ERC Consolidator Grant of €2 million to map how language emerges in the human brain

Stephanie Forkel, Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, has been awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant worth €2 million. Her five-year project, EMERGENCE, will begin in 2026 and aims to transform our understanding of how language arises from the complex interplay of neural systems in the human brain.

For more than a century, theories of language have centred on a small set of cortical regions—most famously Broca’s area, associated with speech production, and Wernicke’s area linked to understanding spoken language. Yet growing evidence across neurology, neurosurgery, and neuroimaging shows that these classical models fall short: they cannot reliably predict language abilities in healthy individuals or recovery patterns in patients after stroke. “Take any existing model to a single person or patient, and it falls apart,” Forkel explains. “We are missing key pieces of the puzzle, from neurochemical systems to structural connections.”

A multimodal, large-scale approach

EMERGENCE tackles this challenge head-on by integrating structural, functional, and neurochemical data into one unified framework. A cornerstone of the project is the Language and Interaction dataset, a flagship resource including more than 200 participants. Unlike most open neuroimaging datasets, it contains exceptionally rich language measures alongside structural MRI, functional tasks, and resting-state scans. This depth allows Forkel’s team to study language across multiple levels—from neurotransmitters and white-matter pathways to cortical activity and behaviour—at an unprecedented scale.

The project builds directly on recent breakthroughs, including the brain-cognition morphospace map that is able to predict and decode unseen brain functions. The tool identifies "gaps"—areas where no current cognitive functions are mapped but where potential functions likely exist. EMERGENCE will explore these gaps within the language domain.

Across four interconnected work packages, the researchers will combine existing datasets with new multimodal MRI acquisitions, develop a functional white-matter atlas of language, and incorporate global linguistic diversity. This includes collaborations with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics on prosody, and with partners at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa to study click consonants and selective click apraxia (“aclickia”), broadening language research beyond traditional European languages.

Language as an emergent property of the connected brain

At the heart of the project lies a shift in perspective: language is not a localised function but an emergent property arising from distributed interactions across neurochemical, cortical, subcortical, and white-matter systems. By combining molecular, structural, functional, computational, and clinical data, EMERGENCE aims to describe precisely how this complex phenomenon unfolds in individual brains.

The implications are potentially far-reaching. A more comprehensive anatomical model could improve diagnosis and rehabilitation for people with aphasia, support neurosurgeons in planning safer interventions, and inspire biologically grounded approaches to artificial intelligence.

A uniquely interdisciplinary effort

EMERGENCE exemplifies the collaborative culture of the Donders Institute. Expertise from neuroimaging, language science, and cognitive research converge to make the project possible. Advanced MRI facilities, linguistic theory, computational modelling, and clinical partnerships provide the necessary infrastructure for such an ambitious undertaking.

Forkel summarises: “Every work package contributes one piece of the puzzle. By the end of the project, we hope to bring these pieces together into the most complete picture to date of where and how language truly emerges in the brain.”

The ERC panel underlined the importance of this work, noting that understanding how language arises from the interactions of widespread neural systems remains one of the major open questions in neuroscience. They concluded that EMERGENCE has the potential to make decisive advances in this area.

Post written by Dirk Jan Melssen, Public Outrech Officer Donders Institute https://www.ru.nl/en/donders-institute/news/erc-consolidator-grant-of-eu2-million-to-map-how-language-emerges-in-the-human-brain