Temporal structure of natural language processing in the human brain corresponds to layered hierarchy of large language models
Large Language Models (LLMs) offer a framework for understanding language processing in the human brain. Unlike traditional models, LLMs represent words and context through layered numerical embeddings. Here, we demonstrate that LLMs' layer hierarchy aligns with the temporal dynamics of language comprehension in the brain. Using electrocorticography (ECoG) data from participants listening to a 30-minute narrative, we show that deeper LLM layers correspond to later brain activity, particularly in Broca's area and other language-related regions. We extract contextual embeddings from GPT-2 XL and Llama-2 and use linear models to predict neural responses across time. Our results reveal a strong correlation between model depth and the brain's temporal receptive window during comprehension. We also compare LLM-based predictions with symbolic approaches, highlighting the advantages of deep learning models in capturing brain dynamics. We release our aligned neural and linguistic dataset as a public benchmark to test competing theories of language processing.
Authors
- Patricia Dugan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6199-1870)
- Michael P. Brenner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5673-7947)
- Orrin Devinsky (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0044-4632)
- Zaid Zada (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3096-0059)
- Bobbi Aubrey
- Noam Siegelman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5005-4838)
- Omer Levy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7300-8191)
- Eric Ham
- Sasha Devore (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2554-1850)
- Roi Reichart (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6918-0554)
- Amir Feder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5472-1135)
- Samuel A. Nastase (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7013-5275)
- Yossi Matias (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3960-6002)
- Uri Hasson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3599-7168)
- Mariano Schain
- Adeen Flinker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1247-1283)
- Daniel Friedman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1068-1797)
- Harshvardhan Gazula (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9318-8871)
- Ariel Goldstein (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4017-3363)
- Werner Doyle
- Avinatan Hassidim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3855-344X)
- Avigail Grinstein-Dabush
Institutions
- Harvard University (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (IL)
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
- Princeton University (US)
- Google (Israel) (IL)
- New York University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-11-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65518-0
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.43
Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke