Computational Neuroscience of Language Processing in the Human Brain

May 5, 2026 updated by: Robert Mark Richardson, Massachusetts General Hospital
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.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

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.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

40

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

  • Name: Evelina Fedorenko, PhD
  • Phone Number: 617-258-0670
  • Email: evelina9@mit.edu

Study Locations

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years to 85 years (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

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

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Basic Science
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Other: Epileptic participants undergoing intracranial monitoring
Patients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy undergoing intracranial monitoring involving the left cerebral hemisphere.
Other: Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring
Participants will listen to sentences and stories while neural data are recorded through electrodes placed for clinical purposes.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Cortical maps of linguistic responses
Time Frame: 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.
Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Neural time-courses during naturalistic language comprehension
Time Frame: 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.
Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Brain scores for diverse artificial neural network (ANN) language models
Time Frame: 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).
Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Massachusetts General Hospital

Collaborators

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

April 2, 2021

Primary Completion (Estimated)

March 31, 2027

Study Completion (Estimated)

March 31, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 24, 2022

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 24, 2022

First Posted (Actual)

February 3, 2022

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 7, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 5, 2026

Last Verified

May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2020P001989

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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