Featured
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Correspondence |
Three reasons why AI doesn’t model human language
- Johan J. Bolhuis
- , Stephen Crain
- & Andrea Moro
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Career Feature |
Communication barriers for a Deaf PhD student meant risking burnout
Megan Majocha is gearing up to complete her PhD. But developing a sign-language lexicon to help her succeed took an immense toll during her scientific research.
- Jyoti Madhusoodanan
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News |
This AI learnt language by seeing the world through a baby’s eyes
A neural network that taught itself to recognize objects using the filmed experiences of a single infant could offer new insights into how humans learn.
- Elizabeth Gibney
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Article
| Open Access
Single-neuronal elements of speech production in humans
Neuropixels recordings from the language-dominant prefrontal cortex reveal a structured organization of planned words, an encoding cascade of phonetic representations by prefrontal neurons in humans and a cellular process that could support the production of speech.
- Arjun R. Khanna
- , William Muñoz
- & Ziv M. Williams
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News & Views |
From the archive: the royal ‘we’, and an experiment in telegraphy
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Article
| Open Access
Large-scale single-neuron speech sound encoding across the depth of human cortex
High-density single-neuron recordings show diverse tuning for acoustic and phonetic features across layers in human auditory speech cortex.
- Matthew K. Leonard
- , Laura Gwilliams
- & Edward F. Chang
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News & Views |
Ancient DNA uncovers past migrations in California
Genomic data from ancient humans who lived up to 7,400 years ago, sampled from across California and Mexico, unveil patterns of migration that could explain how some Indigenous languages spread in parts of North America.
- Alan Izarraras-Gomez
- & Diego Ortega-Del Vecchyo
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News & Views |
From the archive: lost in translation, and fascinating frogs
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Career Column |
How my broken elbow made the ableism of computer programming personal
Amy Ko’s accident gave her an insight into the degree to which her discipline caters mainly to non-disabled people, reinspiring her to invent more accessible programming languages.
- Amy Ko
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News |
Scientists who don’t speak fluent English get little help from journals, study finds
An analysis of hundreds of publications finds limited efforts to accommodate scientists who are not native English speakers.
- Mariana Lenharo
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News Q&A |
How language-generation AIs could transform science
Shobita Parthasarathy warns that software designed to summarize, translate and write like humans might exacerbate distrust in science.
- Richard Van Noorden
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News & Views |
Tracking the origin of Transeurasian languages
A triangulation of linguistic, archaeological and genetic data suggests that the Transeurasian language family originated in a population of grain farmers in China around 9,000 years ago, and that agriculture underpinned its spread.
- Peter Bellwood
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News |
African languages to get more bespoke scientific terms
Many words common to science have never been written in African languages. Now, researchers from across Africa are changing that.
- Sarah Wild
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News & Views |
From the archive
Nature’s pages feature a 1921 look at the origin of some English place-names, and an 1871 report of a polar expedition.
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News |
From ACTH to DNA: the rise of acronyms in research
More than one million abbreviations have been used in biomedical papers since 1950 — but just a fraction appear regularly.
- Giorgia Guglielmi
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News |
Has Twitter just had its saddest fortnight ever?
A tool that quantifies global happiness on social media recorded an unprecedented dip in mood starting in May.
- Giuliana Viglione
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Research Highlight |
Babies benefit when parents are fluent in baby talk
Formal instruction in ‘parentese’ might seem unnecessary, but researchers find that coaching caregivers leads to chattier children.
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Books & Arts |
What makes a dictator, a guide to the apocalypse, and demythologizing language: Books in brief
Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week’s best science picks.
- Barbara Kiser
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Nature Careers Podcast |
Working Scientist podcast: Career transitions from physics to data science
Industry has long courted physicists for their data science expertise, but will this change as more undergraduates acquire these skills?
- Julie Gould
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Career Column |
Six tips for adapting to a new language and culture
Moving abroad for a career opportunity can be stressful and difficult. But there are ways to navigate the minefields.
- Lisa Liu
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Spotlight |
How one Canadian scientist is tapping into the knowledge of Indigenous communities
Jean Polfus found her research was strengthened by bringing more voices to the table.
- Brian Owens
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News & Views |
The origin and spread of the Sino-Tibetan language family
A robust computational approach with added finesse provides evidence to support the view that the Sino-Tibetan languages arose in northern China and began to split into branches about 5,900 years ago.
