Past events

Title: The timing of the cognitive processes underlying bilingualism and the perception of foreign accents: Evidence from mouse tracking

The mouse-tracking paradigm allows researchers to better understand how cognitive processes unfold over time by recording participants’ responses using a computer mouse. In this talk, I will present a diverse set of cognitive experiments in which I used the mouse-tracking paradigm for data collection. Read More

Title: Neurobiological constraints on speech learning in adulthood

My program of research uses a systems neuroscience approach to study the computations, maturational constraints, and plasticity underlying speech perception. Speech signals are multidimensional, acoustically variable, and temporally ephemeral. A significant computational challenge in speech perception (and more broadly, audition) is categorization, that is, mapping continuous, multidimensional, and variable acoustic signals into discrete, behavioral equivalence classes. Read More

Title: Resting-State Connectivity and Bilingual Language Experience

My research has consistently focused on how variability in brain functioning relates to individual differences in complex abilities, with a focus on network-level functioning. Recently, my work has shifted from investigating task-based patterns of activation to task-free measures of connectivity. In this talk, I will discuss two lines of research linking individual differences in patterns of resting-state connectivity to bilingual language experience. Read More

Title: Dynamic Causal Modeling Analysis of Flexible Behaviors in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

The fact that bilingualism places unique demands on cognitive control networks, particularly those that enable flexible behavior, is relatively uncontroversial. In the current talk, I will summarize research using Dynamic Causal Modeling to investigate whether these demands have broader implications for shaping bilingual brain functioning. Read More

TITLE: Face and words recognition: Flip sides of the same coin?

ABSTRACT: Understanding the process by which the cerebral hemispheres reach their mature functional organization remains challenging. We propose a theoretical account in which, in the domain of vision, faces and words come to be represented adjacent to retinotopic cortex by virtue of the need to discriminate among homogeneous exemplars. Read More

Title: How baby gets the groove: Modeling rhythm learning, perceptual narrowing, and enculturation

Ontogeny is a complex, emergent process that arises from interactions between the developing organism and the structures present in the rearing environment. In the field of infant development, one of the most well known consequences of organism-environment interactions is the adaption and re-organization of perception-action systems to structural regularities in the environment, a phenomenon called “perceptual narrowing” or “perceptual fine tuning.” Read More

Read More

Title: Development and applications of portable functional brain imaging system using near-infrared spectroscopy

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an effective and non-invasive functional brain imaging method. Neuronal activities of the brain are strongly coupled with the hemodynamics in the local cerebral cortex and the hemodynamics can be extracted by using the fact that the absorption spectra of oxy hemoglobin (HbO) and deoxy hemoglobin (HbR) differs in the near-infrared region of the spectrum. Read More