2016 Archive

Brain scan figure
August 12, 2016

This is your brain on sentences

What does the meaning of a word look like? Researchers have, for the first time, decoded and predicted the brain activity patterns of word meanings within sentences, and successfully predicted what the brain patterns would be for new sentences.

Cover image
June 22, 2016

What’s at stake when languages are lost?

Linguists estimate that by the end of this century, half of the 7,000 languages currently in use around the world will have vanished. Rochester scholars join the race to document the world’s linguistic diversity before it’s too late.