AI hints at how the brain processes language

Predicting the next word someone might say — like AI algorithms now do when you search the internet or text a friend — may be a key part of the human brain’s ability to process language, new research suggests.

Why it matters: How the brain makes sense of language is a long-standing question in neuroscience. The new study demonstrates how AI algorithms that aren’t designed to mimic the brain can help to understand it.

• « No one has been able to make the full pipeline from word input to neural mechanism to behavioral output, » says Martin Schrimpf, a Ph.D. student at MIT and an author of the new paper published this week in PNAS.

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