Wired for Words: The Neural Architecture of Language

by Gregory Hickok

Overview

A critical synthesis of over 150 years of research on the brain’s networks that enable us to communicate through language.

The neural architecture of language has been a hotly debated topic in neurology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, and philosophy since the early 1800s. Is language separable from intelligence? Is it enabled by dedicated and localizable neural networks? Do we speak and understand with our left hemisphere? How did language emerge? Is language grounded in sensorimotor systems, or is it abstract and amodal? Will we ever have a clear picture of how syntax, the pinnacle of human linguistic prowess, is organized neurologically?

Wired for Words answers these questions and more. Gregory Hickok tells the stories behind the big ideas, revealing the source of both modern progress and persistent myths. Drawing on decades of research using tools and insights from neurology, functional imaging, neurosurgery, linguistics, psychology, and engineering, Hickok builds a new understanding of the neural architecture—the components and connection patterns—of the brain’s language system from sound to meaning to speech.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262553414
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	11/25/2025
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gregory Hickok is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Language Science at UC Irvine where he serves as Chair of the Department of Language Science. He was the first elected Chair of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the author of The Myth of Mirror Neurons.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Scientists and students may now rejoice—we have a new model of language and the brain for the 21st century! Greg Hickok creatively synthesizes a mass of diverse data into an elegant, sophisticated, and convincing theory, presented with clarity and grace.”
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; author of The Language Instinct and The Sense of Style


“This book is essential reading for anyone exploring how the brain makes language possible—and how language, in turn, reveals the brain’s broader organizational principles. It masterfully synthesizes decades of research through autobiographical, historical, theoretical, evolutionary, and biological perspectives, integrating a comprehensive range of findings from functional imaging, lesion studies, electrophysiology, and anatomical connectivity. The book culminates in the linguistic sensorimotor model—a unifying framework that demonstrates how language is embedded within broader cognitive systems, mirroring and interacting with domains such as vision and motor control, and capturing the interactive, hierarchical, and dynamic nature of language processing across multiple cortical systems.”
—Cathy Price, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London