Abstract
‘The neural dynamics of naturalistic language comprehension’ The cognitive neuroscience of language relies largely on controlled experiments that are different from the everyday situations in which we use language. I discuss an approach to studying specific aspects of sentence comprehension in the brain using data collected while participants perform an every-day task, such as listening to an audiobook story. The approach uses ‘neuro-computational’ models that are based on linguistic and psycholinguistic theories. These models quantify how a specific computation, such as identifying a syntactic constituent, might be carried out by a neural circuit word-by-word. Model predictions are tested for their statistical fit with measured brain data. By comparing the fit of the models to electrophysiological and hemodynamic data we can tease out the spatio-temporal dynamics of specific aspects of structure-building. (Early Career Award, 9:45 am, Aug 21)
