Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42341760›Full record

ArticleCell2026

Shared neural geometries for bilingual semantic representations in human hippocampal neurons.

Xinyuan Yan, Ana G Chavez, Melissa Franch, Kalman A Katlowitz, Ivy Gautam, Brian Kim, Aaditya Krishna, Aadit Shrivastava, Katie Van Arsdel, James Belanger and 13 more

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Cell, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

23 authors.

Xinyuan YanDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. Electronic address: xinyuan.yan@bcm.edu.
Ana G ChavezDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Melissa FranchDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Kalman A KatlowitzDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Ivy GautamDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Brian KimDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Aaditya KrishnaDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Aadit ShrivastavaDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Katie Van ArsdelDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
James BelangerDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Assia ChericoniDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Taha IsmailDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Elizabeth A MickiewiczDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Danika PauloDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Hanlin ZhuDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Alica M GoldmanDepartment of Neurology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Vaishnav KrishnanDepartment of Neurology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Neuroengineering Initiative and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
Atul MaheshwariDepartment of Neurology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Eleonora BartoliDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Neuroengineering Initiative and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
Nicole R ProvenzaDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Neuroengineering Initiative and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA; Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
Seng Bum Michael YooDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, South Korea; Department of Intelligent Precision Health Convergence, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, South Korea; Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, South Korea.
Benjamin Y HaydenDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Neuroengineering Initiative and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA. Electronic address: benjamin.hayden@bcm.edu.
Sameer A ShethDepartment of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Neuroengineering Initiative and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA; Gordon and Mary Cain Pediatric Neurology Research Foundation Laboratories, Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, TX, USA. Electronic address: sameer.sheth@bcm.edu.

Funding

TRAINING PROGRAM IN COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AND MEDICINET15LM007093 · NLM · RICE UNIVERSITY · PI Lydia E. Kavraki · 1992 to 2026
$20.8M
Mapping Algorithmic State Space in the Human BrainU01NS121472 · NINDS · BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE · PI SHETH, SAMEER ANIL · 2021 to 2025
$7.0M
Posterior cingulate cortex and executive control of episodic memoryR01MH129439 · NIMH · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · PI Brett Foster, BENJAMIN Y HAYDEN · 2022 to 2026
$3.4M
Baylor Research Education Program in NeurosurgeryUE5NS070694 · NINDS · BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE · PI SHETH, SAMEER ANIL · 2024 to 2024
$89k
NIMH NIH HHS R01 MH129439NINDS NIH HHS U01 NS121472NINDS NIH HHS UE5 NS070694NLM NIH HHS T15 LM007093
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The human brain has the remarkable ability to comprehend and express similar concepts in multiple languages. To understand how it does so, we examined responses of hippocampal neurons during passive listening, directed speaking, and spontaneous conversation in both English and Spanish in a small group of balanced bilinguals. We found a small number of putative "cross-language neurons," whose responses to equivalent words (e.g., "tierra" and "earth") are correlated. However, neurons' semantic tunings differed substantially by language, suggesting language-specific neural implementations. Instead, the crucial driver of translation was a preserved geometric organization of neural responses between the two languages, one that did not depend on neuron-level functional overlap. Indeed, that geometry was implemented by a common set of neurons along distinct readout axes; this difference in readout may help prevent cross-language interference. Together, these results suggest that the hippocampus encodes a language-independent internal model for meaning.

Indexed as

HippocampusMultilingualismNeuronsSemanticsAdultFemaleHumansMaleabstractionbilingualismconceptshippocampuslanguageLLMNeuralAIneural geometrysemantic tuningsingle-unit recording

Identifiers

PMID42341760
PMCPMC13484884

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.