent (foolish), quasi-transparent (bookish), opaque (vanish), and orthographic control words (bucket) was examined in a series of 5 experiments. In Experiments 1-3 variants of a masked priming lexical-decision task were used; Experiment 4 used a masked priming semantic decision task, and Experiment 5 used a single-word (nonpriming) semantic decision task with a color-boundary manipulation.

Cross-script orthographic and phonological preview benefits.

The present experiment examined the use of parafoveally presented first-language (L1) orthographic and phonological codes during reading of second-language (L2) sentences in proficient Russian-English bilinguals. Participants read English sentences containing a Russian preview word that was replaced by the English target word when the participant's eyes crossed an invisible boundary located before the preview word. The use of English and Russian allowed us to manipulate orthographic and phonological preview effects independently of one another.

Thematic relatedness production norms for 100 object concepts.

Knowledge of thematic relations is an area of increased interest in semantic memory research because it is crucial to many cognitive processes. One methodological issue that researchers face is how to identify pairs of thematically related concepts that are well-established in semantic memory for most people. In this article, we review existing methods of assessing thematic relatedness and provide thematic relatedness production norming data for 100 object concepts.

Lexical stress assignment as a problem of probabilistic inference.

A new conceptualization of the process of stress assignment, couched in the principles of (Bayesian) probabilistic inference, is introduced in this paper. According to this approach, in deciding where to place stress in a polysyllabic word, a reader estimates the posterior probabilities of alternative stress patterns. This estimation is accomplished by adjusting a prior belief about the likelihoods of alternative stress patterns (derived from experience with the distribution of stress patterns in the language) by using lexical and non-lexical sources of evidence for stress derived from the orthographic input.

Cross-language phonological activation: evidence from masked onset priming and ERPs.

The goal of the present research was to provide direct evidence for the cross-language interaction of phonologies at the sub-lexical level by using the masked onset priming paradigm. More specifically, we investigated whether there is a cross-language masked onset priming effect (MOPE) with L2 (English) primes and L1 (Russian) targets and whether it is modulated by the orthographic similarity of primes and targets. Primes and targets had onsets that overlapped either only phonologically, only orthographically, both phonologically and orthographically, or did not have any overlap.