Your brain has its own World Wide Web of words

“Salita lang yan” (those are just words) is what we hear ourselves or others say when we want to separate from the words we utter. When we do this (and we do this routinely), we imply that words are mere accessories – invisible trinkets, utensils and artillery that sparkle, dish or shoot out from our mouths into the world to insist that we are here and that we matter.

But while the universe is made up of atoms, our lives, especially our interconnected lives, are wired with language. Our whole brain is marinated in the effects of words on our being and I mean that literally.

To say that language is a mere accessory is like saying your head is just something nature grabbed for you to wear but that you would be perfectly fine walking around headless.

We have come a long way now since 1861 when neurosurgeon Paul Broca identified a lesion in the brain that make people have difficulty completing sentences, whether verbal or written. This was followed 10 years later by the discovery of a neurologist, Carl Wernicke, of a part that is responsible for understanding language. He concluded this after finding lesions in a part of the brain of patients who spoke and wrote in complete, yet nonsensical sentences. Since then, work has progressed on how language is processed by our brains, implicating parts other than the usual suspects like the Broca and Wernicke areas.

And in the last 20 years or so, brain imaging techniques have become increasingly handy in investigating what happens to people’s brains when we are engaged in language. Among these, studies have shown that emotional attacks to someone, which could come in the form of words, cause real pain to the latter. Researchers know this because they saw the same brain part for physical pain light up when someone is emotionally hurt.  

Neuroscientists have also been confirming their suspicions that the words we use, whether in speech or in writing, register deep and wide across our brains. They found that words make their mark not only in the “usual” language-associated areas like Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas, but they also form part of the brain’s own World Wide Web of words!

Take this very recent study, which for the first time mapped the human brain in terms of the meanings that the words take on for us. They looked at the brain’s cortex, the “higher” brain which is responsible for reason, logic planning and self-control.

Beyond raw emotions

Language is in the cortex because language is that very fine thing that we developed not just in order to survive but in order for our lives and relationships to matter. This is why we take on things that make our lives more than just the stretched out period where we play out our primal hunger, thirst, sex drives and the raw emotions of anger and fear which we share with other animals.

The cortex is also what we have so much more of, in terms of relative size, compared to the brains of other animals. It is that part that checks your emotions when the latter become so overpowering. It is the big brain part that tells you “you are better than that” and it is accessible by each of us from within ourselves.

In the study, the scientists scanned the cortices of the participants using a brain scanning technique called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (or fMRI) where they can see the blood flow to different areas, indicating increase or decrease in brain activity in those parts. While in the brain scanning machines, the researchers played 2 hours-worth of stories for each subject which meant that each subject listened to a total of about 25000 words with 3,000 of them as “unique” words (not a repeat). There are over a million words in the English language alone and 3,000 covers only a small portion of the English dictionary but it is clear that even with 3000 words, the reach  of words is across the entire higher brain. Imagine this study scaling up to take on the other 7,000 languages still being spoken the world!

The researchers matched the brain scans with the recording of the story so that they can see what words sent blood flow to which parts of the brain. The product that came out was an interactive site that shows your brain on words. It is a really cool map you can manipulate where you see how one word can connect to different parts of the brain in terms of the meaning they take on.

Words and murder

Alerted by another article that in this study, “murder” and its related words (“murderer”, “victim”, “punishment”, “killing”, “innocent”) really sent blood flow “gushing” in many parts of the brain, I worked the interactive brain map.

It really showed that “murder” is a word that does not rest on one bull’s eye target in the brain. “Murder” really spawned a network because our brain naturally takes it on as one with a social meaning. It is not just about the one that was killed or the one who killed. It is about us all. Remember John Donne’s “Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind”? I think my brain, in spite of being unreligious, would animate even more intensely in the Filipino version – “walang sinuman ang nabubuhay o namamatay para sa sarili lamang…”

We all live and die for each other. This study is the neuroscience version (basis) of that.

This landmark study proves even more poignantly that language is not a mere accessory unless you consider your own brain a mere accessory. Language sends blood gushing forth many parts of your one’s higher brain and this is not like a train just passing through – this blood gushing forth is “meaning.”

The study is a “semantic map” – which means there is a connection, an imprint being made by words. They are part of your mind. Words, uttered, written or read, form a deep part of who you are.

Now that we have once again established that words powerfully shape our minds and that of others’, we should take back control of our own words and be responsible for them. But if we still think words are just words, what else could we separate from who we are? And if we do that, what will be left? – Rappler.com