- Randy J. LaPolla
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News & Views |
Brain implants that let you speak your mind
A brain–computer interface device synthesizes speech using the neural signals that control lip, tongue, larynx and jaw movements, and could be a stepping stone to restoring speech function in individuals unable to speak.
- Chethan Pandarinath
- & Yahia H. Ali
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Career Feature |
How to harness the support of your local community: write with your PhD pals
Writing sessions with colleagues are a great reminder to PhD students that we’re all in it together.
- Agata Bochynska
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News |
Diverse genome study upends understanding of how language evolved
Research casts doubt on the idea that the FOXP2 gene — linked to language evolution — is special to modern humans.
- Matthew Warren
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News Q&A |
The researchers who study alien linguistics
Nature speaks to linguist Sheri Wells-Jensen who co-hosted a workshop about the challenges of communicating with extraterrestrials.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Career Column |
Write fiction to discover something new in your research
Creative writing can help you to approach your science from a completely different perspective — and boost its impact, says Amanda C. Niehaus.
- Amanda C. Niehaus
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News |
Ancient DNA offers clues to remote Pacific islands’ population puzzle
Genomic studies provide details about the complex peopling of Vanuatu — one of the last places on Earth reached by humans.
- Ewen Callaway
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Spotlight |
Neuroscience starts talking
The previously introverted discipline is opening up to collaboration.
- Andrew Curry
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News |
Language patterns reveal body's hidden response to stress
Volunteers' use of certain words predicted stress-related changes in gene expression better than their self-reported feelings.
- Jo Marchant
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News |
Baby bats crowdsource their dialects from colony members
Mothers aren’t the only ones with influence over what the young mammals learn.
- Rachael Lallensack
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Books & Arts |
History of technology: How China sidestepped QWERTY
Raja Adal investigates the 150-year history of a typewriter able to reproduce thousands of characters.
- Raja Adal
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Books & Arts |
Books in brief
Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.
- Barbara Kiser
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Books & Arts |
Cryptography: The codes that got away
Andrew Robinson takes on a compendium of past and current ciphers ripe for decoding.
- Andrew Robinson
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News & Views |
A social spin on language analysis
Understanding the prevalence and impact of personal attacks in online discussions is challenging. A method that combines crowdsourcing and machine learning provides a way forward, but caveats must be considered.
- Carolyn Penstein Rosé
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Comment |
Antibiotic resistance has a language problem
A failure to use words clearly undermines the global response to antimicrobials' waning usefulness. Standardize terminology, urge Marc Mendelson and colleagues.
- Marc Mendelson
- , Manica Balasegaram
- & Mike Sharland
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Books & Arts |
Language: Points, grunts and speaks
Mark Pagel weighs up a study claiming that the origins of human language are rooted in gesture.
- Mark Pagel
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News |
Bat banter is surprisingly nuanced
The racket that Egyptian fruit bats make when jammed next to each other contains information about food, sleeping arrangements and mating attempts.
- Ramin Skibba
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News |
Geneticists seek keys to bat vocalizations
Project to sequence the DNA of more than 1,000 species seeks to reveal how bats learn to communicate.
- Ramin Skibba
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Books & Arts |
Cryptography: Calligraphic conundrum
Andrew Robinson relishes a new volume on a work that has long defied decoders.
- Andrew Robinson
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News & Views |
Sound and meaning in the world's languages
The sounds of words that represent particular meanings are usually thought to vary arbitrarily across languages. However, a large-scale study of languages finds that some associations between sound and meaning are widespread.
- W. Tecumseh Fitch
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Research Highlights |
Same sounds for similar meanings
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Article |
Natural speech reveals the semantic maps that tile human cerebral cortex
It has been proposed that language meaning is represented throughout the cerebral cortex in a distributed ‘semantic system’, but little is known about the details of this network; here, voxel-wise modelling of functional MRI data collected while subjects listened to natural stories is used to create a detailed atlas that maps representations of word meaning in the human brain.
- Alexander G. Huth
- , Wendy A. de Heer
- & Jack L. Gallant
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Research Highlights |
Languages have common structure
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Social Selection |
“A field of crop scientists” — Twitter delivers collective nouns for researchers
The hashtag #scientistherdnames began with a blog post about the lack of group terms for scientists.
- Dalmeet Singh Chawla
First ‘bilingual’ brain-reading device decodes Spanish and English words
Podcast: Squishy sea creatures, evolving verbs, and Earth's microbiome
The Brain Dictionary