Lateralization and localization of language in the brain is a critical component of surgical planning for patients with epilepsy or brain tumors who require neurosurgical intervention. Accurate language mapping allows the surgeon to conduct the most aggressive surgery possible, enhancing the chance for cure, while avoiding regions critical for language function; striking this balance is critical for maximizing the patient’s quality of life. A range of invasive and non-invasive language mapping techniques are available. This chapter provides a comparative analysis of these techniques and offers a detailed discussion on a newer, non-invasive method called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Using a superficial coil placed on the scalp, TMS generates a magnetic field that creates a temporary “virtual lesion” in the brain, thereby delineating eloquent cortex. TMS is a safe and well-tolerated procedure for both pediatric and adult populations which closely mimics the “gold-standard” invasive mapping techniques. TMS is becoming an integral component of neurosurgical planning and also shows promise as a research tool for studying typical language development and function in healthy populations.

Variability in ultimate learning outcomes is a conspicuous trait of second language (L2) acquisition. After enumerating well-studied conditioning factors in L2 attainment, the present chapter identifies five for particular attention: working memory, attitudes, music background, genetic makeup, and age of acquisition. Along with detailing the factors’ individual roles in L2 attainment, we demonstrate inter-relationships between them. For example, the aptitude factor of working memory ability is subject to genetic variation and may decline over age of L2 learning. We examine variable outcomes from two distinct perspectives: magnitude (i.e., how the identified factors contribute to higher or lower levels of L2 attainment) and dispersion (i.e., how the factors contribute to greater or lesser variability of L2 attainment). Notably, later ages of L2 learning are associated with both lower L2 attainment levels and greater L2 attainment variability. In this vein, we consider the possibility that magnitudes and variability of L2 outcomes over age of learning may be isomorphic with working memory levels and dispersion over the lifespan. In addition, we underscore the transitory nature of individual-level L2 outcomes, which are subject to destabilization following shifts of dominance between the L1 (first language) and the L2.

This chapter explores the intersections and distinctions between One Health, EcoHealth, and Planetary Health: three leading interdisciplinary approaches to global health. While aligned in their holistic focus on human, animal, and environmental health, these paradigms differ in scope, priorities, and their influence on legal frameworks. Recent efforts to merge these approaches offer practical benefits but raise critical questions about their individual contributions and legal implications.

The chapter examines three key areas: (1) the similarities and differences in how these approaches advocate for legal inclusion and reform, (2) how each approach frames its initiatives in relation to the others, and (3) the impact of these paradigms on existing national and international laws.

By analysing these paradigms’ contributions, the chapter highlights how One Health can learn from EcoHealth and Planetary Health to better integrate into legal systems. This comparative study underscores opportunities for these approaches to complement each other, advancing innovative, sustainable, and equitable frameworks for addressing global health challenges.

In the coming decades, cities and other local governments will need to transform their infrastructure as part of their climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. When they do, they have the opportunity to build a more resilient, sustainable, and accommodating infrastructure for humans and non-humans alike. This chapter surveys a range of policy tools that cities and other local governments can use to pursue co-beneficial adaptations for humans, non-humans, and the environment. For example, they can add bird-friendly glass to new and upgraded buildings and vehicles; they can add overpasses, underpasses, and wildlife corridors on transportation systems; they can reduce light and noise pollution that impact humans and nonhumans alike; they can use a novel trash policy to manage rodent populations non-lethally; and more.

It is a privilege to present the introduction to this new volume of The Cambridge Handbook of Language and Brain. The chapters in this volume represent important trends, methods, and central questions in research on brain and language that encompasses perspectives that include a spectrum of studies in methodology that range from healthy subjects that use one or multiple languages to neurodiversity and neurological disorders. A reader looking to come up to speed on a particular topic in language and the brain need look no further than thorough the list of contributions in this book.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fractured state of global health law infrastructure. Establishing a One Health framework in law and policy is necessary to address the multitude of interlinked global health and sustainability challenges, including the risk of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and food insecurity. This chapter will look at domestic and regional institutional collaborative frameworks focused on One Health, drawing on the development and implementation of integrated frameworks at the country level including, Egypt, Vietnam, Kenya, and India. Additionally, it will see how regional cooperation in the Arctic has led to the adoption and implementation of One Health policy guidelines and frameworks at the domestic level. The examination of national approaches will provide a critical analysis of key opportunities and barriers for domestic policy guidelines moving forward.

