{"id":248705,"date":"2026-05-18T15:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/18\/language-development-in-the-brain-mit-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T15:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T19:25:08","slug":"language-development-in-the-brain-mit-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/18\/language-development-in-the-brain-mit-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Language development in the brain | MIT News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Language development in the brain | MIT News<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/language-development-brain-0518<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-18 15:15:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: news.mit.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

The brain\u2019s capacity to use and understand language expands rapidly in the first years of life, as babies start to make sense of the words they hear and eventually begin to piece together sentences of their own. The language-processing parts of the brain that make this possible continue to evolve in older children, as they expand their vocabularies and learn to use language more flexibly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MIT brain researchers have captured snapshots of the developing language-processing network in brain scans of hundreds of children and adolescents. Their data, reported May 16 in the journal Nature Communications, show that the network continues to mature, becoming better integrated and increasingly responsive until around age 16. But they also found that a key feature of the adult language network is established early on: its localization in the left side of the brain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Language lateralization\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is well known that using language is mostly the job of the left hemisphere. As adults, we call on the language-processing regions there when we read, write, speak, or listen to others talk. But there was some question as to whether this left lateralization is established early in life, or might instead emerge as the language network matures, with both sides of the brain contributing to language in childhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To find out, researchers needed to see young brains in action \u2014 and several MIT labs had collected exactly the right kind of data. Groups led by Evelina Fedorenko, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences; John Gabrieli, the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology; and Rebecca Saxe, the John W. Jarve (1978) Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, teamed up to share brain scans from children, adolescents, and adults and compare how their brains responded to language. Fedorenko, Gabrieli, and Saxe are also investigators at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In studies aimed at better understanding a variety…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language development in the brain | MIT News https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/language-development-brain-0518 Publish Date: 2026-05-18 15:15:00 Source Domain:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":248706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/202605\/mit-mcgovern-brain-language.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[101],"class_list":["post-248705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248707,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248705\/revisions\/248707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}