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SUMMARY:Cortical tracking of natural and artificial sequences  - Professor
  Lucia Melloni\, Department of Neurology\, NYU School of Medicine\, US\; D
 epartment of Neuroscience\, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics\
 , Frankfurt\, Germany
DTSTART:20181026T153000Z
DTEND:20181026T163000Z
UID:TALK110842@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Louise White
DESCRIPTION:emporal contingencies and sequences are abundant in the enviro
 nment. In language\, for instance\, sequences of phonemes form words\, seq
 uences of words form sentences. How does the brain parse\, track\, and pro
 cess these sequences that unfold concurrently over time? In this talk\, I 
 will discuss our recent efforts to understand whether and how sequences ar
 e processed online\, and what role brain rhythms might play in this proces
 s. Specifically\, I will discuss studies demonstrating that rhythmic corti
 cal activity entrains to the time course of large linguist units\, even in
  the absence of any acoustic cues for the boundaries between phrases and s
 entences. Entrainment is also observed during second language acquisition\
 , and can rapidly appear when learning to parse an artificial language. Si
 milar processes occur in the visual domain. Together\, these studies show 
 that cortical entrainment to linguistic units reliably tracks online speec
 h processing\, offering endless possibilities to objectively assess langua
 ge processing in children\, difficult-to-test-populations (e.g.\, minimall
 y conscious patients)\, as well as language precursors in animal preparati
 ons to allow for cross-species comparison.\n\nBio\n\nLucia Melloni is a co
 gnitive neuroscientist holding a group at the Max Planck for Empirical Aes
 thetics and an assistant professor at NYU school of medicine. In her resea
 rch she uses a combination of neuroimaging\, electrophysiology\, and behav
 ior to dissect the neural circuits that give rise to perception and cognit
 ion in humans. Her research primarily focuses on questions 1) consciousnes
 s – what make us to have an experience – and 2) language – how do we
  communicate infinite number of ideas with a limited set of string. Her ap
 proach aims at revealing the elementary computations and neural mechanisms
  of those processes\, and to develop a novel framework to study the physio
 logy of uniquely human cognitive processes.\n\n
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of Psychology
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