The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 39 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.
Functional specificity for high-level linguistic processing in the human brain
Open accessAbstract
Neuroscientists have debated for centuries whether some regions of the human brain are selectively engaged in specific high-level mental functions or whether, instead, cognition is implemented in multifunctional brain regions. For the critical case of language, conflicting answers arise from the neuropsychological literature, which features striking dissociations between deficits in linguistic and nonlinguistic abilities, vs. the neuroimaging literature, which has argued for overlap between activations for linguistic and nonlinguistic processes, including arithmetic, domain general abilities like cognitive control, and music. Here, we use functional MRI to define classic language regions functionally in each subject individually and then examine the response of these regions to the nonlinguistic functions most commonly argued to engage these regions: arithmetic, working memory, cognitive control, and music. We find little or no response in language regions to these nonlinguistic functions. These data support a clear distinction between language and other cognitive processes, resolving the prior conflict between the neuropsychological and neuroimaging literatures.
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Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
Using fMRI, the authors functionally defined language regions in each subject and tested whether those regions respond to arithmetic, working memory, cognitive control, or music. They found little or no response to these nonlinguistic functions, supporting a clear distinction between language and other cognitive processes.
Key findings
- Across seven nonlinguistic tasks, language-sensitive ROIs showed little or no response; no other ROIs showed reliable responses to any nonlinguistic task after correction, except one left middle frontal gyrus (LMFG) ROI that responded significantly to verbal working memory.
- The music contrast produced some response in several language ROIs, but effects were weak overall and none survived correction for multiple comparisons.
- Whole-brain overlap analyses at the ROI-analysis threshold found no spatially systematic regions where language activations overlapped with any of the seven nonlinguistic tasks; with liberal thresholding, three overlap regions emerged, including posterior left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) overlap with verbal working memory in 85% of subjects and a similar region with Stroop in 71%.
- The authors conclude that most key cortical regions for high-level linguistic processing are not engaged by mental arithmetic, general working memory, cognitive control, or musical processing, with the LMFG as the main exception.
Methods
- Forty-eight right-handed native English speakers (31 females, ages 18–40) participated; each was run on a language localizer and one or more nonlinguistic tasks. Task-specific samples were: math n = 11, spatial WM n = 12, verbal WM n = 13, MSIT n = 15, vMSIT n = 12, Stroop n = 14, and music n = 12, with overlapping subjects across tasks.
- The language localizer contrasted reading sentences vs. pronounceable nonwords with a memory probe; nonlinguistic experiments contrasted harder vs. easier conditions for arithmetic, spatial WM, verbal WM, MSIT, vMSIT, and Stroop, and intact vs. scrambled music.
- fMRI data were collected on a 3-T Siemens Trio, analyzed with SPM5 and custom MATLAB scripts; language ROIs were defined per subject by intersecting group-level parcels with individual localizer maps thresholded at P < 0.001 uncorrected, and responses were estimated using cross-validation across runs.
Limitations
- The paper states that the investigated regions are not the only ones engaged in or necessary for language: language also requires auditory/visual and motor cortex, and domain-general frontal/parietal regions may be necessary for many linguistic functions.
- The paper states that the computations in the posterior LIFG overlap region remain an open question and that higher spatial resolution might reveal the apparent overlap to be artifactual due to proximity of language-sensitive and demanding-task regions.
- The paper notes that the localizer targets high-level linguistic processing and does not address other aspects of language such as sound-level processes; evident from the text, the whole-brain overlap findings required liberal thresholding, and per-task samples were small (11–15 participants) with overlapping subjects across experiments.
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Claims the paper makes
21 Own result · 14 Not checked yet · 12 Own interpretation · 4 Own method · 4 No basis given
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“the response to intact music is barely above the fixation baseline (and lower than the response to the language localizer control task)”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“At the threshold used for the ROI analyses, no spatially systematic regions were detected in which language activations overlapped with any of the seven nonlinguistic tasks, confirming the overall picture of language specificity found in the ROI analyses.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“the response to intact music is barely above the fixation baseline (and lower than the response to the language localizer control task)”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The current results show that most of the key cortical regions engaged in high-level linguistic processing are not engaged by mental arithmetic, general working memory, cognitive control, or musical processing, indicating a high degree of functional specificity in the brain regions that support language.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“[This threshold is not too stringent to discover true overlap when it exists; at the same threshold, we discovered robust overlap regions in the frontal and parietal lobes between Stroop and the multisource interference task (MSIT) cognitive control task in a subset of the subjects run on both tasks.]”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“One frontal language ROI left middle frontal gyrus (LMFG) showed a significant response to verbal working memory after correcting for the number of ROIs; this region is, thus, not specialized for sentence understanding.”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“we find no hint of activation for either of the other two cognitive control tasks [the MSIT task (39) and its variant, verbal MSIT (vMSIT)]”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites [39] Bush G, Shin LM. The Multi-Source Interference Task: An fMRI task that reliably activates the cingulo-frontal-parietal cognitive/attention network. Nat Protoc. 2006;1:308–313. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2006.48. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Furthermore, although this region does respond more strongly to intact than scrambled musical stimuli (consistent with some previous claims) (21), the response to intact music is barely above the fixation baseline (and lower than the response to the language localizer control task)”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites [21] Maess B, Koelsch S, Gunter TC, Friederici AD. Musical syntax is processed in Broca's area: An MEG study. Nat Neurosci. 2001;4:540–545. doi: 10.1038/87502. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] source
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The third region, present in 85% of the subjects, emerged in the posterior part of our left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) language ROI and responded to both language and verbal WM”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The music contrast did produce some response in several language ROIs (SI Text), suggesting possibly overlapping circuits; however, these effects were weak overall, and none survived correction for multiple comparisons.”
