Haolun LUO

Exactly how I feel !

I'm very pleased to share our latest study:
‘Emergence of Language in the Developing Brain’,
by L Evanson, P Bourdillon et al:
- Paper: ai.meta.com/research/pub...
- Blog: ai.meta.com/blog/meta-fa...
- Thread below 👇

This is amazing!

A unified acoustic-to-speech-to-language embedding space captures the neural basis of natural language processing in everyday conversations - Nature Human Behaviour This study links acoustic, speech and linguistic data with brain activity during real-life conversations to create a model that predicts neural responses during speech with high accuracy.

Goldstein et al. link acoustic, speech, and linguistic data with brain activity during real-life conversations to create a model that predicts neural responses during speech with high accuracy.
https://www.nature.c...

The shared genetic architecture and evolution of human language and musical rhythm - Nature Human Behaviour Using a battery of statistical tools, Alagöz et al. examine the genetic overlap between dyslexia and rhythm impairment and shed light on how the genome influences the neural bases of human language an...

In the Feb 2025 issue of @naturehumbehav.bsky.social, we integrate data from largescale genome scans of dyslexia & rhythm skills, as a novel way to study biological overlaps between human traits related to language & musicality. Just one part of the excellent PhD work of @gokberkalagoz.bsky.social.🧪

Human Genetics: The Evolving Story of FOXP2 FOXP2 mutations cause a speech and language disorder, raising interest in potential roles of this gene in human evolution. A new study re-evaluates genomic variation at the human FOXP2 locus but finds...

I often see misunderstandings & confusion (in media but also scientific literature) over what studies of the FOXP2 gene can & cannot tell us about human evolution. Here's a short commentary I wrote a few years ago for @currentbiology.bsky.social with aim of clarifying for a general readership. 🧬🗣️🧪

Thank you!

Thank you so much for your kind words and support! I'm really grateful for your guidance throughout this project.

Key findings:
✅ The left IFG shows robust language selectivity by age 2
✅ Right hemisphere language regions exhibit a more gradual development
✅ We observe a double dissociation between language and cognitive control regions early on (4/)

We used fNIRS with an individual functional channel of interest approach @lindseypowell.bsky.social to investigate neural responses in both toddlers (2–4yo) and adults during language and cognitive tasks (localizer tasks designed by @evfedorenko.bsky.social ) . (3/)

We ask two core questions:
1️⃣ Does language-selective response emerge early in development?
2️⃣ Are language and domain-general networks dissociated in early childhood? (2/)

Functional Specialization for Language Processing in Inferior Frontal Regions During Early Childhood: Evidence from functional near-infrared spectroscopy individual functional channels of interest app... Early language acquisition represents a fundamental achievement in cognitive development, yet the neural mechanisms underlying this process remain debated. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy ...

New preprint! 🧠🚀

Our study dives into how toddlers’ brains start to specialize for language—revealing that by age 2, the left inferior frontal region already shows adult-like language selectivity.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thank you for sharing!