When surgeons perform brain surgery on people with brain tumors or epilepsy, they need to remove the tumor or abnormal tissue while preserving parts of the brain that control language and movement. A new study may better inform doctors' decisions about which brain areas to preserve, thereby improving patients' language function after brain surgery. The study expands the understanding of how language is encoded in the brain and identifies key features of critical sites in the cerebral cortex that work together to produce language.