Cognitive Neuroscience Perspectives on Language Acquisition and Processing

Abstract

The earliest investigations of the neural implementation of language started with examining patients with various types of disorders and underlying brain damage. The advent of neuroimaging tools in the twentieth century drastically changed the landscape of the field of the (cognitive) neuroscience of language, expanding the variety and depth of research questions one could ask without being confined to specific populations. Today we have better insights regarding the potential (neuro)cognitive correlates of language and an improved understanding of the neurocognitive consequences of language(s) in the mind/brain. And yet the linking hypotheses between neuroscience on the one hand and language on the other do not offer the level of detail needed to move the field from correlational to explanatory [1]. Thus, any further work that takes a more fine-grained look at both language processing and its neurocognitive substrates is warranted and welcome.