NCT05222594

Computational Neuroscience of Language Processing in the Human Brain

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 40 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Massachusetts General Hospital · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 85 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Language is a signature human cognitive skill, but the precise computations that support language understanding remain unknown. This study aims to combine high-quality human neural data obtained through intracranial recordings with advances in computational modeling of human cognition to shed light on the construction and understanding of speech.

Detailed description

The neural architecture of language is the foundation for the highest form of human interaction. Prior work has identified a network of frontal and temporal brain areas that selectively support language processing, but the precise computations that underlie our ability to extract meaning from sequences of words have remained unknown. The standard approaches in human cognitive neuroscience lack the spatial and temporal resolution necessary for precise comparisons to computational models. To bridge this gap in knowledge, neural responses to language stimuli will be collected from epileptic patients undergoing intracranial monitoring. Overall, these data will be used to identify cortical maps of different linguistic manipulations and to better understand properties of the human language network.

Conditions

• Language
• Epilepsy

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring	Participants will listen to sentences and stories while neural data are recorded through electrodes placed for clinical purposes.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-04-02
• Primary completion: 2026-03-31
• Completion: 2026-03-31
• First posted: 2022-02-03
• Last updated: 2026-01-20

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States