Neurolinguistics (G) Spring 2023

Course description

This is an advanced introduction to the cognitive neuroscience of human language. Lectures and discussion on central topics in the neurobiology of language processing and on foundational questions having to do with the relationship between experimental and theoretical approaches to the study of language. Literature and ongoing research on auditory perception, lexical access and syntactic/semantic processing are discussed. In addition to surveying existing results, the course is heavily focused on discussing what kinds of questions about language processing and representation can be investigated with the currently available neurobiological methods/knowledge. Basic neuroanatomy, functional imaging techniques and behavioral measures of cognition are introduced.

Requirements

Attendance

Regular attendance. Students arrive into the Thu session having

• watched the lecture-videos
• done the readings
• post question/topic they’d like to discuss by 5pm WED
  

  Background lectures

  The lectures of the parallel undergraduate version of this course form a background for your readings. Links to lectures are posted below.

  Readings

  All readings are available on this website. You must be on the NYU network to access most journal articles.

  Course project

  For your course project, you will work in small groups to design an MEG experiment, create the stimulus materials, and, hopefully, collect some preliminary data. The final paper will be a progress report of your study. In addition, review type papers are also possible.

  Deadlines

• By Feb 16, meet with LP or AM to discuss your project ideas
• Feb 23: In-class progress report on your project idea
• March 30: Final design and stimuli are due
• March 31 – Apr 21 Data collection 
• May 4: In-class final report on your project
• May 11 5pm: Final papers are due (progress report on the project)
  

  Anti-Racism Pledge

  We will be brave enough to have uncomfortable conversations and take action against racism at NYU.

  Schedule and course materials:

  DATE	TOPIC	VIDEOS (watch before READING)	READ1	READ2	READ3
  Jan-26	INTRO and BRAIN BASICS	*SET 1 on YouTube *just slides*	Small & Hickock: The Neurobiology of Language	Dikker, S., Assaneo, M. F., Gwilliams, L., Wang, L., & Kösem, A. (2020). Magnetoencephalography and Language. Neuroimaging Clinics, 30(2), 229-238.
  Feb-2	METHODS I: Early aphasiology and the Classic Model	*SET 2 on YouTube *just slides	Wilson, S. & Fridriksson, J. Aphasia and aphasia recovery. In Gazzaniga et al (Eds.) The Cognitive Neurosciences Sixth Edition. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.	S&H Chapter 74:Psycholinguistic Approaches to the Study of Syndromes and Symptoms of Aphasia (Blumstein)
  Feb-9	METHODS II: Neuroimaging and electrophysiology	*SET 3 on YouTube *just slides	Hämäläinen, M., Hari, R., Ilmoniemi, R. J., Knuutila, J., & Lounasmaa, O. V. (1993). Magnetoencephalography—theory, instrumentation, and applications to noninvasive studies of the working human brain. Reviews of modern Physics, 65(2), 413.	Flinker, A. et al (2015). Redefining the role of Broca’s area in speech. PNAS.
  Feb-16	SPEECH	*SET 4 on YouTube *just slides	Phillips, C. et al. (2000). Auditory Cortex Accesses Phonological Categories: An MEG Mismatch Study. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 12: 1038-1055.	Mesgarani, N., Cheung, C., Johnson, K., & Chang, E. F. (2014). Phonetic feature encoding in human superior temporal gyrus. Science, 343(6174), 1006-1010.
  Feb-23	Project progress reports (full length session)
  Mar-2	READING	*SET 5 on YouTube *just slides	McCandliss, B. D., Cohen, L., & Dehaene, S. (2003). The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), 293-299.	Rajalingham, R. et al. (2020). A potential cortical precursor of visual word form recognition in untrained monkeys. Nature Comm.
  Mar-9	LEXICAL ACCESS	*SET 6 on YouTube *just slides	Pylkkänen, L., & Marantz, A. (2003). Tracking the time course of word recognition with MEG. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 187-189.	Desai, R. et al.(2018). The multifaceted abstract brain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373(1752), 20170122.	Borghesani, V., Buiatti, M., Eger, E., & Piazza, M. (2019). Conceptual and perceptual dimensions of word meaning are recovered rapidly and in parallel during reading. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 31(1), 95-108.
  Mar-16	SPRING BREAK
  Mar-23	MORPHOLOGY	*SET 7 on YouTube *just slides	Zweig, E., & Pylkkänen, L. (2009). A visual M170 effect of morphological complexity.	Solomyak, O., & Marantz, A. (2010). Evidence for early morphological decomposition in visual word recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(9), 2042-57.	Yablonski, M., & Ben-Shachar, M. (2020). Sensitivity to word structure in adult Hebrew readers is associated with microstructure of the ventral reading pathways. Cortex.
  Mar-30	SYNTAX & SEMANTICS: CLASSICS	*SET 8 on YouTube *just slides	Kaan, E. & Swaab, T.Y. (2002). The brain circuitry of syntactic comprehension, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(8), 350-356.	Stromswold, K., Caplan, D., Alpert, N., & Rauch, S. (1996). Localization of syntactic comprehension by positron emission tomography. Brain and Language, 52(3), 452-473.	Friederici, A. D. (2002). Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(2), 78-84.
  Apr-6	SYNTAX-SEMANTICS: BASIC COMPOSITION	*SET 9 on YouTube *just slides	Bemis, D. K., & Pylkkänen, L. (2011). Simple composition: A magnetoencephalography investigation into the comprehension of minimal linguistic phrases. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(8), 2801-2814.	Pylkkänen, L. (2019). The neural basis of combinatory syntax and semantics. Science, 366(6461), 62-66.
  Apr-13	THE BILINGUAL BRAIN	*SET 10 on YouTube *just slides	Blanco-Elorrieta, E., & Pylkkänen, L. (2017). Bilingual language switching in the laboratory versus in the wild: The spatiotemporal dynamics of adaptive language control. Journal of Neuroscience, 37(37), 9022-9036.	Declerck, M., Wen, Y., Snell, J., Meade, G., & Grainger, J. (2020). Unified syntax in the bilingual mind. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27(1), 149-154.
  Apr-20	SIGN LANGUAGE	*SET 11 on YouTube *just slides	Emmorey, K. & MacSweeney, M. (2020)The Neurobiology of Sign Language Processing. In Gazzaniga MS, Mangun GR, Poeppel D, editors. The Cognitive Neurosciences VI. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2020.	Blanco-Elorrieta, E., Kastner, I., Emmorey, K., & Pylkkänen, L. (2018). Shared neural correlates for building phrases in signed and spoken language. Scientific reports, 8(1), 1-10.
  Apr-27	CAN LANGUAGE DISSOCIATE FROM OTHER ABILITIES? SLI AND WILLIAMS SYNDROME	*SET 12 on YouTube *just slides	TBD	TBD
  May-4	Final Project Presentations