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About the guest: Ev Fedorenko is a neuroscientist at MIT. Her lab studies the neural basis of language, speech, and thought in the human brain.

*Full episode available free on Substack & YouTube.

Episode summary: Nick and Dr. Fedorenko discuss: the relationship between language and thought; the extent to which language is for thinking vs. communication; Noam Chomsky’s Universal Grammar theory; Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; language acquisition & language learning; language networks in the brain; neuroanatomy & brain lateralization; large language models (LLMs) & machine intelligence; and more.

Related episodes:

• M&M #141: Evolution, Language, Domestication, Symbolic Cognition, AI & Large Language Models
• M&M #20: Language, Symbolic Cognition, Evolution, Origins of the Human Mind | Terrence Deacon

*This content is never meant to serve as medical advice.

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