Cognitive Neuroscience of Language
LING 646, Spring 2007
Colin Phillips & David Poeppel
Thursdays, 9-12, 1108B Marie Mount Hall
Overview: The aim of the course is to evaluate what a Neuroscience of Language might look like, what tools are needed to get there, and how far we are towards that goal (hint: pack a toothbrush). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Language is also a rapidly moving field, such that the state of the art has moved on tremendously in the past 10 years. This course gives a sense of what is needed to keep up.
Requirements: (i) There will be a series of homework assignments, especially earlier in the semester, associated with the technical background material. (ii) One in-class presentation [20 minutes], to be followed by a write-up of a commentary based on the presentation. (iii) A final paper that proposes a novel study, or provides a critical discussion of some existing research.
Readings: available (i) electronically through the library, (ii) electronically from CP's course readings page, (iii) in hard copy form for photocopying in 1401 Marie Mount. Please be conservative in your use of printing resources for course readings.
Schedule
| January 25 | Getting Started: Top-down and bottom-up approaches to brain and language | Broca 1861; Geschwind 1970; Hickok & Poeppel 2004; Poeppel & Embick 2005; Jackendoff 2002 (excerpt) |
| February 1 | Getting Started: What, where, and how? Basic neuroanatomy and neurophysiology | Gazzaniga et al. 2002 (excerpts); Bear et al. 2002 (excerpts); Amunts & Zilles 2006 |
| February 8 | Functional Neuroimaging I |
Huettel et al. 2004; Poeppel 1996; Demonet et al. 1996; Ni et al.2000; Dapretto & Bookheimer '99 |
| February 15 | Linguistic Aphasiology | Grodzinsky 2000; Dronkers et al. 2004 |
| February 22 | Functional Neuroimaging II | Friederici et al. 2006 |
| March 1 | Functional neuroanatomy of sounds and words | Rodd et al. 2005; Shapiro et al. 2006 |
| March 8 | Electrophysiology: basics and beyond | Luck 2005 (excerpt); Salmelin & Kujala 2006; Tallon-Baudry et al. 1999; Bastiaansen & Hagoort 2006 |
| March 15 | Electrophysiology of speech processing | Poeppel, et al. 2006; van Wassenhove et al. 2005; Kazanina et al. 2006 |
| March 22 | SPRING BREAK | |
| March 29 | Electrophysiology of lexical processing | Fiorentino & Poeppel 2007; Pylkkanen et al.2006 |
| April 5 | Electrophysiology of semantic processing | Kutas & Federmeier 2000; Pylkkanen et al. submitted |
| April 12 | Electrophysiology of syntax I | Friederici et al. 2001; Hagoort 2003 |
| April 19 | Electrophysiology of syntax II | Bornkessel & Schlesewsky 2006; Lau et al. 2006; Kuperberg 2007 |
| April 26 | Computational neuroscience of language I | Guenther 2002 |
| May 3 | Computational neuroscience of language II | Whitney & Weinberg 2005; van der Velde & de Kamps 2006 |
| May 10 | Wrap-up |
Selected Readings
Amunts, K. & K. Zilles. (2006). A multimodal analysis of structure and function in Broca's Region. In Y. Grodzinsky & K. Amunts (2006), Broca's Region: Mysteries, Facts, Ideas, and History, pp. 17-30. Oxford University Press.
Bear, M., Connors, B., & Paradiso, M. (2006). Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, 3rd Edn. Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. [excerpts]
Broca, P. (1861). Comments regarding the seat of the faculty of spoken language, followed by an observation of aphemia (loss of speech). Reprinted in Y. Grodzinsky & K. Amunts (2006), Broca's Region: Mysteries, Facts, Ideas, and History, pp. 291-304. Oxford University Press.
Dapretto, M. & Bookheimer, S. (1999). Form and content: Dissociating syntax and semantics in sentence comprehension. Neuron, 24, 427-432.
Demonet, J., Fiez, J., Paulesu, E., Petersen, S., & Zatorre, R. (1996). PET studies of phonological processing: A critical reply to Poeppel. Brain & Language, 55, 352-379.
Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, R. (2002). Cognitive Neuroscience, 2nd Edn. W.M. Norton. [excerpts]
Geschwind, N. (1970). The organization of language and the brain. Science, 170, 940-944.
Hickok, G., & Poeppel, D. (2004). Dorsal and ventral streams: A framework for understanding aspects of the functional neuroanatomy of language. Cognition, 92, 67-99.
Huettel, S., Song, A., & McCarthy, G. (2004). Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Sinauer.
Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of Language. Oxford University Press. [excerpt: "Four challenges for cognitive neuroscience."]
Ni, W., Constable, R., Mencl, W., Pugh, K., Fulbright, K., Shaywitz, S., Shaywitz, B., Gore, J., & Shankweiler, D. (2000). An event-related neuroimaging study distinguishing form and content in sentence processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 120-133.
Poeppel, D. (1996). A critical review of PET studies of phonological processing. Brain & Language, 55, 317-351.
Poeppel, D., & Embick, D. (2005). Defining the relation between linguistics and neuroscience. In: A. Cutler et al. (eds), Twenty-first Century Psycholinguistics. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Shapiro, K., Moo, R., & Caramazza, A. (2006). Cortical signatures of noun and verb production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 1644-1649.
Last Updated 1/22/07