Saima Malik-Moraleda

What is a language? Some think math, logic and music are like natural languages, but the brain doesn't treat them as such. What about constructed languages? Here is a preprint on what we discovered in @ev_fedorenko ’s lab: tinyurl.com/2p8f8vnp

New brain/language study w/ @ev_fedorenko! We applied task-agnostic individualized functional connectomics (iFC) to the entire history of fMRI in the Fedorenko lab, parcellating nearly 1200 brains into networks based on activity fluctuations alone. doi.org/10.1101/2025.0… . 🧵

A @PNASNews study by @ev_fedorenko @saima_mm finds natural and invented languages elicit similar responses in the brain’s language-processing network. mcgovern.mit.edu/2025/03/18/to-…

Now out in PNAS! Link to the paper: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… News story by MIT News: news.mit.edu/2025/esperanto…

Now out in Cerebral Cortex! Link to the paper: doi.org/10.1093/cercor… News story by MIT News: news.mit.edu/2024/mit-study…

The Tsimane’ language divides color into blackish, reddish and whitish. But bilingual Spanish and Tsimane’ speakers are reworking this rainbow. trib.al/2djuW34

These results suggest that learning a new lang can change the concepts in your native lang. To me, these results highlight the beauty of language learning: encountering concepts in a new language that can be incorporated into our native language.

The narrowing of the conceptual space of Tsimane’ color terms upon learning Spanish (left) is also depicted by the decrease in average surprisal values for naming color chips in Tsimane’ in the bilingual vs. the monolingual group (right)

Can learning a new language change the concepts in your native language? We think so! Tsimane’ speakers use the same term for🟩&🟦. Upon learning Spanish, they use distinct 🟩🟦 terms & use other color terms more consistently. 📝 tinyurl.com/bdz6d9pb 🧵 ⬇️

Anyway, we did our best to do good science, I’m proud of our work, and I’m always happy to address criticism. It can only make science better. I would have appreciated if you had addressed your concerns to us, which I’m sure would have helped with the tone too.

Third, one could have hypothesized that generativeness (or another factor) might be critical in determining which conlangs pattern up with nat langs, in which case HighVal and Doth shld not have since it’s v hard for their speakers to come up with new sentences

Hey, @wmatchin, I can take criticism, but how about you: a) tag us so we can respond b) (optional) frame it more kindly Now, if you actually want to engage in a scientific discussion, as opposed to wanting to put a “cool” tweet out there, here’s what I have to say:

And a big thank you to our participants, who I had the pleasure to interact with, the McGovern Institute, evlab members for helping with the event (@thomashikaru), @AJB_Lane @matteo_wong @sweelos @lailaii_3 for covering the preliminary findings of this work!

A big shout out to @MayaTaliaferro for all her hard work to help it all go smoothly, as well as to other co-authors @Dedalvs PaulFrommer @mokrand1 @quothalinguist @RamseyCardwell @cassiopeiaf for all their help

What is a language? Some think math, logic and music are like natural languages, but the brain doesn't treat them as such. What about constructed languages? Here is a preprint on what we discovered in @ev_fedorenko ’s lab: tinyurl.com/2p8f8vnp