Temporal structure of natural language processing in the human brain corresponds to layered hierarchy of large language models.

Publication Year
2025

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

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.

Journal
Nature communications
Volume
16
Issue
1
Pages
10529
Date Published
11/2025
ISSN Number
2041-1723
Alternate Journal
Nat Commun
PMCID
PMC12657922
PMID
41298357
Documents