{"id":240349,"date":"2026-07-06T03:07:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/the-brains-language-network-is-more-extensive-than-previously-thought"},"modified":"2026-07-06T03:07:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:07:57","slug":"the-brains-language-network-is-more-extensive-than-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/the-brains-language-network-is-more-extensive-than-previously-thought","title":{"rendered":"The brain\u2019s language network is more extensive than previously thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-brains-language-network-is-more-extensive-than-previously-thought.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For decades, neuroscientists have known that specific regions in the brain\u2019s left hemisphere are responsible for processing language. However, a new study by MIT researchers shows that language processing also occurs in many other parts of the brain.<\/p>\n<p>Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from more than 700 people, the researchers identified 17 additional regions of the brain that appear to play a role in language. These regions are scattered across the brain, including parts of the <a href=\"https:\/\/mcgovern.mit.edu\/2026\/01\/22\/language-processing-beyond-the-neocortex\/\" target=\"_blank\">cerebellum<\/a>, hippocampus and cerebral cortex, and they make up about 5% of the total volume of the adult brain\u2014about the size of a large strawberry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven though there are all these distant components, it\u2019s pretty restricted in terms of volume. You don\u2019t need that much of the brain to do language,\u201d says Evelina Fedorenko, an MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, a member of MIT\u2019s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the senior author of the study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For decades, neuroscientists have known that specific regions in the brain\u2019s left hemisphere are responsible for processing language. However, a new study by MIT researchers shows that language processing also occurs in many other parts of the brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from more than 700 people, the researchers identified 17 additional [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}