Healthcare (Commonwealth Union) – The role of different regions of the brain and what function they play has been key component in neurological studies.
Recent research has found that brain regions beyond the traditional language centres also contribute to understanding and processing language.
For many years, neuroscientists have believed that language functions are mainly controlled by specialised areas in the brain’s left hemisphere. However, research from MIT has revealed that language processing involves a much wider network of brain regions.
By analysing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans from more than 700 individuals, the researchers discovered 17 additional brain areas that appear to support language abilities. These regions are spread throughout the brain, including areas within the cerebellum, hippocampus, and cerebral cortex. Together, they account for around 5% of the adult brain’s total volume — roughly equivalent to the size of a large strawberry.
Evelina Fedorenko, who is an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, a researcher at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and senior author of the study indicated that although these distant regions contribute to language, the overall amount of brain tissue dedicated to this ability remains relatively small. Language does not require a large portion of the brain.
The precise roles these newly identified regions play in language processing remain unclear, but the researchers have begun making advances in understanding the functions of the cerebellar areas they discovered.
MIT postdoctoral researcher Agata Wolna is the study’s lead author, with contributions from Aaron Wright, a K. Lisa Yang Post-Baccalaureate Research Scholar at MIT; Colton Casto, a graduate student at Harvard University; Samuel Hutchinson, a graduate student at MIT; and Benjamin Lipkin, PhD ’26. The research has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The brain’s primary language-processing network includes Broca’s area, which was identified in the 19th century, along with other regions located in the left frontal and temporal lobes. Researchers have also discovered that certain areas in the right hemisphere play a role in language, particularly in interpreting the emotional and social aspects of communication.
However, growing evidence suggests that language processing may involve additional areas of the brain beyond these traditionally recognised centres. Earlier in her career, Fedorenko frequently observed activity in brain regions outside the established language network during her studies. However, she noted that she was discouraged from including these findings in published research papers.
“When we initially started looking at language, in the first couple of papers, I tried to be comprehensive and include anything that seemed consistent across participants, and there was a huge amount of resistance,” she explained. “People would say things like, ‘Well, we know those are not language areas, so please focus on the language areas.’”
In the latest study, she and Wolna aimed to re-examine these brain scans to determine whether language-related regions could be systematically found beyond the traditionally recognized language-processing areas.
The researchers analyzed imaging data from 772 individuals who had undergone brain scans in Fedorenko’s laboratory since 2013. Each participant completed a procedure called a language localizer, a test designed to identify the brain regions involved in language processing for each individual.
During the task, participants either read or listened to sentences and were also presented with strings of meaningless words. The researchers then compared the strength of brain activity between responses to meaningful sentences and responses to the nonword sequences. Brain regions showing greater activity during the sentence tasks were identified as potentially contributing to language processing, particularly if they were activated during both reading and listening activities.
Wolna pointed out that it is a very straightforward method that allows you to pinpoint the core language network within individual brains.