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- It may state two separate claims as one. 10
- Probably not a substantial claim. 8
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The music contrast did produce some response in several language ROIs (SI Text), suggesting possibly overlapping circuits; however, these effects were weak overall, and none survived correction for multiple comparisons.”
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Nevertheless, a complementary analysis shows that a portion of the LIFG language ROI is selective for high-level linguistic processing and not engaged in either verbal WM or Stroop (Fig. 4).”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Because the activation patterns were similar across the two tasks, we collapsed the data from these two groups of participants for the current analyses.”
plainn = 4- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Note that the brain regions investigated here are surely not the only ones engaged in or necessary for language processing.”
boosted- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The order of conditions was counterbalanced; each condition was equally likely to appear in the earlier vs. later parts of each run and was as likely to follow every other condition as it was to precede it.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The resulting piece had component sounds similar to the intact music but lacked musical structure.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“These data support a clear distinction between language and other cognitive processes, resolving the prior conflict between the neuropsychological and neuroimaging literatures.”
boosted- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“However, ROI analyses can obscure functional heterogeneity within an ROI or miss important overlapping regions outside the borders of the ROI.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Of course, the question of the relationship between linguistic and nonlinguistic processes extends to other aspects of language (e.g., sound-level processes), which we are not targeting with the current language localizer task.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“The responses to the sentences and nonwords conditions were estimated using cross-validation across the functional runs, and therefore, the data used to estimate the effects were always independent of the data used for ROI definition (46).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites [46] Vul E, Kanwisher N. Begging the question: The non-independence error in fMRI data analysis. In: Hanson S, Bunzl M, editors. Foundational issues for human brain mapping. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2010. pp. 71–91. [Google Scholar] source
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“and to be robust to changes in stimulus modality (visual/auditory) (see also ref. 32), specific stimuli, and task (passive reading vs. reading with a probe task, which is used here).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites [32] Braze D, et al. Unification of sentence processing via ear and eye: An fMRI study. Cortex. 2011;47:416–431. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2009.11.005. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“However, the neuroimaging claims are based largely on observations of activation for a nonlanguage task in or near a general brain region previously implicated in language (e.g., Broca's area), without a direct demonstration of overlap of linguistic and nonlinguistic activations in the same subjects.”
What the sources say
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plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“ROI-based analyses afford great statistical power and reduce the blurring of functional activations inevitable in group analyses.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds. It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“(here and throughout the study, responses were estimated using data from left-out runs not used for defining the ROIs).”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
The paper relies on this without support.
The individual-subject overlap analysis strategy has almost never been applied in neuroimaging investigations of high-level linguistic processing.
“a data analysis strategy that has almost never been applied in neuroimaging investigations of high-level linguistic processing”
The paper relies on this without support.
Most claims about the overlap between linguistic and nonlinguistic processes have concerned syntactic processing.
“However, most claims about the overlap between linguistic and nonlinguistic processes have concerned (i) syntactic processing, which is included in our functional contrast, and (ii) brain regions, which are robustly activated by our localizer (e.g., Broca's area).”
The paper relies on this without support.
Most claims about the overlap between linguistic and nonlinguistic processes have concerned brain regions robustly activated by the language localizer.
“However, most claims about the overlap between linguistic and nonlinguistic processes have concerned (i) syntactic processing, which is included in our functional contrast, and (ii) brain regions, which are robustly activated by our localizer (e.g., Broca's area).”
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“The hard > easy contrast has been found to robustly activate regions of the MD network (Fedorenko et al., 2011(Fedorenko et al., , 2013)).”
From Functional Specificity and Sex Differences in the Neural Circuits Supporting the Inhibition of Automatic Imitation (2018) · cites this paper as Fedorenko et al., 2011
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“Neuroimaging studies have consistently shown that the language network -a set of brain regions responsible for language comprehension and production -remains largely inactive during various reasoning tasks”
From Training Large Language Models to Reason in a Continuous Latent Space (2024) · cites this paper as Fedorenko et al., 2011
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn the citing paper
“There is little doubt that perisylvian regions are more involved in processing language inputs than some other brain systems (see, e.g., Blank & Fedorenko, 2017), and may be particularly involved in language tasks (e.g., Fedorenko, Behr, & Kanwisher, 2011).”
