"In their classic 1998 textbook on cognitive neuroscience, Michael Gazzaniga, Richard Ivry, and George Mangun made a sobering observation: there was no clear mapping between how we process language and what was happening in our brains. Fast forward to today, and the landscape has changed dramatically. We now have a much more sophisticated understanding of language's neural architecture—not just the basic abilities of speaking and understanding, but the intricate computational machinery that makes human communication possible.

Although there is still much to learn, the progress has been astounding. Consider the figure here, for example, which shows the best overall model we had of the neural architecture of language in 1998—a model that hadn’t improved much since the 1800s—compared to what we can assemble today. I am honored to have witnessed these advances firsthand and played a small part in what the field has accomplished."

Continue reading: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wired-for-words/202511/wired-for-words-understanding-language-and-the-brain