Society for the Neurobiology of Language

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)

Date
Aug 20, 2019 — Aug 22, 2019
Location
Helsinki, Finland
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Jonathan R. Brennan
Associate Professor of Linguistics & Psychology

Neurolinguistics, semantics, and syntax.