The ability to record responses of single neurons in awake humans allows us to understand the neurocomputational foundations of language. We recorded responses of neural populations in hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex during speech listening and during interactive conversations. We find that single neurons in both regions use a dense code with mixed selectivity to encode both speaker identity and word meanings, consistent with the principles of vectorial coding. Meanwhile we find that morphosyntactic processes correspond to specific and consistent vectorial rotations.

Bio: Ben Hayden received his Ph.D. In Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley in 2005 studying the neural basis of working memory and attention, and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Duke University until 2011. In 2023, he moved to the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is a Full Professor and McNair Scholar.  His work has been supported by the Sloan Foundation, the Klingenstein-Simons Foundation, the Brain and Behavior Research foundation, Templeton Foundation, NSF, NIMH, and NIDA.

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