Language and Memory: Understanding their Interactions, Interdependencies, and Shared Mechanisms

Language and memory have historically been studied apart, as unique cognitive abilities, and with distinct research traditions and methods. Over the past several decades, however, a growing body of evidence suggests that language and memory are heavily intertwined and may even rely on shared cognitive and neural mechanisms. Cutting across theoretical and methodological approaches, these findings offer novel insights into the interactions and interdependencies of language and memory. These advances also have considerable theoretical and clinical implications for the neurobiology of language and memory, their development, representation, and maintenance across the lifespan, the intervention and rehabilitation of disorders of language and memory, and the evolution of these two quintessential human abilities.

This Research Topic seeks contributions on the language-memory interface that examine the relation between diverse aspects of language and language use (semantics, syntax, conversation, acquisition, bilingualism, gesture) and distinct forms of memory and learning (encoding, consolidation, recall, working memory, long-term declarative or procedural memory, statistical learning) across a range of methods (behavioral, neuroimaging, neurophysiology) and populations (children, aging, SLI, aphasia, dementia, healthy adults). Submissions of new empirical work and critical reviews are welcome. We hope this timely collection permits readers to bridge the rich history of empirical work on the interaction and interdependency of language and memory with current and emerging theories and that it advances the development of novel, psychologically and biologically integrated models of the language-memory interface.