LanguageNCT05222594
Computational Neuroscience of Language Processing in the Human Brain
A study testing Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring in people with Language and Epilepsy, run by Massachusetts General Hospital at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
Language is a signature human cognitive skill, but the precise computations that support language understanding remain unknown. This study aims to combine high-quality human neural data obtained through intracranial recordings with advances in computational modeling of human cognition to shed light on the construction… Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 18 to 85 years
- What is being tested?
- Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 40 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 2 Apr 2021to 31 Mar 2027
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- Not yet: the study is under way
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 18 to 85 years
- All sexes
- No healthy volunteers
- Adult, Older adult
Who may be able to join
- clinical indications to proceed with intracranial monitoring involving the left cerebral hemisphere, as determined by a multidisciplinary epilepsy surgery team
- the ability to comply with test directions and provide informed consent
- between ages 18 - 85
Who cannot join
- inability to understand or perform the task outlined in the protocol, or who are unwilling or unable to participate
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.
United States1 site, 1 recruiting
- Recruiting
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts, 02114
Robert M Richardson, MD, PhD, mark.richardson@harvard.mgh.edu
Erin Donahue, PhD, ekdonahue@mgh.harvard.edu
About this study
Language is a signature human cognitive skill, but the precise computations that support language understanding remain unknown. This study aims to combine high-quality human neural data obtained through intracranial recordings with advances in computational modeling of human cognition to shed light on the construction and understanding of speech.
Read the detailed description
The neural architecture of language is the foundation for the highest form of human interaction. Prior work has identified a network of frontal and temporal brain areas that selectively support language processing, but the precise computations that underlie our ability to extract meaning from sequences of words have remained unknown. The standard approaches in human cognitive neuroscience lack the spatial and temporal resolution necessary for precise comparisons to computational models. To bridge this gap in knowledge, neural responses to language stimuli will be collected from epileptic patients undergoing intracranial monitoring. Overall, these data will be used to identify cortical maps of different linguistic manipulations and to better understand properties of the human language network.
- Being tested
- Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring
- Keywords
- language, computational neuroscience, epilepsy
- Medical subject headings
- Language, Epilepsy
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoringOther
Participants will listen to sentences and stories while neural data are recorded through electrodes placed for clinical purposes.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Epileptic participants undergoing intracranial monitoring | Other | Patients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy undergoing intracranial monitoring involving the left cerebral hemisphere. Receives: Other: Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Cortical maps of linguistic responses
By using sEEG intracranial recordings of the brain, EEG power in frequency bands will reflect cortical maps of responses to different linguistic manipulations, informing the functional organization of the human language system. Power is measured in arbitrary units; higher power reflects greater activity at the investigated frequency.
Measured: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Neural time-courses during naturalistic language comprehension
Time-courses of neural response to language across diverse parts of the language network. These data will be used to predict across-time variation in response strength from the properties of linguistic input.
Measured: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Brain scores for diverse artificial neural network (ANN) language models
Human neural data will be compared to ANN language models to test how well these models predict human responses to language and why. There are no minimum or maximum scores. Higher values mean better model predictivity (i.e., a better match between model representations and neural responses).
Measured: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted3 Feb 2022
- Study start2 Apr 2021
- Primary completion31 Mar 2027 (estimated)
- Study completion31 Mar 2027 (estimated)
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Publications (14)Papers the sponsor has linked to this study.
- Other trials for LanguageStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- More trials run by Massachusetts General HospitalThe sponsor's other registered studies.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Not applicable
- Intervention model
- Single group
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Enrolment
- 40 participants (estimated)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Massachusetts General Hospital
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Responsible party
- Principal investigator, Robert Mark Richardson, Massachusetts General Hospital
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT05222594
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- 2020P001989
- Status last verified
- May 2026
- First submitted
- 24 Jan 2022
- Last updated
- 7 May 2026
- Results posted
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- No
Publications
Blank I, Balewski Z, Mahowald K, Fedorenko E. Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system. Neuroimage. 2016 Feb 15;127:307-323. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.11.069. Epub 2015 Dec 5.
PubMed 26666896Blank IA, Fedorenko E. No evidence for differences among language regions in their temporal receptive windows. Neuroimage. 2020 Oct 1;219:116925. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116925. Epub 2020 May 11.
PubMed 32407994Fedorenko E, Behr MK, Kanwisher N. Functional specificity for high-level linguistic processing in the human brain. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Sep 27;108(39):16428-33. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1112937108. Epub 2011 Sep 1.
PubMed 21885736Fedorenko E, Blank IA. Broca's Area Is Not a Natural Kind. Trends Cogn Sci. 2020 Apr;24(4):270-284. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.01.001. Epub 2020 Feb 20.
