COGS 260: Winter Quarter '07
Cognitive Neuroscience of
Language
Tuesday 2:00-4:50 PM
CSB 003
Instructor: Dr. Coulson
Office Hours: Thursday 12-2pm
in CSB 161
(or by
appointment)
Email:
coulsonatcogscidotucsddotedu
Office Phone: 858-534-7486
On-line syllabus: http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/CNL
Course Description
and Goals
Language is a distinctive human behavior and is
central to social life. In this course we will consider a range of
topics relevant to the neural underpinnings of our ability to speak and
understand human languages. Topics range from the perceptual and
motoric aspects of language use to the nature of abstract linguistic
representations, and include consideration of a number of neurological
disorders, including dyslexia and different forms of aphasia. The goal
of the course is to highlight important theoretical issues in language
processing and to understand how converging evidence from different
techniques has been used to address these issues. Besides (1) knowledge
of
how different techniques in cognitive neuroscience have been used to
address important theoretical issues, this course aims to give students
(2) practice with critically reading and
evaluating research reports and reviews in the area, and (3) experience
developing research questions, designing an experiment to test those
questions,
and writing a research proposal.
On completion of this course, students
should be
able to:
- Identify and explain how cognitive
neuroscience methods have contributed to our current
understanding of various aspects of language comprehension and
production
- Analyze and evaluate primary research
reports in the area
- Develop an interesting and important
research question
- Outline a research proposal that
documents how that question might be addressed using
methods from neuroscience
Requirements
Research Proposal
1st preliminary 2-page paper (due
Friday 2/23)
2nd preliminary 2-page paper (due
Friday 3/2)
Final (5-20 page)
proposal (due Friday 3/16)
Presentation (lead seminar for a week)
COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS
Just in case we get behind schedule – Be
sure to
check the
on-line version of the syllabus for the most up-to-date list of reading
assignments and due dates.
Week 1: Introductory Material
Tuesday 1/9
Overview
Gasser, M. (2005). Chapter 1.
How Language Works. pp. 1-36.
[review]
PDF
Phillips, C. & Sakai, KL. (2005).
Language and the brain. McGraw-Hill Handbook of Science and Technology,
pp. 166-169. [review]
PDF
Coulson, S. (to appear). Electrifying
results: ERP data and cognitive linguistics. In M Gonzalez-Marquez, I
Mittelberg, S Coulson, & M Spivey (Eds.),
Methods in Cognitive Linguistics: Ithaca. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins. [review]
PDF
Week 2: Speech Perception
Tuesday 1/16
Electric and Magnetic Brain Responses
to Speech Sounds
Naatanan, R, et al. (1997).
Language-specific phoneme representations revealed by electric and
magnetic brain responses.
Nature 385:
432-435. [report]
PDF
Opitz, B, Rinne, T, Mecklinger, A, von
Cramon, Y, & Scherger, E. (2002). Differential contribution of
frontal and temporal cortices to auditory change detection: fMRI and
ERP results.
NeuroImage 15:
167-174. [report]
PDF
McGurk, H & McDonald, J. (1976).
Hearing lips and seeing voices.
Nature
264: 746-749. [report]
PDF
Sams, M. et al. (1991). Seeing speech:
Visual information from lip movements modifies activity in the human
auditory cortex.
Neuroscience
Letters 127: 141-145. [report]
PDF
Colin, C, et al. (2002). Mismatch
negativity evoked by the McGurk-MacDonald effect: A phonetic
representation within short-term memory.
Clinical neurophysiology 113:
495-506. [report]
PDF
Week 3: Functional Anatomy of Speech Perception
Tuesday 1/23
Auditory Disorders
Polster, MR & Rose, SB. (1998).
Disorders of auditory processing: Evidence for modularity in audition.
Cortex 34: 47-65. [review]
PDF
Motor Theory of Speech
Perception
Skipper, JL, Nusbaum, HC, & Small,
SL. (2005). Listening to talking faces: Motor cortical activation
during speech perception.
NeuroImage
25: 76-89. [report]
PDF
Week 4: Reading and Lexical Access
Tuesday 1/30
Expertise for Reading
McCandliss, B, Cohen, L, & Dehaene,
S. (2003). The visual word form area: Expertise for reading in the
fusiform gyrus.
Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 7: 293-300. [review]
PDF
Dyslexia
Shaywitz, S. (1996). Dyslexia.
Scientific American, pp. 98-104.
[review]
PDF
Week 5: Semantic and Pragmatic Processing
Tuesday 2/6
Sentence Context, Word Meaning, and
Word Identification
Kutas, M & Hillyard, SA. (1980).
