Word-specific neurons

Natural languages and linguistics
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zompist
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Word-specific neurons

Post by zompist »

This is pretty neat:

Editor's summary: "during reading, single cells in the medial temporal lobes that respond selectively to specific individuals also respond to pronouns that later in sentences refer to previously read nouns."
Abstract wrote:During discourse comprehension, every new word adds to an evolving representation of meaning that accumulates over consecutive sentences and constrains the next words. To minimize repetition and utterance length, languages use pronouns, like the word “she,” to refer to nouns and phrases that were previously introduced. It has been suggested that language comprehension requires that pronouns activate the same neuronal representations as the nouns themselves. We recorded from individual neurons in the human hippocampus during a reading task. Cells that were selective to a particular noun were later reactivated by pronouns that refer to the cells’ preferred noun. These results imply that concept cells contribute to a rapid and dynamic semantic memory network that is recruited during language comprehension.
I don't have access to the article itself, so I can't say how solid it is.

In a way it's quite unsurprising: obviously language and pronouns have some neural substrate. But it's interesting that, in effect, the brain rewires itself on the fly to interpret pronouns.
sasasha
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Re: Word-specific neurons

Post by sasasha »

So, sounds like there's a context-driven process to prioritise preferred nouns for each pronoun slot, neurally. Interesting. The pronoun nodes must be big, active interchanges between these context processes and the cells that store information about individuals... (?)
Ares Land
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Re: Word-specific neurons

Post by Ares Land »

Very neat! It's pretty cool to think we're beginning to see how language works at the biological level.
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