[Source:  Science Daily]

Scientists have come a step closer to understanding how we’re able to understand spoken language so rapidly, and it involves a huge and complex set of computations in the brain.

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Cambridge developed novel computational models of the meanings of words, and tested these directly against real-time brain activity in volunteers.

“Our ability to put words into context, depending on the other words around them, is an immediate process and it’s thanks to the best computer we’ve ever known: the brain in our head. It’s something we haven’t yet managed to fully replicate in computers because it is still so poorly understood,” said Lorraine Tyler, Director of the Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at the University of Cambridge, which ran the study.

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