Epilepsy, Language
Conditions
Keywords
language, computational neuroscience, epilepsy
Brief 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.
Interventions
OTHERBehavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring
Participants will listen to sentences and stories while neural data are recorded through electrodes placed for clinical purposes.
Sponsors
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Study design
Allocation
NA
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 85 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* clinical indications to proceed with intracranial monitoring involving the left cerebral hemisphere, as determined by a multidisciplinary epilepsy surgery team * the ability to comply with test directions and provide informed consent * between ages 18 - 85
Exclusion criteria
* inability to understand or perform the task outlined in the protocol, or who are unwilling or unable to participate
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Cortical maps of linguistic responses | Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days | By using sEEG intracranial recordings of the brain, EEG power in frequency bands will reflect cortical maps of responses to different linguistic manipulations, informing the functional organization of the human language system. Power is measured in arbitrary units; higher power reflects greater activity at the investigated frequency. |
| Neural time-courses during naturalistic language comprehension | Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days | Time-courses of neural response to language across diverse parts of the language network. These data will be used to predict across-time variation in response strength from the properties of linguistic input. |
| Brain scores for diverse artificial neural network (ANN) language models | Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days | Human neural data will be compared to ANN language models to test how well these models predict human responses to language and why. There are no minimum or maximum scores. Higher values mean better model predictivity (i.e., a better match between model representations and neural responses). |
Countries
United States
Contacts
CONTACTEvelina Fedorenko, PhD
Outcome results
None listed