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Related Concept Videos

Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language01:10

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Language is a system of communication that allows the expression of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The brain processes language in both hemispheres.
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The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 1, 2026

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
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Visual cortex entrains to sign language.

Geoffrey Brookshire1, Jenny Lu2, Howard C Nusbaum2,3

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637; casasanto@alum.mit.edu g_b@cal.berkeley.edu.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|June 1, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Neural oscillations flexibly entrain to visual sign language, demonstrating a general mechanism for processing rhythmic information across sensory modalities. This brain activity optimizes sensitivity to time-varying signals, regardless of whether they are spoken or signed.

Keywords:
EEGcortical entrainmentoscillationssign language

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Human language comprehension is possible across spoken and signed modalities.
  • Electrophysiological oscillations in the auditory cortex entrain to speech envelope fluctuations (around 8 Hz).
  • It remains unclear if this entrainment is auditory-specific or a general mechanism for processing rhythmic information.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if cortical entrainment occurs for visual sign language.
  • To determine if flexible entrainment is a general-purpose cortical mechanism.

Main Methods:

  • Developed a metric to quantify visual change in sign language.
  • Used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure cortical coherence in fluent American Sign Language (ASL) speakers watching ASL videos.
  • Compared brain activity in signers and non-signers.

Main Results:

  • Sign language exhibits quasiperiodic visual fluctuations at lower frequencies (<5 Hz, peaking ~1 Hz) than speech.
  • Significant cortical entrainment to visual sign language oscillations was observed, strongest in occipital and parietal cortex.
  • Nonsigners showed reduced frontal entrainment compared to fluent signers.

Conclusions:

  • Cortical entrainment to language is flexible and not dependent on auditory-specific neural processes.
  • Low-frequency oscillatory entrainment appears to be a general cortical mechanism for processing time-varying signals across modalities.