Semantic encoding during language comprehension at single-cell resolution

This study investigated how neurons represent linguistic meaning during language comprehension. Researchers recorded from single cells in the left prefrontal cortex of participants listening to sentences and stories. They found that individual neurons responded selectively to specific word meanings, distinguishing words from nonwords and dynamically reflecting contextual meaning. These neuronal ensembles accurately predicted semantic categories in real time, tracked sentence structure, and encoded hierarchical meaning representations. The findings reveal a detailed cortical organization of semantic representations at the neuronal level in humans.

Mohsen Jamali, Benjamin Grannan, Jing Cai, Arjun R. Khanna, William Muñoz, Irene Caprara, Angelique C. Paulk, Sydney S. Cash, Evelina Fedorenko, Ziv M. Williams