Some people find it useful to talk through their problems — but language isn’t necessary for logical reasoning, cognitive neuroscientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research say. In research published this week in the journal PNAS, researchers led by MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences Evelina Fedorenko have shown that people can […]
Read More
The brain’s 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 […]
Read More
Millions of students nationwide use text-supplemented audiobooks, learning tools that are thought to help those who struggle with reading keep up in the classroom. A new study from scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research finds that many students do benefit from the audiobooks, gaining new vocabulary through the stories they hear. But study […]
Read More
Growing up in the village of Kewa — located between Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico — William Pacheco, a member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo, learned the value of his language, its history, and the traditions it carries. “We speak Keres, a language isolate found in seven villages and communities in central New Mexico,” […]
Read More
The 2026 Times Higher Education World University Ranking has ranked MIT first in three subject categories: Arts and Humanities, Business and Economics, and Social Sciences, repeating the Institute’s top spot in the same subjects in 2025. The Times Higher Education World University Ranking is an annual publication of university rankings by Times Higher Education, a leading British […]
Read More
The ability to use language to communicate is one of things that makes us human. At MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, scientists led by Evelina Fedorenko have defined an entire network of areas within the brain dedicated to this ability, which work together when we speak, listen, read, write, or sign. Much of the […]
Read More