Dr. Gina Kuperberg: CRLMB Distinguished Lecture Series
The Centre for Research on Language, Mind and Brain welcomes Dr. Gina Kuperberg, who will present a Distinguished Lecture entitled "Streams of Language Processing in the Brain: evidence from ERPs and fMRI." Dr. Kuperberg is an Associate Professor (Psychology) at Tufts University and an Associate Psychiatrist (Psychiatry) at Mass. General Hospital and Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
Abstract:
Traditional models of sentence comprehension have generally focused on the syntactic mechanisms by which words are integrated to construct higher order meaning. The assumption here is that single words are retrieved from the lexicon and then combined together through their syntactic representations. Any material stored within semantic memory, beyond the single word, is assumed to exert its influence by directly influencing syntactic combination or during a later phase of processing. I will discuss data using event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies of language comprehension that challenge such assumptions. I will suggest that word-by-word syntactic-based combination operates in parallel with semantic memory-based mechanisms, giving rise to a highly dynamic system, with additional analysis occurring when the outputs of these distinct but interactive neural streams of processing contradict one another.
The parallel operation of these processing streams gives rise to a highly dynamic interactive and balanced system that may be a fundamental aspect of language comprehension, ensuring that it is fast and efficient, making maximal use of our prior experience, but also accurate and flexible in the face of novel input. Indeed, it may be a more general feature of comprehension outside language domain: I will present data suggesting that analogous streams of processing may be engaged during our comprehension of real-world visual events, depicted in short, silent video-clips.
Finally, I will suggest that imbalances between semantic memory-based and combinatorial streams of processing may help explain patterns of language abnormalities in various disorders. In particular, I will briefly discuss the syndrome of schizophrenia – a common neuropsychiatric disorder in which language processing can be dominated by semantic associations, at the expense of syntactic-based combination, possibly leading to symptoms of psychosis.