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Language and communication
Humans create a society through communication, and language is its powerful tool to convey feelings and move people. Elucidation of the neural bases of these functions and their acquisition is expected to contribute to understanding humanity and to educational applications.
202203.29 Is it possible to elucidate brain processes in spontaneous speech? (Oral presentation) Posted in RESEARCH
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To deliver a speech, one must think about the content, select linguistic elements, and construct the speech while also considering its relevance for the following content. Although the brain mechanisms underlying the generation of short sentences and other forms of speech have been studied, very few fMRI studies have been conducted on spontaneous free speech. In this study, a research team from University College London, which is well-known for analyzing second language speech, and a language neuroscience team from Tohoku University collaborated to address this issue. We focused on different cognitive processing by speakers depending on the length and position of the pause in speech and succeeded in extracting the brain activity corresponding to different cognitive activities during spontaneous speech. The results of the research were presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics and received positive feedback as a new approach. (Jeong)