See Figure 1:
Figure 1: Neocortical-cerebellar loops per language. A language command to speak is issued from the neocortex (cortex) which has access to the cerebellar cortex at the Purkinje cells (Purkinje) via the pons (Pons). The return portion of the loop passes through the cerebellar nuclei (Nuclei) and thalamus (Thal) en route to the neocortex. According to Ojemann (1983,1991) every language is stored separately in the neocortex according to electrical inactivation experiments done on human subjects. This idea is supported by work on stroke patients, whereby primary languages are often preserved over secondary languages (based on cerebellar stroke, Mariën et al. 2017) and it is well-known that doing language interpretations in real time is difficult, likely because of the neural segregation between the language loops. Irrespective of the type of language, every language is transmitted at a comparable bit-rate of 39 bits per second, which is short of 1 trillion possibilities per second (Coupé et al. 2019). This dovetails with the idea of Chomsky that all humans have a universal-grammar capability (Chomsky 1965) further supporting the idea that we are one species. Whether other mammals have a similar capability is not known, but machine learning is now being used to decipher communications between whales, which have neocortical neurons in excess of 40 billion, e.g., the killer whale (Ridgway et al. 2019; humans have 16 billion neocortical neurons by comparison, Herculano-Houzel 2009). The loop configuration in the figure is based on the anatomical, unit recording, and optogenetic experiments of Hasanbegović (2024), all performed on the mouse and generalized to the primate (Thach et al. 1992).
Very interesting research.
You may be interested in a little referred to series of related research results initiated by Pavlov in the 1930's regarding the function of articulated language, source of these verbal stimuli originating in the verbal areas of the neocortex that activate the amygdala into increasing the attention of individuals about the issue being verbally considered, in the cognition process and ultimately in the establishment of conceptual thinking:
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=90657
Edward J Tehovnik I just returned (11am EST) from a visit to my neighbor in Baltimore. His father-in-law born in Switzerland is visiting and he speaks German, French, Italian & English (the least). I asked him, “ What language do you count in?” and he said, “German!” I then told him him that I read a study many years ago that reported - THE LANGUAGE YOU COUNT IN IS THE LANGUAGE YOU THINK IN.” Are you familiar with such a study? André Michaud I saw your Answer to this Question immediately sending you a message on ResearchGate!!!!
Dear Sahab Karam,
Now that is an interesting insight. Some days back a colleague of mine mentioned something about counting--now I understand what she was referring to. Thanks so much.