The brain processes words almost as fast as pictures

[New Sancai Compilation and First Release] Text messages can deliver information quickly, but a new study shows that the human brain can keep up with the barrage of messages.

Researchers report that the brain can detect the basic language structure of short sentences in about 150 milliseconds, about as fast as the blink of an eye.

"Our experiments suggest that the brain's language understanding system may be able to perceive language like a visual scene, quickly grasping its essence at a glance," said lead researcher Liina Pylkkanen, a professor in NYU's Department of Linguistics.

Essentially, words or images are received and processed much faster than anything someone says to someone, researchers say.

"The human brain's language processing capabilities may be much faster than we thought," Pilkanen told a news conference. "In the time it takes to hear a syllable, the brain can actually detect the structure of a short sentence."

Researchers say the rise of email, followed by text messaging and social media, has facilitated the rapid and distributed consumption of information. Text messages are constantly flashed to people through mobile phone notifications and online platforms.

"This shift clearly demonstrates that our brains are capable of not only processing fast messages instinctively, but also making quick decisions based on those messages—like whether to keep or delete an email, or how to respond to a brief social media update." Pilkanen explained.

"But how well do we understand these rapid messages and how do our brains manage them?" Pilkanen said. "The fact that our brains can, at least to some extent, grasp the meaning of this rapid information at a glance, may reveal something fundamental about the processing potential of the language system."

The studies, published Oct. 23 in Science Advances and the Journal of Neuroscience, show that the area of the brain used for language understanding, the left temporal cortex, is the fastest at distinguishing between simple three-word sentences and Unstructured word list.

"This speed suggests that sentence comprehension at first glance may be similar to the rapid perception of a visual scene, rather than the slower, stepwise process we associate with spoken language," Pilkanen said. "The time it takes for people to hear a syllable In the required amount of time, the brain can actually detect the structure of a three-word sentence."

The researchers noted that the left temporal cortex is able to quickly identify sentence fragments, even if they contain grammatical errors such as "nurse cleans mouth" or do not appear to make any sense.

"This suggests that these signals reflect the detection of basic phrase structure, but not necessarily other aspects of grammar or meaning," said lead researcher Jacqueline Fallon, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado.

Related research also shows that the brain can also quickly correct small errors in phrase structure, such as swapping two adjacent words to say "all cats are beautiful."

Nigel Flower, a graduate student at New York University, said that such errors reduce the brain's ability to react quickly, but the brain appears to "correct" such errors within 400 milliseconds and process the segment as if it were It's completely grammatical.

"This shows that the brain can not only quickly recognize phrase structure, but also automatically correct small errors," Flower said in a news release. "This explains why readers often miss small errors—their brains have corrected them internally."

(Compiled by: Wang Jimin)

(Editor: Jiang Qiming)

(Source of the article: Compiled and published by New Sancai)