Reading senseless sentences: Brain
potentials reflect semantic incongruity.
Science 207: 203-205. [report]
PDF
Van Petten, C. (1995). Words and
sentences: Event-related brain potential measures.
Psychophysiology 32: 511-525.
[review]
PDF
Discourse Context & World
Knowledge
Van Berkum, JJA. (to appear). The
electrophysiology of discourse and
conversation. In M Spivey, M Joanisse, & K McRae (Eds),
The
Cambridge Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. [review]
PDF
Hagoort, P. et al. (2004). Integration
of word meaning and world
knowledge in language comprehension.
Science
304: 438-441. [report]
PDF
Neural Generators of the N400 Effect
Nobre, AC, Allison, T, & McCarthy,
G. (1994). Word recognition in the human inferior temporal lobe.
Nature 372: 60-63. [report]
PDF
Van Petten, C & Luka, B. (2006).
Neural localization of semantic context effects in electromagnetic and
hemodynamic studies.
Brain &
Language. [review]
PDF
Week 6: Language Production
Tuesday 2/13
Models of Word Production
Levelt, WM. (1999). Models of word
production.
Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 3: 223-233. [review]
PDF
Brain Activity During Speaking
Van Turennout, M, Hagoort, P, &
Brown, C. (1998). Brain activity
during speaking: From syntax to phonology in 40 milliseconds.
Science
280: 572-574. [report]
PDF
Brain Activity During Speaking
Schmitt, BM, Schiltz, K, Zaake, W,
Kutas, M, & Muente, TF. (2001).
An electrophysiological analysis of the time during tacit picture
naming.
Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience 13: 510-522. [report]
PDF
First 2-page proposal-related paper
due Friday 2/23: This 2-page paper
should describe the topic area you have picked for your final paper,
summarize background literature in the area, and describe the question
or hypothesis your study will test. References go at the end, and can
spill over onto a third and/or fourth page if necessary.
Week 7: Syntactic Processing
Tuesday 2/20
Open vs. Closed Class Items
Muente, TF, et al. (2001). Differences
in brain potentials to open and
closed class words: Class and frequency effects.
Neuropsychologia 39:
91-102. [report]
PDF
Ter Keurs, M, Brown, CM, & Hagoort,
P. (2002). Lexical processing
of vocabulary class in patients with Broca's aphasia: An event-related
brain potential study on agrammatic comprehension.
Neurospsychologia
40: 1547-1561. [report]
PDF
Electrophysiological Studies of
Syntactic Processing
Kaan, E. & Swaab, T. (2003).
Repair, revision, and complexity in syntactic analysis: An
electrophysiological differentiation.
Journal
of Cognitive Neuroscience 15: 98-110. [report]
PDF
2-page proposal-related paper due Friday 2/23
Week 8:The Whys and Wherefores of Broca's Area
Tuesday 2/27
Syntax & Neuroimaging
Kaan, E & Swaab, TY. (2002). The
brain circuitry of syntactic
comprehension.
Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 6: 350-356. [review]
PDF
What Does Broca's Area Do (and what
doesn't it do!)?
(TBA)
2nd 2-page proposal-related paper due
Friday 3/2: This 2-page paper should
briefly reiterate your question/hypothesis (from your earlier paper),
summarize/sketch the design and methods you will use, and outline the
possible pattern of results and what each would mean.
Week 9: Linguistic versus Nonlinguistic Meaning
Tuesday 3/6
Music & Language
2-page proposal-related paper due today
Koelsch, S, et al. (2004). Music,
language, and meaning: Brain
signatures of semantic processing.
Nature
Neuroscience 7: 302-307.
PDF
Common Sense
Ganis, G, Sereno, MI, & Kutas, M.
(1996). The search for "common
sense": An electrophysiological study of the comprehension of words and
pictures in reading.
Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience 8: 89-106.
[report]
PDF
Van Petten, C, & Rheinfelder, H.
(1995). Conceptual relationships
between spoken words and environmental sounds: Event-related brain
potential measures.
Neuropsychologia
33: 485-508. [report]
PDF
Categories in the Brain
Pulvermueller, F. (2001). Brain
reflections of words and their meanings.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5:
517-525. [review]
PDF
Caramazza, A & Mahon, BZ. (2003).
The organization of conceptual knowledge: The evidence from
category-specific semantic deficits.
Trends
in Cognitive Sciences 7: 354-360. [review]
PDF
Week 10: Hot Topics
No Class
Coulson will hold office hours 10am-12pm in CSB 161 on Monday 3/19.