Computational Lesions Multilingual Language Models Separate

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name: computational-lesions-multilingual-language-models-separate-
description: "How the brain supports language across different languages is a basic question in neuroscience and a useful test for multilingual artificial intelligence. Neuroimaging has identifi... Activation: brain, fmri, multilingual, lesion"
---

# Computational Lesions in Multilingual Language Models Separate Shared and Language-specific Brain Alignment

## Overview

How the brain supports language across different languages is a basic question in neuroscience and a useful test for multilingual artificial intelligence. Neuroimaging has identified language-responsive brain regions across languages, but it cannot by itself show whether the underlying processing is shared or language-specific. Here we use six multilingual large language models (LLMs) as controllable systems and create targeted ``computational lesions'' by zeroing small parameter sets that are important across languages or especially important for one language. We then compare intact and lesioned models in predicting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses during 100 minutes of naturalistic story listening in native English, Chinese and French (112 participants). Lesioning a

## Source Paper

- **Title:** Computational Lesions in Multilingual Language Models Separate Shared and Language-specific Brain Alignment
- **Authors:** Yang Cui, Jingyuan Sun, Yizheng Sun et al.
- **arXiv:** 2604.10627v1
- **Published:** 2026-04-12
- **Categories:** cs.CL, cs.AI, cs.CE
- **PDF:** https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.10627v1

## Key Contributions

1. Theoretical analysis and formal framework

## Core Concepts

### Key Methodology

These results support a shared backbone with embedded specializations and provide a causal framework for studying multilingual brain-model alignment.

### Technical Details

These results support a shared backbone with embedded specializations and provide a causal framework for studying multilingual brain-model alignment.

## Practical Applications

- Multilingual language model analysis
- Brain-language alignment research
- Brain signal decoding
- Neuroimaging analysis

## Related Work

Related skills and approaches in the domain.

## Activation Keywords

- brain
- fmri
- multilingual
- lesion

## Notes

This skill was created from arXiv paper 2604.10627v1 as part of automated neuroscience research workflow.