PubMed 32160565Fedorenko E, Duncan J, Kanwisher N. Language-selective and domain-general regions lie side by side within Broca's area. Curr Biol. 2012 Nov 6;22(21):2059-62. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.09.011. Epub 2012 Oct 11.
PubMed 23063434Fedorenko E, Hsieh PJ, Nieto-Castanon A, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Kanwisher N. New method for fMRI investigations of language: defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects. J Neurophysiol. 2010 Aug;104(2):1177-94. doi: 10.1152/jn.00032.2010. Epub 2010 Apr 21.
PubMed 20410363Fedorenko E, Nieto-Castanon A, Kanwisher N. Lexical and syntactic representations in the brain: an fMRI investigation with multi-voxel pattern analyses. Neuropsychologia. 2012 Mar;50(4):499-513. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.09.014. Epub 2011 Sep 17.
PubMed 21945850Fedorenko E, Scott TL, Brunner P, Coon WG, Pritchett B, Schalk G, Kanwisher N. Neural correlate of the construction of sentence meaning. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Oct 11;113(41):E6256-E6262. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1612132113. Epub 2016 Sep 26.
PubMed 27671642Mollica F, Siegelman M, Diachek E, Piantadosi ST, Mineroff Z, Futrell R, Kean H, Qian P, Fedorenko E. Composition is the Core Driver of the Language-selective Network. Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2020 Mar 1;1(1):104-134. doi: 10.1162/nol_a_00005. eCollection 2020.
PubMed 36794007Nieto-Castanon A, Fedorenko E. Subject-specific functional localizers increase sensitivity and functional resolution of multi-subject analyses. Neuroimage. 2012 Nov 15;63(3):1646-69. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.065. Epub 2012 Jul 8.
PubMed 22784644Norman-Haignere S, Kanwisher NG, McDermott JH. Distinct Cortical Pathways for Music and Speech Revealed by Hypothesis-Free Voxel Decomposition. Neuron. 2015 Dec 16;88(6):1281-1296. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.11.035.
PubMed 26687225Pereira F, Lou B, Pritchett B, Ritter S, Gershman SJ, Kanwisher N, Botvinick M, Fedorenko E. Toward a universal decoder of linguistic meaning from brain activation. Nat Commun. 2018 Mar 6;9(1):963. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03068-4.
PubMed 29511192Shain C, Blank IA, van Schijndel M, Schuler W, Fedorenko E. fMRI reveals language-specific predictive coding during naturalistic sentence comprehension. Neuropsychologia. 2020 Feb 17;138:107307. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107307. Epub 2019 Dec 24.
PubMed 31874149Siegelman M, Blank IA, Mineroff Z, Fedorenko E. An Attempt to Conceptually Replicate the Dissociation between Syntax and Semantics during Sentence Comprehension. Neuroscience. 2019 Aug 10;413:219-229. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2019.06.003. Epub 2019 Jun 11.
PubMed 31200104
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 7 May 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Computational Neuroscience of Language Processing in the Human Brain
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT05222594
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- 2020P001989
- Keywords
- language, computational neuroscience, epilepsy
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Recruiting
- Enrolment
- 40 participants (estimated)
- Lead sponsor
- Massachusetts General HospitalUniversity, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Study start
- 2 Apr 2021 (actual)
- Primary completion
- 31 Mar 2027 (estimated)
- Study completion
- 31 Mar 2027 (estimated)
- First posted
- 3 Feb 2022 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
Language is a signature human cognitive skill, but the precise computations that support language understanding remain unknown. This study aims to combine high-quality human neural data obtained through intracranial recordings with advances in computational modeling of human cognition to shed light on the construction and understanding of speech.
Detailed description
The neural architecture of language is the foundation for the highest form of human interaction. Prior work has identified a network of frontal and temporal brain areas that selectively support language processing, but the precise computations that underlie our ability to extract meaning from sequences of words have remained unknown. The standard approaches in human cognitive neuroscience lack the spatial and temporal resolution necessary for precise comparisons to computational models. To bridge this gap in knowledge, neural responses to language stimuli will be collected from epileptic patients undergoing intracranial monitoring. Overall, these data will be used to identify cortical maps of different linguistic manipulations and to better understand properties of the human language network.
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Not applicable
- Intervention model
- Single group
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Number of arms
- 1
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Epileptic participants undergoing intracranial monitoring | Other | Other: Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoringPatients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy undergoing intracranial monitoring involving the left cerebral hemisphere. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 18 to 85 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Not accepted
- Age groups
- Adult, Older adult
Key inclusion criteria (3 listed)
- clinical indications to proceed with intracranial monitoring involving the left cerebral hemisphere, as determined by a multidisciplinary epilepsy surgery team
- the ability to comply with test directions and provide informed consent
- between ages 18 - 85
Key exclusion criteria (1 listed)
- inability to understand or perform the task outlined in the protocol, or who are unwilling or unable to participate
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoringParticipants will listen to sentences and stories while neural data are recorded through electrodes placed for clinical purposes. | Other | Epileptic participants undergoing intracranial monitoring |
Primary outcome
Cortical maps of linguistic responses
Time frame: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
By using sEEG intracranial recordings of the brain, EEG power in frequency bands will reflect cortical maps of responses to different linguistic manipulations, informing the functional organization of the human language system. Power is measured in arbitrary units; higher power reflects greater activity at the investigated frequency.
Neural time-courses during naturalistic language comprehension
Time frame: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Time-courses of neural response to language across diverse parts of the language network. These data will be used to predict across-time variation in response strength from the properties of linguistic input.
Brain scores for diverse artificial neural network (ANN) language models
Time frame: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Human neural data will be compared to ANN language models to test how well these models predict human responses to language and why. There are no minimum or maximum scores. Higher values mean better model predictivity (i.e., a better match between model representations and neural responses).
Results and safety
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 7 May 2026.
- Background: PubMed 26666896Blank I, Balewski Z, Mahowald K, Fedorenko E. Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system. Neuroimage. 2016 Feb 15;127:307-323. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.11.069. Epub 2015 Dec 5.
- Background: PubMed 32407994Blank IA, Fedorenko E. No evidence for differences among language regions in their temporal receptive windows. Neuroimage. 2020 Oct 1;219:116925. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116925. Epub 2020 May 11.
- Background: PubMed 21885736Fedorenko E, Behr MK, Kanwisher N. Functional specificity for high-level linguistic processing in the human brain. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Sep 27;108(39):16428-33. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1112937108. Epub 2011 Sep 1.
- Background: PubMed 32160565Fedorenko E, Blank IA. Broca's Area Is Not a Natural Kind. Trends Cogn Sci. 2020 Apr;24(4):270-284. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.01.001. Epub 2020 Feb 20.
- Background: PubMed 23063434Fedorenko E, Duncan J, Kanwisher N. Language-selective and domain-general regions lie side by side within Broca's area. Curr Biol. 2012 Nov 6;22(21):2059-62. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.09.011. Epub 2012 Oct 11.
- Background: PubMed 20410363Fedorenko E, Hsieh PJ, Nieto-Castanon A, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Kanwisher N. New method for fMRI investigations of language: defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects. J Neurophysiol. 2010 Aug;104(2):1177-94. doi: 10.1152/jn.00032.2010. Epub 2010 Apr 21.
- Background: PubMed 21945850Fedorenko E, Nieto-Castanon A, Kanwisher N. Lexical and syntactic representations in the brain: an fMRI investigation with multi-voxel pattern analyses. Neuropsychologia. 2012 Mar;50(4):499-513. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.09.014. Epub 2011 Sep 17.
- Background: PubMed 27671642Fedorenko E, Scott TL, Brunner P, Coon WG, Pritchett B, Schalk G, Kanwisher N. Neural correlate of the construction of sentence meaning. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Oct 11;113(41):E6256-E6262. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1612132113. Epub 2016 Sep 26.
- Background: PubMed 36794007Mollica F, Siegelman M, Diachek E, Piantadosi ST, Mineroff Z, Futrell R, Kean H, Qian P, Fedorenko E. Composition is the Core Driver of the Language-selective Network. Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2020 Mar 1;1(1):104-134. doi: 10.1162/nol_a_00005. eCollection 2020.
- Background: PubMed 22784644Nieto-Castanon A, Fedorenko E. Subject-specific functional localizers increase sensitivity and functional resolution of multi-subject analyses. Neuroimage. 2012 Nov 15;63(3):1646-69. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.065. Epub 2012 Jul 8.
- Background: PubMed 26687225Norman-Haignere S, Kanwisher NG, McDermott JH. Distinct Cortical Pathways for Music and Speech Revealed by Hypothesis-Free Voxel Decomposition. Neuron. 2015 Dec 16;88(6):1281-1296. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.11.035.
- Background: PubMed 29511192Pereira F, Lou B, Pritchett B, Ritter S, Gershman SJ, Kanwisher N, Botvinick M, Fedorenko E. Toward a universal decoder of linguistic meaning from brain activation. Nat Commun. 2018 Mar 6;9(1):963. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03068-4.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: No
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part.
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring in people with Language and Epilepsy, run by Massachusetts General Hospital at 1 site in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 3 inclusion and 1 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: looking for participants now, as of the sponsor's last update on 7 May 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
Contact Evelina Fedorenko, PhD (617-258-0670, evelina9@mit.edu), or a site near the patient. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Cortical maps of linguistic responses (time frame: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days). The study lists 3 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT05222594, which also lists 14 linked publications.
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 7 May 2026.