An interventional study of Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring in Language and Epilepsy, sponsored by Massachusetts General Hospital. Recruiting at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 85 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-05-07.
Sponsored by Massachusetts General Hospital · Not applicable, Interventional, and Basic science
Language is a signature human cognitive skill, but the precise computations that support language understanding remain unknown. This study aims to combine high-quality human neural data obtained through intracranial recordings with advances in computational modeling of human cognition to shed light on the construction and understanding of speech.
The neural architecture of language is the foundation for the highest form of human interaction. Prior work has identified a network of frontal and temporal brain areas that selectively support language processing, but the precise computations that underlie our ability to extract meaning from sequences of words have remained unknown. The standard approaches in human cognitive neuroscience lack the spatial and temporal resolution necessary for precise comparisons to computational models. To bridge this gap in knowledge, neural responses to language stimuli will be collected from epileptic patients undergoing intracranial monitoring. Overall, these data will be used to identify cortical maps of different linguistic manipulations and to better understand properties of the human language network.
243 studies on the registry are indexed under Language; 76 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 40 is below the median of 65 across 158 interventional studies indexed under Language.
Browse Language studies →Massachusetts General Hospital is the lead sponsor of 2,586 studies on the registry; 447 are open to participants now.
Of its 222 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 168 (76%) have results posted.
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Exclusion Criteria:
Underlined terms in the criteria open these too. Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Before you join, the study team explains what taking part involves — its purpose, what happens, the risks and possible benefits — and answers your questions, so you can decide freely. Consent is usually recorded on a form (the informed consent form, ICF) signed by you or, where the law allows, by someone legally authorised to decide for you.
You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
Informed consent
Before you join, the study team explains what taking part involves — its purpose, what happens, the risks and possible benefits — and answers your questions, so you can decide freely. Consent is usually recorded on a form (the informed consent form, ICF) signed by you or, where the law allows, by someone legally authorised to decide for you.
You can keep asking questions during the study, you are told of new information that matters, and you can choose to leave at any time.
Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Patients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy undergoing intracranial monitoring involving the left cerebral hemisphere.
Other: Behavioral tasks during intracranial monitoring
Participants will listen to sentences and stories while neural data are recorded through electrodes placed for clinical purposes.
Cortical maps of linguistic responses
By using sEEG intracranial recordings of the brain, EEG power in frequency bands will reflect cortical maps of responses to different linguistic manipulations, informing the functional organization of the human language system. Power is measured in arbitrary units; higher power reflects greater activity at the investigated frequency.
Time frame: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Neural time-courses during naturalistic language comprehension
Time-courses of neural response to language across diverse parts of the language network. These data will be used to predict across-time variation in response strength from the properties of linguistic input.
Time frame: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Brain scores for diverse artificial neural network (ANN) language models
Human neural data will be compared to ANN language models to test how well these models predict human responses to language and why. There are no minimum or maximum scores. Higher values mean better model predictivity (i.e., a better match between model representations and neural responses).
Time frame: Throughout intracranial monitoring period, up to approximately 10 days
Plan to share: No
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