The new neurocognitive science of language: innovative experimental design for studying syntactic and semantic processing in communicative settings, an interview with Katrien Segaerts

Abstract

Katrien Segaert is the head of the Neuroscience of Language lab at the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham (UK), where she is also affiliated with the Centre for Human Brain Health. Her research deals with the major question of how syntax and semantic processing are instantiated in the brain within the context of communicative settings, and how the neurobiological circuitry for sentence processing changes throughout our lives.  Her lab does experimental studies with a variety of techniques, ranging from EEG and fMRI to classical psycholinguistic methodologies. Her work has been really innovative in the ways she has managed to bring communicative context to experimental paradigms: participants engaged with avatars, or interacted with interlocutors while lying in the MRI scanner. Another series of her studies that have attracted some media attention are those involving aging adults: results have shown surprising correlations between language processing and fitness. She has agreed to talk to us about working with novel experimental methodologies in a highly interdisciplinary field.

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Original in English.