From Grounding the neurobiology of language in first principles: The necessity of non-language-centric explanations for language comprehension (2018) · cites this paper as Fedorenko, Behr, & Kanwisher, 2011
In the citing paper
“it responds reliably when people listen to, read, or generate sentences, but not when they perform arithmetic tasks, engage in logical reasoning, understand computer programs, listen to music, categorize objects or events, reason about people’s mental states, or process non-verbal communicative information like facial expressions or gestures [37, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48].”
From Dissociating language and thought in large language models (2024) · cites this paper as [37]
In the citing paper
“is sensitive to linguistic regularities at multiple levels: from phonological/sub-lexical [36] to phrase/sentence level [37, 38]”
From Dissociating language and thought in large language models (2024) · cites this paper as [37]
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Commentary: Cultural recycling of neural substrates during language evolution and development
Trettenbrein, P. C. (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01507
“Nevertheless, functional specificity for language has been demonstrated (Musso et al., 2003; Fedorenko et al., 2011), and the processing of hierarchical structure as a core linguistic operation has successfully been isolated from other functions attributed to Broca’s area, such as working memory…”
BackgroundInfluentialUsing rhythm to teach spelling to a child with autism
Cerf, C. M. (2015) · Texas ScholarWorks (Texas Digital Library) · doi:10.15781/t21s56
“The contrast between this study and the studies of Fedorenko et al. (2012), Fedorenko et al. (2011) and Rogalsky et al. (2011) is that Fedorenko et al. (2012), Fedorenko et al. (2011) and (Rogalsky et al., 2011) were comparing intact and scrambled music processing skills to the ability to process…”
BackgroundResultStructural and Functional Organizing Principles of Language: Evolving Theories
Szalontai, Á., & Csiszár, K. (2014) · Biolinguistics · doi:10.5964/bioling.9009
“Contrary to earlier reported functional distinction between language and other cognitive processes (Fedorenko et al. 2011), none of the language-relevant regions and none of the language-specific neurophyschological effects have proved language-specific as these are also triggered by other input”
ResultGomes, J. S., Akiba, H. T., Furtado, P. C., Ando, R. A. R., de Oliveira, M. A., & Dias, Á. M. (2013) · Journal of Biomedical Graphics and Computing · doi:10.5430/jbgc.v4n1p27
“As one may note, seriality is the key trend behind verbal ability, as it is at the core of verbal syntax [7, 8] and much has been said about the role of specific brain regions ( e.g ., Broca’s area) in computing serial issues related to language [9] .”
BackgroundDuan, X., Ma, Z., Yao, Z., et al. (2026) · Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026 · doi:10.18653/v1/2026.scil-main.44
“Neuroimaging studies consistently implicate left temporal and inferior frontal regions in combinatorial and sentence-level computations, with activity in these regions scaling with the size and complexity of phrasal constituents (Pallier et al., 2011; Fedorenko et al., 2011; Hu et al., 2023).”
Boeckx, C. A. (2020) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-820584-6.00038-6
Hertzog, E. B. (2012) · doi:10.7916/d87087j9
“…was clearly distinct from other cognitive processes because little response was recorded in language regions to nonlinguistic functions including music; the effects of the responses in several language regions of interest produced by the music contrast were weak overall (Fedorenko et al., 2011).”
BackgroundInfluentialChen, J., Antonello, R. J., Chaparala, K., et al. (2025) · Proceedings of the Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics · doi:10.18653/v1/2025.cmcl-1.12
“…(Kamps et al., 2016; Julian et al., 2016; Taylor et al., 2007; Calvo-Merino et al., 2010; Leibo et al., 2015; Saleem et al., 2018; Howard et al., 1996), language (Fedorenko et al., 2011), auditory processing (Perani et al., 2010; Ter-vaniemi et al., 1999), and motor function (Wilson et al., 2014).”
Metadata
- Authors
- Fedorenko, E., Behr, M. K., & Kanwisher, N.
- Affiliations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department and
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2011-09
- Volume
- 108
- Issue
- 39
- Pages
- 16428-16433
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC3182706
- OpenAlex
- W2096462008
- Semantic Scholar
- b62b60be4fe51188d90a27dd9fc695c924a55b0b
- Cited by
- 595
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 43 · 2025: 52 · 2024: 75 · 2023: 42 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 61 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 32 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 34 · 2015: 35 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 10.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- National Institutes of Health (5k99hd057522-02)
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K99 HD-057522)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Keywords
- language lateralization, functional specificity, language regions, arithmetic, working memory, cognitive control, music processing, domain specificity
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Female, Humans, Linguistics, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Speech
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