Dr. Evelina Fedorenko is a cognitive neuroscientist at MIT and one of the world’s leading experts on how the brain processes language.

She’s mapped the brain’s language system more precisely than anyone, proving it’s a specialized network — not shared with general thought — and that our inner monologue? It might be an illusion. Now, her lab is using large language models like GPT to predict and even control neural activity in human language regions, revealing uncanny parallels between artificial and biological intelligence.

Expect to learn why you don’t actually think in words, how language and thought are distinct systems in the brain, why GPT-style models light up the same brain regions as human speech, what “drive” and “suppress” sentences reveal about how we process meaning, how hyperpolyglots learn 20+ languages using the same neural real estate, how bilingualism changes your brain, what language does that other mammals never evolved, how AI could reshape neuroscience research, whether machines could ever be conscious — and much more…

Timestamps:

03:05 The Surprising Rise of LLM Technology

08:06 Neuroscience and AI: Uncovering the Brain's Mysteries 13:01 Exploring Model and Brain Similarities

18:06 Functional Specialization in AI and Human Brains

23:04 Convergence of Models: Approximating Reality

26:01 Future Directions in Neuroscience and AI

34:24 Exploring Innateness in Cognitive Development

35:58 Driving and Suppressing Sentences in Language Processing

39:54 Super Stimuli: Language System Preferences

42:37 Language Processing Across Development

46:16 Aphantasia and Inner Speech

52:57 Subjectivity of Inner Experience

57:57 The Brains of Hyperpolyglots

58:32 The Language Processing of Polyglots

01:01:49 Comparing Early Multilinguals and Late Language Learners

01:03:21 Understanding Language Activation in the Brain 01:05:24 Implications for Language Learning and Education 01:08:49 The Intersection of Language and Self-Identity 01:13:27 Consciousness and AI: A Philosophical Inquiry

01:18:18 Human Behavior vs. AI: The Greater Concern

01:19:48 Future Research Directions in Language and Reasoning

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