Tomás Goucha | Conciliating crosslinguistic differences with a universal language faculty in brain structure and function

Humans possess a common neurobiological background that allows them to acquire their mother tongue. This apparent universality contrasts with the diversity among the word languages. We therefore face the challenge to explain how a universal brain basis can adapt to each language and its specific processing demands. One of the keys to this question is the underlying computations, particularly the capacity to combine meaning units according to certain rules, which is transversal to all languages. In this talk, I will start by explaining how to dissociate meaning from these abstract rules and the respective localisation using fMRI. I will then present the results of the comparison of the structural language network of speakers with different mother tongues. Using diffusion MRI, we showed that the white matter connectivity in the language network is modulated systematically by three languages—Chinese, English, and German. Finally, I will give a theoretical outlook of how the computations underlying language look like from an evolutionary point of view, and how we can bring those insights together with our knowledge of brain structure and function.

Poster