Interests can modulate language processing in children's brains, according to a new MIT study. The approach paves the way for personalized brain research.
A recent study from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research shows how interests can modulate language processing in children's brains and paves the way for personalized brain research. The paper, which appears in Imaging Neuroscience, was conducted in the lab of MIT professor and McGovern Institute investigator John Gabrieli, and led by senior author Anila D'Mello, a recent McGovern postdoc who is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Texas at Dallas. "Traditional studies give subjects identical stimuli to avoid confounding the results," says Gabrieli, who is the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. "However, our research tailored stimuli to each child's interest, eliciting stronger — and more consistent — activity patterns in the brain's language regions across individuals." This work unveils a new paradigm that challenges current methods and shows how personalization can be a powerful strategy in neuroscience. The paper's co-first authors are Halie Olson, a postdoc at the McGovern Institute, and Kristina Johnson PhD '21, an assistant professor at Northeastern University and former doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab. "Our research integrates participants' lived experiences into the study design," says Johnson. "This approach not only enhances the validity of our findings, but also captures the diversity of individual perspectives, often overlooked in traditional research." Taking interest into account When it comes to language, our interests are like operators behind the switchboard. They guide what we talk about and who we talk to. Research suggests that interests are also potent motivators and can help improve…