'Universal language network' identified in the brain

Japanese, Italian, Ukrainian, Swahili, Tagalog and dozens of other languages cause the same "universal language network" to light up in the brains of natives. This hub of language processing has been studied extensively in English speakers, but now neuroscience shows that the exact same network is activated in speakers of 45 different languages.

Evelina Fedorenko is an associate professor of neuroscience at MIT and a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Fedorenko said that the hope is that now that the basic properties seem to be general across languages, we can ask about potential differences between languages and language families in how they are implemented in the brain. English isn't a tonal language so it might be processed differently in the brain.

Two native speakers of each language had their brains scanned as they performed various cognitive tasks. The team scanned the participants' brains using a technique called fMRI, which records the flow of blood through the brain. An indirect measure of brain cell activity is provided by fMRI.

There is a secret code behind key type of memory.

The participants listened to the passages in their native languages during the fMRI scans. The same language network should be used by all of the people who listen to stories in their native tongues.

The recordings that the participants listened to wouldn't make this language network work. They listened to recordings in which the native speaker's words were distorted beyond recognition and to passages read by someone else. The team theorizes that the participants were asked to do math problems and perform memory tasks, but not the language tests.

Saima Malik-Moraleda, a PhD student in the Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology program at Harvard University, is one of the authors. They shouldn't be responding to other tasks, such as a spatial working memory task, and that's what we found among the speakers of 45 languages that we tested.

The left hemisphere of the brain is where language processing takes place in native English speakers. The researchers were able to show that the same brain areas were active regardless of the language being heard.

There were slight differences in brain activity among the individual speakers. A small amount of variation has been seen among native English speakers.

The team wrote in their report that the results are important for future studies. The demonstration is an essential foundation for future systematic, in-depth and fine-grained cross-linguistic comparisons.

It was originally published on Live Science