COGS 260: Winter Quarter '07

Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

Tuesday 2:00-4:50 PM

CSB 003

 Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10


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:


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.