Title: Language in the functional connectome of brains and models
Speaker: Cory Shain, Stanford Linguistics
Abstract: AI has turned into a complex systems science, much like neuroscience has always been. And increasingly, precision functional connectivity techniques in neuroscience are revealing that despite the daunting complexity of the human brain, there are natural “cuts” in the system, not just in terms of physiology, but in terms of cognitive function. In this talk, I will present recent work in the lab showing that one of those cuts is language. I will show evidence from an ongoing large scale neuroimaging study (1200 participants) that an unsupervised technique for parcellating each participant’s brain into networks reliably discovers a frontotemporal network of interconnected regions that is highly selective for language in that individual. This network is both closely adjacent to multiple functionally distinct networks within individuals and “loosely tethered” (Vázquez-Rodríguez et al, 2019) to anatomy. I will further show that, within the network, three putatively distinct linguistic processes (lexical semantics, syntax, and combinatorial semantics) distribute broadly, rather than localizing to different hubs. Together with a growing body of other research, these results suggest that language is “nearly decomposable” (Simon, 1962) as an integrated network in the brain. I will sketch how the lab is now pursuing the implications of this insight for neuroscience, its possible translations to neurosurgery and neural engineering, and its potential relevance to AI theory and practice.