Despite long knowing what brain areas support language comprehension, our knowledge of the neural computations that these frontal and temporal regions implement remains limited. One important unresolved question concerns functional differences among the neural populations that comprise the language network. Here we leveraged the high spatiotemporal resolution of human intracranial recordings (n = 22) to examine responses to sentences and linguistically degraded conditions. We discovered three response profiles that differ in their temporal dynamics. These profiles appear to reflect different temporal receptive windows, with average windows of about 1, 4 and 6 words, respectively. Neural populations exhibiting these profiles are interleaved across the language network, which suggests that all language regions have direct access to distinct, multiscale representations of linguistic input—a property that may be critical for the efficiency and robustness of language processing.

尽管我们很早就知道哪些大脑区域支持语言理解，但我们对这些额叶和颞叶区域实现的神经计算的了解仍然有限。一个重要的未解决的问题涉及构成语言网络的神经种群之间的功能差异。在这里，我们利用人类颅内记录的高时空分辨率 （n = 22） 来检查对句子和语言退化条件的反应。我们发现了三种在时间动态上不同的响应曲线。这些配置文件似乎反映了不同的时间感受窗口，平均窗口分别约为 1、4 和 6 个单词。表现出这些特征的神经种群在语言网络中交错分布，这表明所有语言区域都可以直接访问语言输入的不同、多尺度表示——这一特性对于语言处理的效率和稳健性可能至关重要。