Work

Limited but specific engagement of the mature language network during linguistic statistical learning

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Statistical learning (SL) is the ability to detect and learn regularities from input and is foundational to language acquisition. Despite the dominant role of SL as a theoretical construct for language development, there is a lack of direct evidence supporting the shared neural substrates underlying language processing and SL. It is also not clear whether the similarities, if any, are related to linguistic processing, or statistical regularities in general. The current study tests whether the brain regions involved in natural language processing are similarly recruited during auditory, linguistic SL. Twenty-two adults performed an auditory linguistic SL task, an auditory nonlinguistic SL task, and a passive story listening task as their neural activation was monitored. Within the language network, the left posterior temporal gyrus showed sensitivity to embedded speech regularities during auditory, linguistic SL, but not auditory, nonlinguistic SL. Using a multivoxel pattern similarity analysis, we uncovered similarities between the neural representation of auditory, linguistic SL, and language processing within the left posterior temporal gyrus. No other brain regions showed similarities between linguistic SL and language comprehension, suggesting that a shared neurocomputational process for auditory SL and natural language processing within the left posterior temporal gyrus is specific to linguistic stimuli.

Source: Cerebral Cortex

DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae123

Authors: Julie M Schneider, Terri L Scott, Jennifer Legault, Zhenghan Qi

Institutions: Louisiana State University, University of Delaware, Northeastern University, Elizabethtown College

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Science Foundation, University of Delaware, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Awards: The contribution of maternal language input and statistical learning to brain and vocabulary development among children from low SES backgrounds, Predicting language and literacy growth in children with ASD using statistical learning, The role of statistical learning in the atypical language development in ASD, G2980187553