Music & spoken language share many features by combining smaller units (e.g., words, notes) into larger structures (e.g., sentences, musical phrases). This hierarchical organization of sound is culturally contingent & communicates meaning to listeners. Comparisons of music & language from a cognitive neuroscience perspective provide several insights into commonalities & differences between these systems, how they are represented in the brain. The cognitive neuroscience research of music & language, emphasizes the pitfalls & promises identified, including (1) the apparent acoustic & structural similarities between these systems, (2) how both systems convey meaning to listeners, (3) how these systems are learned over the course of development, & (4) the ways in which experience in one domain influences processing in the other domain. We conclude that searching for similarities in how these complex systems are structured (e.g., comparing musical syntax to linguistic syntax) represents a pitfall that researchers should approach with caution. A promising approach in this area of research is to examine how general cognitive mechanisms underlie the learning & maintenance of both systems

During the Symposium held in Manhattan in 2004 coining the One Health approach, the role of environmental law was underlined. The IUCN Commission on Environmental Law, through its representative from Southeast Asia, insisted on the importance of biodiversity conservation and the protection of wildlife while massive culling measures were taken to counteract zoonotic diseases. In this chapter we will show how the development of the One Health approach has been historically favoured by environmental law, acknowledging the interactions between health and biodiversity. We will detail how it has spread into the multilateral environmental agreements in relation to biodiversity conservation and how the environmental protection arena has evolved quite independently from the health sector in implementing the One Health approach until UNEP joined the FAO-OIE (WOAH)-WHO forces and the input from the OHHLEP (One Health High Level Expert Panel) in that respect. We will conclude with examples of One Health implementation in relation to environmental law, whether they concern research projects or training, notably in Southeast Asia.

Animal rights theory and the One Health approach share similarities in that they are gaining prominence and are presented as pathways to address the challenges of the Anthropocene. These two discourses may, however, be conceived as philosophically incompatible. On the one hand, animal rights theory centres on the inherent worth of individual animals. One Health, on the other hand, emerges from an understanding of ecology and focuses on the health of nature as a broad system. Where the individual rights of an animal and the interests of human/animal/environmental health conflict, animal rights and One Health would presumably propose different resolutions.

In an effort to reconcile these promising theories, this chapter seeks to locate a recognition of animal intrinsic worth within the One Health paradigm. In pursuing this objective, it seeks to conceive of animal rights as compatible with and as part of a broader One Health paradigm. On this basis, it explores the theoretical implications of such an approach for contemporary societies and their common uses of animals.

Anticipatory processes can influence how quickly comprehenders can process novel linguistic input and how they learn from linguistic surprises. This chapter outlines experimental evidence establishing the psychological reality of anticipatory processes and sketches some contemporary accounts that explain how comprehenders generate predictions from linguistic input. Accounts like Pickering & Gambi’s (2018) formulation suggest that comprehenders covertly engage language production mechanisms to generate predictions about future input and to know when it is time to stop processing current input. Kuperberg and colleagues’ (2021, 2023) formulation lays out a multi-layered network that produces predictions for several different types of linguistic and semantic information (phonological/orthographic, syntactic, lexical, event). N-gram accounts (Brennan, 2020; Hale, 2003, 2016) focus on word predictions and include formal metrics of entropy and surprisal derived from information-theoretic frameworks like Shallice’s. On this account, comprehenders store in long-term memory strings of words (N-grams) and these stored patterns serve as the basis for calculating entropy (how many different continuations are possible at a given point) and surprisal (how likely is a specific word in a specific context). We present a variety of evidence indicating that n-grams may not be the sole or main basis for predictions.