For decades, neuroscientists have known that specific regions in the brain’s 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 regions of the brain that appear to play a role in language. These regions are scattered across the brain, including parts of the cerebellum, hippocampus, and cerebral cortex, and they make up about 5 percent of the total volume of the adult brain — about the size of a large strawberry. “Even though there are all these distant components, it’s pretty restricted in terms of volume. You don’t need that much of the brain to do language,” says Evelina Fedorenko, an MIT associate professor of brain and co…

Each of these participants underwent a task known as a language localizer, which is used to determine the location of language processing areas for each subject. During the test, participants read or listen to sentences as well as sequences of nonwords. For each person, the researchers measure the difference in strength of response when reading real sentences or nonsense sequences. The brain areas that work harder during the sentence condition are considered to be doing something relevant to language, especially if they respond while both reading and listening to sentences. “It’s a very simple paradigm that lets you identify this core language system in individual brains,” Wolna says. When searching for language areas, the researchers usually use a relatively strict statistical threshold. In this study, they relaxed the threshold and also used some targeted searches i…