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SUNDAY SCIENCE: DO WE NEED LANGUAGE TO THINK?  
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Carl Zimmer
July 19, 2024
New York Times
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_ A group of neuroscientists argue that our words are primarily for
communicating, not for reasoning. _

A network of regions become active when the brain retrieves words
from memory, use rules of grammar, and carries out other language
tasks., Evelina Fedorenko

 

For thousands of years, philosophers have argued about the purpose of
language. Plato believed it was essential for thinking. Thought “is
a silent inner conversation of the soul with itself,” he wrote.

Many modern scholars have advanced similar views. Starting in the
1960s, Noam Chomsky, a linguist at M.I.T., argued that we use language
for reasoning and other forms of thought. “If there is a severe
deficit of language, there will be severe deficit of thought,” he
wrote
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As an undergraduate, Evelina Fedorenko took Dr. Chomsky’s class and
heard him describe his theory. “I really liked the idea,” she
recalled. But she was puzzled by the lack of evidence. “A lot of
things he was saying were just stated as if they were facts — the
truth,” she said.

Dr. Fedorenko went on to become a cognitive neuroscientist at M.I.T.,
using brain scanning to investigate how the brain produces language.
And after 15 years, her research has led her to a startling
conclusion: We don’t need language to think.

“When you start evaluating it, you just don’t find support for
this role of language in thinking,” she said.

When Dr. Fedorenko began this work in 2009, studies had found that the
same brain regions required for language were also active when people
reasoned or carried out arithmetic.

But Dr. Fedorenko and other researchers discovered that this overlap
was a mirage. Part of the trouble with the early results was that the
scanners were relatively crude. Scientists made the most of their
fuzzy scans by combining the results from all their volunteers,
creating an overall average of brain activity.

In her own research, Dr. Fedorenko used more powerful scanners and ran
more tests on each volunteer. Those steps allowed her and her
colleagues to gather enough data from each person to create a
fine-grained picture
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individual brain.

The scientists then ran studies to pinpoint brain circuits that were
involved in language tasks, such as retrieving words from memory and
following rules of grammar. In a typical experiment, volunteers read
gibberish, followed by real sentences. The scientists discovered
certain brain regions that became active only when volunteers
processed actual language.

Each volunteer had a language network
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constellation of regions that become active during language tasks.
“It’s very stable,” Dr. Fedorenko said. “If I scan you today,
and 10 or 15 years later, it’s going to be in the same place.”

The researchers then scanned the same people as they performed
different kinds of thinking, such as solving a puzzle. “Other
regions in the brain are working really hard when you’re doing all
these forms of thinking,” she said. But the language networks stayed
quiet. “It became clear that none of those things seem to engage
language circuits,” she said.

In a paper published Wednesday
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Fedorenko and her colleagues argued that studies of people with brain
injuries point to the same conclusion.

Strokes and other forms of brain damage can wipe out the language
network, leaving people struggling to process words and grammar, a
condition known as aphasia. But scientists have discovered
that people can still do algebra
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chess
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with aphasia. In experiments, people with aphasia can look at two
numbers — 123 and 321, say — and recognize that, by using the same
pattern, 456 should be followed by 654.

If language is not essential for thought, then what is language for?
Communication, Dr. Fedorenko and her colleagues argue. Dr. Chomsky and
other researchers have rejected that idea, pointing out the ambiguity
of words and the difficulty of expressing our intuitions out loud.
“The system is not well designed in many functional
respects,” Dr. Chomsky once said
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But large studies have suggested that languages have been optimized to
transfer information clearly and efficiently.

In one study [[link removed]],
researchers found that frequently used words are shorter, making
languages easier to learn and speeding the flow of information. In
another study [[link removed]],
researchers who investigated 37 languages found that the rules of
grammar put words close to each other so that their combined meaning
is easier to understand.

Kyle Mahowald, a linguist at the University of Texas at Austin who was
not involved in the new work, said that separating thought and
language could help explain why artificial intelligence systems like
ChatGPT are so good at some tasks and so bad at others.

Computer scientists train these programs on vast amounts of text,
uncovering rules about how words are connected. Dr. Mahowald suspects
that these programs are starting to mimic the language network in the
human brain — but falling short on reasoning.

“It’s possible to have very fluent grammatical text that may or
may not have coherent underlying thought,” Dr. Mahowald said.

But Guy Dove, a philosopher at the University of Louisville, thought
that Dr. Fedorenko and her colleagues were going too far in banishing
language from thought — especially complex thoughts. “When we’re
thinking about democracy, we might rehearse conversations about
democracy,” he said. “You do not need language to have thoughts,
but it can be an enhancement.”

_Carl Zimmer [[link removed]] covers news
about science for The Times and writes the Origins column
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Federal funding for major science agencies is at a 25-year low
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Chris Impey
The Conversation
June 28, 2024

* Science
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* language
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* Brain
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* communication
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* reason
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