Ground-Breaking UC Word Cloud Map Could Help 'Broken Brains'

BERKELEY (CBS SF) – Researchers at the University Of California-Berkeley have developed a word cloud map of the cerebral cortex, a breakthrough they hope may someday help victims of stroke or other maladies that impact speech.

The map displays the regions of the cortex as they respond to certain words.

The breakthrough was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday and is the work of UC Berkeley neuroscientist Jack Gallant and researchers Alex Huth, Wendy de Heer, Frederic Theunissen and Thomas Griffiths.

Using funding from the National Science Foundation, the team used an MRI to record neural activity of study volunteers as they listened to stories from the "Moth Radio Hour."

The study found that at least one-third of the brain's cerebral cortex, including areas dedicated to high-level cognition, is involved in language processing and that different people share similar language maps.

"The similarity in semantic topography across different subjects is really surprising," study lead author Alex Huth, a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at UC Berkeley, said in a university news release.

Among the future uses for the maps could be to give voice to those who cannot speak -- victims of stroke or brain damage or motor neuron diseases such as ALS.

"In order to heal people who have diseased or broken brains or to apply the knowledge we get from neuroscience to build better computers, we need to understand the brain at a fundamental level," Gallant said.