ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

Home → Health → Mind & Brain

That urge to complete other people’s sentences? Turns out the brain has its own Auto Correct

In the hippocampus -- which is weird, because we didn't think it had anything to do with talking.

Alexandru MicubyAlexandru Micu
November 28, 2016 - Updated on November 29, 2016
in Mind & Brain, News
A A
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterSubmit to Reddit

The hippocampus might have a much more central role to play in language and speech than we’ve ever suspected, a team of US neuroscientists claims. They examined what happens in people’s brains when they finish someone else’s sentence.

Conversation
Image credits Isa Karakus / Pixabay.

Do you ever get that urge to blurt out the last word of somebody else’s sentence? Happens to me all the time. And it seems scientists do it too because a team led by senior researcher at the Donders Centre for Cognition and Radboud University Medical Centre Vitoria Piai looked into the brains of 12 epileptic patients to make heads and tails of the habit. What they’ve found flies against everything we currently know about how memory and language interact in our brains.

The 12 patients were taking part in a separate study trying to understand their unique patterns of brain activity. Each one of their brains was monitored with a set of electrodes. Piai and her team told the participants a series of six-syllable (but incomplete) sentences, “she came in here with the…” or “he locked the door with the…” for example. After the sentence was read out to them the researchers held up a card with the answer printed on it, all the while monitoring how the patients’ hippocampi — on their non-epileptic side of the brain — responded.

When the missing word was obvious, ten out of the twelve subjects showed bursts of synchronised theta waves in the hippocampus, a process indicative of memory association.

“The hippocampus started building up rhythmic theta activity that is linked to memory access and memory processing,” said Robert Knight from the Department of Psychology, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley and co-author of the paper.

But when the answer wasn’t so straightforward, their hippocampi ramped up even more as it tried (without success) to find the correct word — like an engine revving up with the clutched pulled down.

The original auto correct

“[The results] showed that when you record directly from the human hippocampal region, as the sentence becomes more constraining, the hippocampus becomes more active, basically predicting what is going to happen.”

Just like the auto correct feature replaces a more unusual word the first time you use it but adapts over time to not only stop replacing it, but also starts filling it in for you, the findings suggest that our minds try to fill blanks in dialogue drawing from our memory stores of language and the interlocutor’s particularities of speech, linking memory and language.

“Despite the fact that the hippocampal area of the medial part of the temporal lobe is well known to be linked to spatial and verbal memory in humans, the two fields have been like ships running in the fog, unaware that the other ship is there,” Knight added.

This would mean that the hippocampus plays a much more important role in language, previously thought to be the domain of the cortex — though right now, the team doesn’t know exactly how this link works. Because of this, the team hopes to continue their work to better understand the bridge between memory and language, which will hopefully give us a better understanding of the brain itself.

RelatedPosts

It might be easier to tell a lie in a foreign language — relatively speaking
How your brain puts the “where” and “when” in memories
Each language you speak in alters your perception of time, study finds
The brains of people with excellent general knowledge are more efficiently wired

Another implication would be that, because at least part of the act of speaking is handled by the hippocampus and not the cortex, language might not be so human-only as we’d like to believe.

The full paper “Direct brain recordings reveal hippocampal rhythm underpinnings of language processing” has been published in the journal PNAS.

Tags: brainhippocampuslanguagespeechTalking

ShareTweetShare
Alexandru Micu

Alexandru Micu

Stunningly charming pun connoisseur, I have been fascinated by the world around me since I first laid eyes on it. Always curious, I'm just having a little fun with some very serious science.

Related Posts

Mind & Brain

Scientists Just Built a Mini Human Nervous System That Can Process Pain in a Dish in World First

byTibi Puiu
1 month ago
Mind & Brain

A Dutch 17-Year-Old Forgot His Native Language After Knee Surgery and Spoke Only English Even Though He Had Never Used It Outside School

byRupendra Brahambhatt
1 month ago
Health

Your Brain Hits a Metabolic Cliff at 43. Here’s What That Means

byTibi Puiu
1 month ago
Mind & Brain

Why Can’t We Remember Our Lives as Babies? Our Earliest Memories May Still be There

byTibi Puiu
2 months ago

Recent news

AI and Brain Scans Reveal Why You Struggle to Recognize Faces of People of Other Races

May 13, 2025

Mysterious Stone Circles on Remote Scottish Island May Have Been Home to Humans Before Stonehenge Existed

May 12, 2025

People Spend $12,000 to Tattoo Their Eyes and Change Their Color but the Risks Are Still Unknown

May 12, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Editorial Policy
  • Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
  • How we review products
  • Contact

© 2007-2025 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Science News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Space
  • Future
  • Features
    • Natural Sciences
    • Physics
      • Matter and Energy
      • Quantum Mechanics
      • Thermodynamics
    • Chemistry
      • Periodic Table
      • Applied Chemistry
      • Materials
      • Physical Chemistry
    • Biology
      • Anatomy
      • Biochemistry
      • Ecology
      • Genetics
      • Microbiology
      • Plants and Fungi
    • Geology and Paleontology
      • Planet Earth
      • Earth Dynamics
      • Rocks and Minerals
      • Volcanoes
      • Dinosaurs
      • Fossils
    • Animals
      • Mammals
      • Birds
      • Fish
      • Amphibians
      • Reptiles
      • Invertebrates
      • Pets
      • Conservation
      • Animal facts
    • Climate and Weather
      • Climate change
      • Weather and atmosphere
    • Health
      • Drugs
      • Diseases and Conditions
      • Human Body
      • Mind and Brain
      • Food and Nutrition
      • Wellness
    • History and Humanities
      • Anthropology
      • Archaeology
      • History
      • Economics
      • People
      • Sociology
    • Space & Astronomy
      • The Solar System
      • Sun
      • The Moon
      • Planets
      • Asteroids, meteors & comets
      • Astronomy
      • Astrophysics
      • Cosmology
      • Exoplanets & Alien Life
      • Spaceflight and Exploration
    • Technology
      • Computer Science & IT
      • Engineering
      • Inventions
      • Sustainability
      • Renewable Energy
      • Green Living
    • Culture
    • Resources
  • Videos
  • Reviews
  • About Us
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Editorial policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2025 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.