Hong, Min Kyung; Janson, Andrew; Koirala, Prasanna; Fotidzis, Tess; Polyn, Sean; Aboud, Katherine. (2026).听.听Cerebral Cortex, 36(8), bhag097.听
Learning through language requires the brain to rapidly transform words into meaningful concepts, but how this process unfolds over time remains unclear. Using a combination of functional MRI and electroencephalography (EEG), we tracked brain activity in healthy adults as they processed language. We identified a sequence of brain networks that became active within about 700 milliseconds, progressing from visual word recognition to retrieving meaning, interpreting context, integrating sentence structure and meaning, and ultimately forming a coherent concept. Transitions between these stages involved shared brain regions, particularly the left temporoparietal junction. People with stronger language comprehension showed greater involvement of later processes related to interpreting and integrating information. These findings reveal how different brain networks work together over fractions of a second to transform language into conceptual knowledge.
Figure 1
Spatial and temporal perspectives on language processing. Current neuroimaging approaches examine language processing through separate methodological silos, limiting our understanding of how distributed brain networks coordinate dynamically in real time. a) Spatial perspective: brain systems supporting language comprehension, after聽Fedorenko et聽al. (2024), showing the distributed architecture of perception of linguistic input (green), core language processing (red), motor planning (navy), and higher-order cognition (purple). Regions are rendered on an inflated left-hemisphere cortical surface from probabilistic functional atlases for the language, multiple demand (light purple), and default mode (dark purple) networks (Lipkin et聽al. 2022;聽Yeo et聽al. 2011), and Harvard-Oxford for the perception and motor areas. While fMRI reveals the spatial organization of these networks, it lacks the temporal resolution to capture their millisecond-scale coordination. b) Temporal perspective: a schematic ERP waveform illustrating the N400 (semantic processing,聽~400 ms) and P600 (syntactic/integrative processing,聽~600 ms) components that reflect the rapid timecourse of language comprehension. c) Topographical maps illustrating the spatial distribution of ERP effects, reproduced from Schacht et聽al. (2014, Fig 1B and 1C): the main effect of semantics in the N400 window (top) and the grammaticality-violation effect in the P600 window (bottom). Licensed under CC BY; cropped from the original. While EEG provides precise temporal information about language processing stages, it offers limited spatial resolution for localizing these processes within the distributed brain networks shown in (a). This methodological divide has hindered our understanding of how spatially distributed language networks achieve their rapid, coordinated function during real-world comprehension.