In his new book, “The Neuroscience of Language,” Northeastern University professor Jonathan Peelle writes about how the brain supports communication.
Perhaps as many as 80% of the words in the English language are considered to have multiple meanings, yet toddlers learn to differentiate between bottle caps and baseball caps and, more subtly, between being right (correct) and the direction right.
Examples like that on how the brain processes language are what Northeastern University associate psychology professor Jonathan Peelle writes about in his new book, “The Neuroscience of Language.” The book caters to a general audience and provides a wealth of facts and rabbit holes for further reading.
Peelle researches how the brain supports communication, which he defines broadly as “transferring ideas from one brain to another.” In the book, he follows the chain of communication from speaker to listener and describes the fundamentals of auditory processing. He addresses other modes, too, including gestures and sign language.
His goal was to write a book that would appeal to students and other readers regardless of previous knowledge.
“I had the strong sense that a good introductory book in the field of language neuroscience was missing,” Peelle said. “The existing textbooks didn’t cover enough of the brain, or enough of background on cognitive neuroscience, to be an appropriate one-stop introduction. I also felt most of the existing textbooks were at too advanced of a level to be engaging with new undergraduate students.”
Peelle breaks with textbook-writing tradition and includes robust footnotes (rather than parenthetical citations). He hopes this will make the book approachable to different readers — both those who want the basics and those who want to dive deeper into more detail and tangents.
One footnote, for example, probes the question of speaking rates and the number of words produced. While it is often assumed that women talk more than men, research shows that the number of words women speak over the course of a day is actually only negligibly higher.
In another colorful footnote about how experience affects brain development, Peelle discusses a famous “London Taxi Cab study” that found brain differences in London taxi drivers who have to negotiate complex spatial environments, linking behavior to gray matter development.
Peelle’s expertise is in spoken language and the book is abundant with illustrations (which Peelle made himself) to show the “speech chain” that links the motor nerves in the brain to the vocal muscles of the mouth, and then the sensory nerves in the listener’s ears and brain.
He also covers some language challenges, including stuttering and how strokes can affect communication. He shares interviews that he conducted, including one with a college student who has a cochlear implant and another with a stroke survivor who experienced language difficulty.
The stroke survivor, Mary, was able to regain her ability to speak and return to her job as a teacher of English as a second language. Sometimes in class, her students would need extra time to come up with the right words — a need that Mary could relate to.
“In English as a second language, time is very key,” Mary told Peelle. “I always gave them a minute to think. And while they were thinking of their answer, I was formulating in my head what I was going to say to them.”
Including personal experience like Mary’s was important to Peelle.
“These stories helped me to think about how to write the book,” Peelle said, “and I hope they help students connect abstract topics with real people.”