Abstract
Human language can convey a broad range of entities and relationships through processes that are highly complex and structured. All of these processes are happening somewhere inside our brains, and one way of precising these locations is through the usage of the functional magnetic resonance imaging. The great obstacle when experimenting with complex processes, however, is the need to control them while still having data that are representative of reality. When it comes to language, an interactional phenomenon in its nature, and that integrates a wide range of processes, a question emerges concerning how compatible it is with the current experimental methodology, and how much of it is lost in order to fit the controlled experimental environment. Because of its particularities, the fMRI technique imposes several limitations to the expression of language during experimentation. This paper discusses the different conceptions of language as a research object, the hardships of combining this object with the requirements of fMRI, and what are the current perspectives for this field of research.
Highlights
Attempts to discover the dwelling of language inside the human body can be traced as far back as Ancient Egypt and find their most renowned representatives in Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke in the 19th century [1, 2]
When it comes to language, the truth is that the current models are still not complex enough [3, 8]
Current methodology for fMRI is careful about the machine setting, about the software for data analysis, and about the proposition of anatomical and physiological correlations; it may be less concerned about linguistic context and about the theoretical linguistic references for the phenomena the experiments claim to describe
Summary
Attempts to discover the dwelling of language inside the human body can be traced as far back as Ancient Egypt and find their most renowned representatives in Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke in the 19th century [1, 2]. Because the living brain cannot be shut down for investigation, this real-time access of cerebral activity leads to the observation of several functions simultaneously, and to the identification of several different brain areas, regardless of them being crucial or not to the targeted function [3] When it comes to language, the truth is that the current models are still not complex enough [3, 8]. Current methodology for fMRI is careful about the machine setting, about the software for data analysis, and about the proposition of anatomical and physiological correlations; it may be less concerned about linguistic context and about the theoretical linguistic references for the phenomena the experiments claim to describe This tendency for weakly defining some concepts from the Human Sciences is not new and has been frequently debated. The aim of this article is to discuss the current limitations of fMRI experimentation with language, the hardships of working with ill-defined objects, and to which measure linguistic theory can collaborate in both developing better methods for neuroimaging studies, and in refining our treatment of language as a scientific object, in isolation and in combination with fMRI
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