Studying semantic processing during language comprehension in humans at the single-cellular level

在单细胞水平上研究人类语言理解过程中的语义处理

基本信息

批准号：
10591471
负责人：
Ziv Williams
金额：
$ 54.89万
依托单位：
MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2022
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2022-03-15 至 2027-02-28
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10591471
关键词：
Action Potentials Algorithms Animal Model Animals Aphasia Area Brain Cells Chronic Cognition Communication Communication impairment Communities Complex Computational Technique Computer Models Data Dependence Derivation procedure Disease Dyslexia Electrodes FDA approved Goals Grain Higher Order Chromatin Structure Human Impairment Implant Individual Institution Institutional Review Boards Language Language Disorders Left Letters Linguistics Maps Microelectrodes Modeling Neurons Participant Population Prefrontal Cortex Process Psychological Techniques Research Resolution Semantics Speech Speech Sound Structure Techniques Temporal Lobe Testing Time Tissues Validation autism spectrum disorder cognitive process combinatorial frontal lobe insight language comprehension neural neurophysiology novel prospective response semantic processing syntax temporal measurement theories

项目摘要

Studying semantic processing during language comprehension in humans at the single-cellular level Humans are capable of communicating extraordinarily rich and nuanced meanings through language. This capacity surpasses that of all other animal species. Yet, despite a growing understanding of the network of brain areas that supports semantic processing, the precise derivation of linguistic meaning in neural tissue at the cellular-level and over the temporal scales of action potentials remains largely unknown. Over the past several years, our collaborative group has developed unique approaches that have allowed us to record from individual neurons in the language-dominant prefrontal and temporal cortex in participants performing structured linguistic tasks. Here, we will use this extraordinarily rare opportunity together with our group’s unique combined expertise in linguistic theory, human intraoperative neurophysiology, single-neuronal recordings and computational modeling in order to study in detail, for the first time, how semantic information is encoded at a cellular-level during speech and the degree to which single neurons respond selectivity to specific semantic domains, whether semantic information can be robustly decoded from neural activity, the extent to which it can be generalized across linguistic materials and the process by which these neuronal activities maps onto the fine-grained semantic relationships between individual words. Using structured linguistic manipulations and violations and by employing information-theoretic techniques, we will also crucially examine whether certain neurons in humans respond selectively to linguistic compared to non-linguistic information, how they engaged in lexico-semantic or syntactic processes, how they track the real-time context-dependent inferred meanings of individual words during speech and how these mixed representations and computations are distributed within frontal and temporal cortical populations in the language-dominant hemisphere. Taken together, this novel cross-institutional, inter-disciplinary collaborative effort promises to provide a fundamental new platform by which to begin studying the basic cellular mechanisms that underlie human language and unprecedented new insight into the cellular-level processing and representation of linguistic meaning during language comprehension in humans.

研究人类语言理解过程中的语义处理单细胞水平人类能够通过语言传达极其丰富和微妙的含义。然而，尽管人们对网络的了解不断加深，但其能力却超过了所有其他动物物种。支持语义处理的大脑区域，即神经组织中语言意义的精确推导过去，细胞水平和动作电位的时间尺度仍然很大程度上未知。几年来，我们的合作小组开发了独特的方法，使我们能够记录语言主导的前额叶和颞叶皮层中的单个神经元在执行在这里，我们将与我们小组一起利用这个难得的机会。语言理论、人类术中神经生理学、单神经元的独特综合专业知识录音和计算建模，以便首次详细研究语义如何信息在言语过程中在细胞水平上编码以及单个神经元响应的程度对特定语义领域的选择性，语义信息是否可以从神经网络中稳健地解码活动，它可以在语言材料中推广的程度以及这些语言材料的过程神经活动映射到各个单词之间的细粒度语义关系。结构化的语言操纵和侵犯，并通过采用信息论技术，我们还将严格检查人类的某些神经元是否对语言有选择性的反应非语言信息，他们如何参与词汇语义或句法过程，他们如何跟踪实时根据上下文推断演讲过程中各个单词的含义以及这些单词如何混合表示和计算分布在额叶和颞叶皮层群体中总而言之，这部小说是跨机构、跨学科的。协作努力有望提供一个基本的新平台，通过该平台开始学习基础知识人类语言背后的细胞机制以及对细胞水平前所未有的新见解人类语言理解过程中语言意义的处理和表示。