PhD Andrea Martin | Linking linguistic and cortical computation via hierarchy and time

Guest Lecture

  • Date: Nov 13, 2017
  • Time: 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: PhD Andrea Martin
  • Psychology of Language Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  • Location: MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
  • Room: Wilhelm Wundt Room (A400)
  • Host: Department of Neuropsychology
I will focus on two topics related to linguistic computation and electrophysiology. The first is deriving, via computational modeling, a mechanism that links the processing of hierarchical sentence representations to observed power spectra in cortical oscillations. I argue that the mechanism - using time to encode hierarchy across a layered network - can satisfy the computational requirements of language, and show that it produces a pattern of oscillatory activation that resembles the human cortical response to the same stimuli. The second is the application of new analysis methods (e.g., machine learning) to electrophysiological data in order to discover signals related to linguistic cortical computation. I will sketch how we might use these new techniques to test predictions from models of speech and language processing.
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