Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Briefing
  • Published:

The brain responds in similar ways to 45 diverse languages

Nature Neuroscience volume 25, pages 982–983 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: fMRI activation maps for the Alice language ‘localizer’ contrast (listening to passages from Alice in Wonderland versus acoustically degraded passages) in the left hemisphere of a sample participant for each language.

References

  1. Evans, N. & Levinson, S. C. The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behav. Brain Sci. 32, 429–448 (2009). A review article on cross-linguistic diversity.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Evlab Localizers for Diverse Languages https://evlab.mit.edu/aliceloc (2022). A website where we make the ‘localizer’ fMRI paradigms for different languages available.

  3. Lipkin, B. et al. LanA (Language Atlas): a probabilistic atlas for the language network based on fMRI data from>800 individuals. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.06.483177 (2022). Describes the fMRI approach adopted here and quantifies inter-individual variability.

  4. Fedorenko, E. & Blank, I. A. Broca’s area is not a natural kind. Trends Cogn. Sci. 24, 270–284 (2020). Summarizes evidence for the separation between language and other cognitive abilities.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Blasi, D., Anastasopoulos, A. & Neubig, G. Systematic inequalities in language technology performance across the world’s languages. In Proc. 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) 5486–5505 (2022). Quantifies disparities in natural language processing (NLP) research and makes policy recommendations for promoting more global and equitable language technologies.

Download references

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This is a summary of: Malik-Moraleda, S. et al. An investigation across 45 languages and 12 language families reveals a universal language network. Nat. Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01114-5 (2022).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

The brain responds in similar ways to 45 diverse languages. Nat Neurosci 25, 982–983 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01115-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01115-4

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing