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：
10280022
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/10280022
关键词：
Action Potentials Algorithms Animal Model Animals Aphasia Area Brain Cells Chronic Cognition 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 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 base cognitive process combinatorial frontal lobe insight language comprehension neurophysiology novel prospective relating to nervous system 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.

在人类的语言理解过程中研究语义处理单细胞水平人类有能力通过语言传达富裕和细微的含义。这容量超过了所有其他动物物种。然而，战略家对网络的越来越了解支持语义处理的大脑区域，在神经组织中的语言意义的精确推导细胞级别和临时动作电位尺度上的范围在很大程度上未知。过去几年，我们的协作小组开发了独特的方法，使我们能够记录表演的参与者的语言主导前额叶和临时皮层中的个别神经元结构化语言任务。在这里，我们将使用这个极为难得的机会以及我们的小组的语言理论，人类术中神经生理学，单神经元的独特组合专业知识录音和计算建模，以便首次详细研究语义信息在语音期间在蜂窝级和单个神经元响应的程度上编码对特定语义领域的选择性活动，可以在语言材料中推广的程度以及这些过程的过程神经元活动映射到单个单词之间的细粒语义关系。使用结构化的语言操纵和违规行为，并采用信息理论技术，我们还将彻底检查人类的某些神经元是否有选择性地对语言作出反应非语言信息，他们如何从事词典语义或句法过程，如何跟踪实时上下文依赖性推断在语音期间单个单词的含义，以及这些含义如何混合表示和计算分布在额叶和临时皮质种群中语言为主导的半球。综上所述，这个小说的跨机构跨学科协作努力有望提供一个基本的新平台，通过该平台开始研究基本人类语言和前所未有的新洞察力的细胞机制对细胞级别在人类语言理解期间的语言意义的处理和表示。