The Brain Basis of Individual Differences in Language Comprehension Abilities

Individual differences in language abilities must be manifest by differences in brain functioning. Thus, comprehensive theories of the biological basis of language should account for systematic variability between individuals. This article is divided into two sections summarizing research on individual differences in the language comprehension network and their theoretical implications. The first section reviews research on individual differences in three network-level characterizations of brain function: neural efficiency, neural adaptability, and functional synchronization. The second section describes some of the implications of this research for theories of language in the brain. The role of the right hemisphere in language comprehension, the brain bases of word knowledge and verbal working-memory capacity, and potential mechanisms underpinning neural adaptability are discussed.

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