Understanding language & cognition

Hyderabad: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH) have found that all aspects of human language and cognition cannot possibly be united with neurobiology.

Dr Prakash Mondal, an Assistant Professor, Department of Liberal Arts, heading the Language and Cognition Lab at the IIT Hyderabad said that the limits and challenges in integrating human language and cognition with the human brain have been explored. The main findings of his study suggest that human language and cognition cannot be successfully reduced to neurobiology for all aspects of human language.

However, a certain kind of unity may be achieved between linguistic cognition and brain processes if they are applied to aspects of human language that are agreeable to more automated identification and categorization (such as who did what to whom in linguistic structures).

This study also draws upon recent neuro-scientific work as evidence in support of the conclusions arrived at. The magnitude of the signals in the activity of the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) in the brain increases when the first word in a phrase such as 'wooden furniture is integrated into the second word. But the linguistic and logical aspects of such constructions are not captured by these patterns. Thus, many such properties of human language and cognition are hard to be integrated into and united with, human brain structures.

Mondal said that aspects of human language that have complex mathematical patterns as deployed in human reasoning and other cognitive processes are hard to be united with brain structures.

For instance, human language permits the formation of the negation of a sentence, as in 'It is not so that he wanted to run away' vs the negation of a constituent, as in 'He ran to the store, not to his office'. This helps in reasoning about what it is that did not happen, as opposed to, about what it is that someone did not get to. No known brain mechanisms and processes capture this distinction in neuronal terms. Likewise, symmetric patterns can be found in human language, as in 'What I want is a book' vs 'A book is what I want', and again, no known brain mechanisms and processes express this mirror-like reversal of the pieces of structures.

Dr Prakash Mondal, further said, "With the rise of biological studies of language, we seem to become closer to a deep understanding of human language and cognition, but significant and often unique differences in experience, appearance, form, and organization of certain aspects of human language and cognition can pose hard problems and challenges to brain and cognitive sciences."