BABIES COME into the world seeking out comfort, so their first word is often “mama”. It is easy to say and reflects the bond of mother and child. Meanwhile those leaving this world often make a ...

You’re reading a book and come across a word you don’t know. You keep going, and a few lines later, it clicks. You realise what the word must mean. There’s a small, satisfying moment of clarity—an ...

Understanding language in the real world requires us to compose the meaning of individual words in a way that makes the final composed product more meaningful than the string of isolated words. For ...

A recent study published in the journal Cell provides evidence that the human brain uses a shared organizational map, or ...

We used computational models built using neural networks to predict what brain areas process the new meaning that emerges when words are combined. The brain activity evoked by this composed meaning ...

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but how many numbers is a word worth? The question may sound silly, but it happens to be the foundation that underlies large language models, or LLMs — and ...

In today’s consumerist, fast-moving culture, the pursuit of meaning in life may not be everyone’s immediate goal. However, research shows that finding meaning in life, whatever that might be for the ...

From work to travel to personal hobbies, people across the 17 publics surveyed draw meaning and fulfillment from the activities that make up their daily lives. This is particularly the case when it ...