By Kate Rix
Perhaps as many as 80% of the words in the English language are considered to have multiple meanings, yet toddlers learn to differentiate between bottle caps and baseball caps and, more subtly, between being right (correct) and the direction right.
Examples like that on how the brain processes language are what Northeastern University associate psychology professor Jonathan Peelle writes about in his new book, “The Neuroscience of Language.” The book caters to a general audience and provides a wealth of facts and rabbit holes for further reading.
Peelle researches how the brain supports communication, which he defines broadly as “transferring ideas from one brain to another.” In the book, he follows the chain of communication from speaker to listener and describes the fundamentals of auditory processing. He addresses other modes, too, including gestures and sign language.
His goal was to write a book that would appeal to students and other readers regardless of previous knowledge.
“I had the strong sense that a good introductory book in the field of language neuroscience was missing,” Peelle said. “The existing textbooks didn’t cover enough of the brain, or enough of background on cognitive neuroscience, to be an appropriate one-stop introduction. I also felt most of the existing textbooks were at too advanced of a level to be engaging with new undergraduate students.”
Peelle breaks with textbook-writing tradition and includes robust footnotes (rather than parenthetical citations). He hopes this will make the book approachable to different readers — both those who want the basics and those who want to dive deeper into more detail and tangents.
