The approach of cross-language brain decoding is to use models of brain decoding from one language to decode stimuli of another language. It has the potential to provide new insights into how our brain represents multiple languages. While it is possible to decode semantic information across different languages from neuroimaging data, the approach’s overall success remains to be tested and depends on a number of factors such as cross-language similarity, age of acquisition/proficiency levels, and depth of language processing. We expect to see continued progress in this domain, from a traditional focus on words and concrete concepts toward the use of naturalistic experimental tasks involving higher-level language processing (e.g., discourse processing). The approach can also be applied to understand how cross-modal, cross-cultural, and other nonlinguistic factors may influence neural representations of different languages. This article provides an overview of cross-language brain decoding with suggestions for future research directions.

跨语言大脑解码的方法是使用一种语言的大脑解码模型来解码另一种语言的刺激。它有可能为我们的大脑如何表示多种语言提供新的见解。虽然可以从神经影像数据中解码不同语言的语义信息，但该方法的整体成功仍有待测试，并取决于多种因素，如跨语言相似性、习得年龄/熟练程度和语言处理深度。我们期望看到该领域的持续进步，从传统的关注单词和具体概念到使用涉及高级语言处理（例如，话语处理）的自然主义实验任务。该方法还可用于了解跨模式、跨文化、和其他非语言因素可能会影响不同语言的神经表征。本文概述了跨语言大脑解码，并对未来的研究方向提出了建议。