ArticleeLife2023
Brain-imaging evidence for compression of binary sound sequences in human memory.
Article in eLife, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sensory integration, temporal prediction, and rule discovery reflect interdependent inference processes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- The neurobiology of human sequential signal prediction: Insights from language, music, and mathematics.Neuroscience research · 2026Review
- Impact of Education and Music Training on the Development of Abstract Thinking in the First Years of Schooling.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Building hierarchically nested structure by rapid neural sequences.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- From shape to number: Shape-from-dots homogeneity boosts groupitizing enumeration.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Cognitive Maps in the Prefrontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Review
- The detection of algebraic auditory structures emerges with self-supervised learning.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Origins of numbers: a shared language-of-thought for arithmetic and geometry?Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- Dogs as a model to study the emergence of concept manipulation skills for language-readiness.Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Sensitivity to Geometric Shape Regularity Emerges Independently of Vision.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Predictive learning shapes the representational geometry of the human brain.Nature communications · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
According to the language-of-thought hypothesis, regular sequences are compressed in human memory using recursive loops akin to a mental program that predicts future items. We tested this theory by probing memory for 16-item sequences made of two sounds. We recorded brain activity with functional MRI and magneto-encephalography (MEG) while participants listened to a hierarchy of sequences of variable complexity, whose minimal description required transition probabilities, chunking, or nested structures. Occasional deviant sounds probed the participants' knowledge of the sequence. We predicted that task difficulty and brain activity would be proportional to the complexity derived from the minimal description length in our formal language. Furthermore, activity should increase with complexity for learned sequences, and decrease with complexity for deviants. These predictions were upheld in both fMRI and MEG, indicating that sequence predictions are highly dependent on sequence structure and become weaker and delayed as complexity increases. The proposed language recruited bilateral superior temporal, precentral, anterior intraparietal, and cerebellar cortices. These regions overlapped extensively with a localizer for mathematical calculation, and much less with spoken or written language processing. We propose that these areas collectively encode regular sequences as repetitions with variations and their recursive composition into nested structures.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.