« Prev  

Wednesday, May 22 2013

  Next »
Time Talks
All day
 
12:00 pm
12:00pm - 01:00pm
Evelina Fedorenko - A novel framework for a neural architecture of languageEvelina Fedorenko
MIT, Brain & Cognitive Sciences Department

Abstract: What are the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the uniquely and universally human capacity for language? Since Broca's and Wernicke's seminal discoveries in the 19th century, a broad array of brain regions have been implicated in linguistic comprehension, production and learning, spanning frontal, temporal and parietal lobes, both hemispheres, and subcortical and cerebellar structures. However, characterizing the precise contributions of these different structures to language has proven challenging. Furthermore, although evidence from the investigations of patients with brain damage has long suggested some degree of independence between language and other high-level cognitive functions, many neuroimaging studies have argued that brain regions implicated in language are also engaged in many non-linguistic processes. In this talk I will argue that language is supported by the joint engagement of two functionally and computationally distinct brain systems. The first is comprised of the classic “language regions” on the lateral surfaces of left frontal and temporal lobes. Using individual-subject analysis methods which surpass traditional neuroimaging methods in sensitivity and functional resolution (Fedorenko et al., 2010; Nieto-Castañon & Fedorenko, 2012; Saxe et al., 2006), I have shown that these brain regions are specifically engaged in language processing (Fedorenko et al., 2011; see also Monti et al., 2012). The second is the fronto-parietal "multiple demand" network, a set of regions that are engaged across a wide range of demanding cognitive demands (e.g., Duncan, 2001, 2010). Most past neuroimaging work on language processing has not explicitly distinguished between these two systems, especially in the frontal lobes,
where subsets of each system reside side by side within the region referred to as “Broca’s area” (Fedorenko et al., 2012). Using a variety of research methods I am now beginning to characterize the important roles of both
domain-specific and domain-general mechanisms in language.

Bio: Ev Fedorenko is a research scientist in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT. She seeks to understand i) the representations and computations that underlie human communicative abilities, and ii) the relationship between the language system and other cognitive/neural systems. To do so, she is adopting individual-subject MRI analysis methods that have been successful in other domains (e.g., vision), supplementing those with behavioral investigations of healthy and brain-damaged individuals and more temporally-sensitive methods like ECoG.

Add to calendar