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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		A naturalistic approach to studying the meaning of language
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-06-09 19:00:00
	Description:		How might your brain respond to a word spoken in a sentence, rather than alone or without meaningful context? Rather than looking at how the brain responds to single words, neuroscientist Alexander Huth of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to create a more natural environment to study semantics, or the meaning of language. "We call this a “naturalistic” approach to this kind of experiment, where instead of…showing people single words or single sentences, we’re just showing them a continuous narrative, a full story, as language is used. And that has certain advantages in that we see sort of how the brain actually works when you’re understanding language." With these conditions, the researchers then built models able to predict brain activity, and tested them by playing unfamiliar radio stories for the subjects. "It turns out that our models, based on semantics, predict really really well in a bunch of brain areas." Huth and his team are currently looking into other nuances of language and the human brain, such as whether the response is different when it comes to speaking versus hearing.
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