New Brain Map Indicates Spots Where Words Are Stored Inside Your Head

By R. Siva Kumar - 02 May '16 09:15AM

There is one interesting and interactive map of the brain that has been published online. Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, have put up the whole brain, enabling you to click on the map and locate different types of words, right from "social" and "spatial," to "violent" and "visual". The map helps you to identify where the words are stored.

To construct the maps, the team first exposed seven different participants to a two-hour The Moth Radio Hour show. The brains were scanned with the help of functional MRI. They showed how the oxygen levels in the brain's blood network altered, which helped to disclose the active part of the brain.

Scientists then compared the perceived brain activity to the types of words that the participants heard at that point of time. The team could then build 12 categories of words that appeared all over the brain.

The map puts together information from six of the participants, with words in more than 100 areas of the brain and spanning both the left and right hemispheres. The left side of the brain is marked out to be used for the processing of language.

Various words are seen in different spots, and a single point could be related to multiple words too. Different spots light up as we process language, which helps to translate the meanings of every word.

The map can help us to understand what patients of Alzheimer's are thinking just going by the fMRI data. It can also help us to build a "language decoder" to help those who are not able to communicate with others.