Suhail Matar

PhD Student, Psychology

I am in my 5^th year of doctoral studies in Psychology (Cognition and Perception) at NYU, where I work with PIs Alec Marantz and Liina Pylkkänen. My main line of work focuses on the neural basis of morpho-syntactic processing during language comprehension, at the sentential, phrasal, and word levels. I am especially interested in grounding morpho-syntactic processing within the predictive processing framework. Other than syntax, I work on discourse processing, and am interested in developing experimental ways to investigate temporal displacement in language.

My work uses a two-pronged approach: (i) passive, non-invasive, time-resolved magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings of brain activity, and (ii) experimental designs that capitalize on grammatical properties of different –‍often less-studied‍– languages (such as Arabic).

Prior to NYU, I completed an M.Sc. and a B.Sc. in biomedical engineering at the Technion. During my Master’s, I worked on the development of optical interfaces to control the activation of in vitro neural populations in Shy Shoham’s Neural Interface Engineering Laboratory.

Contact Email ♦  Personal Website  ♦  Curriculum Vitae

Publications & manuscripts

• Matar, S., Dirani, J., Marantz. A., & Pylkkänen, L. (2021). Left posterior temporal cortex is sensitive to syntax within conceptually matched Arabic expressions. Scientific Reports 11, 7181. 
• Matar, S., Pylkkänen L., & Marantz A. (2019). Left occipital and right frontal involvement in syntactic category prediction: MEG evidence from Standard Arabic, Neuropsychologia 135, 107230. Special issue: The Neural basis of Linguistic Prediction (ed: Mante Nieuwland, Nina Kazanina).
• Farah N.†, Zoubi A.†, Matar S.†, Golan L., Marom A., Butson C.R., Brosh I. & Shoham S. (2013). Holographically patterned activation using photo-absorber induced neural–thermal stimulation, Journal of Neural Engineering 10(5) 056004 [†equal contribution].
• Matar S., Golan L. & Shoham S. (2011). Reduction of two-photon holographic speckle using shift-averaging, Optics Express 19(27), 25891-25899.
• Matar S., Golan L., Farah N., Reutsky I. & Shoham S., Holographic photo-stimulation for dynamic control of neuronal population activity, Proceedings of the IEEE EMBS 4^th International Conference on Neural Engineering, April-May, 2009, Antalya, Turkey.

Talks

• Matar S., Left posterior temporal cortex is sensitive to syntax within conceptually matched Arabic expressions. Talk presented at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL; virtual; April 2021).
• Matar S., Dirani J., Marantz A. & Pylkkänen L., Dissociating syntactic processing and semantic composition in the left temporal lobe: MEG evidence from Standard Arabic. Talk presented at: 12^th annual meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL); 2020 Oct 21-24 (virtual).
• Matar S., Dirani J., Pylkkänen L. & Marantz A., Syntactic category prediction during reading: MEG evidence from adjectival modification in Standard Arabic. Talk presented at: Experimental Arabic Linguistics Conference 2018 (EXAL18); 2019 Oct 28-29; Al Ain, United Arab Emirates.
• Matar S., Dirani J., Pylkkänen L. & Marantz A., Syntactic category prediction during reading: MEG evidence from adjectival modification in Standard Arabic. Talk presented at: 1^st Workshop on Predictive Processing; 2018 Jun 20-22; San Sebastián, Spain.
• Matar S. & Shoham S., Two-photon holographic photo-stimulation for dynamic control of neuronal population activity. Talk presented at: 18^th Annual Meeting of Israeli Society for Neuroscience; 2009 Nov 22-24; Eilat, Israel.