BCS 565: Language and the Brain

Offered: Fall

About this course:

This course will examine how the comprehension and production of language is implemented in the human brain. It will focus on spoken language (not written or signed language) and fMRI (not ERPs and other imaging modalities). We will consider a number of questions about brain activation to: speech vs non-speech/music, native vs non-native phonetics/phonology, effects of learning/expertise, lexical organization (neighborhood structure) and development, form-class and semantic category constraints on processing, and the role of perceptual brain regions in semantic processing. We will also explore new fMRI analysis methods and experimental designs that could be suitable for addressing these questions.