📋 Tender Overview
DOI
10.3030/101170179
EC signature date
22 April 2025
Start date
1 May 2025
End date
30 April 2030
Description:
Right-hemispheric language processing at the individual neuron level
Language is essential to human civilisation, shaping communication and experience. The role of the right brain in language remains debated. Evidence suggests it mirrors the left hemisphere and supports recovery after injury, but current techniques do not fully reveal the underlying mechanisms. The ERC-funded RHETORICAL project will investigate right-hemispheric language processing at the level of individual neurons and explore the interconnected cortical hubs involved in both linguistic and non-linguistic functions. It will examine how neurons and their circuits in the right hemisphere (corresponding to the left hemisphere’s language areas) contribute to language comprehension and production. The project will perform large-scale recordings from microelectrode arrays implanted in individuals with left-sided strokes to analyse right-hemispheric engagement in language functions.
Objective
Language is the bedrock of human civilization. It shapes how we connect, communicate and collaborate, and how we think, feel and experience. Language is typically viewed as a left-brain function. In contrast, the role of the right brain in language processing is unclear and heavily contested. Compelling evidence suggests that the right hemisphere harbors a language system that is mirror-symmetric to the left and contributes to the reorganization of language functions after brain injury. However, because conventional neuroimaging and non-invasive electrophysiology do not have the necessary spatiotemporal resolution, the cellular and circuit mechanisms are unknown. My key objective is to provide the first investigation of right-hemispheric language processing at single-neuron resolution with coverage of multiple interconnected cortical hubs that serve linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive functions. I will address two central questions. First, how do individual neurons, neuronal populations and their circuits in right brain regions homotopic to the left language regions contribute to our ability to comprehend and produce language My team and I will perform large-scale recordings from right-hemispheric microelectrode arrays implanted chronically in individuals with left-sided stroke that has compromised some, but not all linguistic skills. This will allow us to describe in unprecedented detail the right-hemispheric engagement in normal and impaired language functions. Second, can we target this right-sided network to drive language recovery after brain injury My team and I will engineer the investigated circuits using closed-loop neurofeedback and intracortical microstimulation to explore their potential for treating acquired disorders of language. RHETORICAL will bring together my unique expertise in neurology, neuroscience and neurotechnology to propel forward our mechan
