Language articles from across Nature Portfolio

Language is a means of communicating complex ideas or feelings. Although human language can be verbal or non-verbal, it is more complex than any form of animal communication and reflects the culture of its speakers.

Latest Research and Reviews

Research
12 May 2023 | Open Access

Behavioral and oscillatory signatures of switch costs in highly proficient bilinguals
- Polina Timofeeva
- , Ileana Quiñones
- & Lucia Amoruso
Scientific Reports 13, 7725
Research | 01 May 2023

Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings

Tang et al. show that continuous language can be decoded from functional MRI recordings to recover the meaning of perceived and imagined speech stimuli and silent videos and that this language decoding requires subject cooperation.
- Jerry Tang
- , Amanda LeBel
- & Alexander G. Huth
Nature Neuroscience 26, 858-866
Reviews | 28 April 2023

The relationship between bilingual language use and executive functions

Debate exists regarding whether using multiple languages confers cognitive advantages beyond the language domain. In this Review, Lehtonen and colleagues contrast domain-generality and skill-learning accounts of bilingualism, considering how bilingual language use interacts with executive functions across levels of language proficiency.
- Minna Lehtonen
- , Valantis Fyndanis
- & Jussi Jylkkä
Nature Reviews Psychology, 1-14
Research
20 April 2023 | Open Access

Encoding of speech in convolutional layers and the brain stem based on language experience
- Gašper Beguš
- , Alan Zhou
- & T. Christina Zhao
Scientific Reports 13, 6480
Research
17 April 2023 | Open Access

Neurocognitive bases of self-monitoring of inner speech in hallucination prone individuals
- Christian Stephan-Otto
- , Christian Núñez
- & Gildas Brébion
Scientific Reports 13, 6251
Research
31 March 2023 | Open Access

Atypical connectivity aids conversation in autism
- Kyle Jasmin
- , Alex Martin
- & Stephen J. Gotts
Scientific Reports 13, 5303

All Research & Reviews

News and Comment

News & Views | 07 March 2023

Hierarchical organization of language predictions in the brain

Human language processing is poorly matched by artificial intelligence algorithms. We analysed fMRI brain recordings of 304 participants while they listened to short stories and compared brain activations to artificial intelligence algorithms. Unlike such algorithms, we found that the human brain operates with a hierarchy of predictions that anticipate incoming words and phrases.

Nature Human Behaviour 7, 308-309
News & Views | 29 November 2022

The meaning emerging from combining words can be detected in space but not time

We used computational models built using neural networks to predict what brain areas process the new meaning that emerges when words are combined. The brain activity evoked by this composed meaning was detected only with some brain recording modalities, a finding that might have consequences for brain–computer interfaces.

Nature Computational Science 2, 783-784
News & Views | 28 November 2022

Understanding the combined meaning of words

Recent work uses a language model to gain insight into how the human brain understands the combined meaning of words in a sentence, and uncovers parts of the brain that contribute to this understanding.
- Katrin Erk
Nature Computational Science 2, 701-702
Research Highlights | 10 October 2022

Ecological factors in comprehension of irony
- Teresa Schubert
Nature Reviews Psychology 1, 622
Research Highlights | 29 July 2022

A universal network

Core features of the language network in the brain are consistent across languages and language families.
- Jake Rogers
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 23, 521
News & Views | 18 July 2022

The brain responds in similar ways to 45 diverse languages

The language network in the brain shows similar properties across 45 languages spanning 12 language ‘families’. The language areas are lateralized to the left hemisphere, selective for language, and strongly functionally inter-connected. Variability among speakers of different languages is similar to the variability that has been reported among English speakers.

Nature Neuroscience 25, 982-983