Language function and dysfunction lab
At the Language Function and Dysfunction Lab, we study the psychology, neuropsychology, and neurobiology of language in healthy individuals and in individuals with brain damage.
Our approach is bi-directional. On the one hand, we use models from cognitive neuroscience to better understand language function in neurological populations with the goal of contributing to the development of novel diagnostic tools and methods to improve language capacity in patients. On the other hand, we use observations of the breakdown of language and communicative abilities following brain insult to obtain unique insights informative for cognitive (neuro)science models.
We have a strong focus on language production (because, of course, you can’t do it all!), but are also interested in comprehension and, especially, the intersection between production and comprehension. Most of our work is based on behavioural meaures, electrophysiology, diffusion-weighted imaging, and non-invasive brain stimulation.
We are also part of the Adaptive Language for Healthy Brain and Society.
Looking for an internship? Contact us!
Research line
Research line
We are excited about attending SNL this year (from our homes). Follow the links for more. Check Joanna’s poster for exciting findings on the temporal lobe white matter in humans vs chimps.
We are very excited to present at Science of Aphasia. Click on the links to see more. We will update the pages to include more info later. Joanna will give a talk on comparative neuroanatomy of the posterior temporal lobe at the white matter level: chimps vs humans!
We will be presenting lots of interesting stuff at SNL this year. Click on the links to see more. We will update the pages to include more info later.
We will be presenting at this year’s meeting of the European Low Grade Glioma Network. I cannot be there unfortunately, but Joanna will be giving an exciting presentation on the initial results of our AFTERCARE survey: what are we offering in terms of assessments and interventions to patients after a surgery to remove a brain tumour, and what do we think we should be offering?
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical neurodegenerative syndrome with word finding problems as a core clinical symptom. Many aspects of word finding have been clarified in psycholinguistics using picture naming and a picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm, which emulates naming under contextual noise. However, little is …
We documented cognitive and speech functioning before treatment in individuals with head and neck cancer in a prospective cohort study. Results indicated a high prevalence of speech and cognitive impairment. Patient-reported speech and cognitive function were associated with each other, whereas objective cognitive measures were not associated with patient-reported measures.
Studies suggest that alpha–beta power decreases index word retrieval in context-driven word production. We recorded the electroencephalogram from patients with stroke lesions encompassing the left lateral-temporal and inferior-parietal regions or left lateral-frontal lobe. Results indicate a critical role for the left posterior, but not frontal cortex, in generating the alpha–beta power decreases underlying context‐driven word production.
Language is typically studied in isolation from memory. We demonstrate that the same neuronal computations used by the hippocampus for memory also subserve online language usage. These findings represent a major step in integrating the studies of language and memory, significantly expanding the role of hippocampal theta oscillations.
The literature on repetition priming in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is inconsistent, with some findings supporting spared priming while others do not. Several factors may explain these inconsistencies, including AD severity (e.g., dementia vs. Mild Cognitive Impairment; MCI) and priming paradigm-related characteristics. This systematic …
Purpose: This systematic review focuses on the effect of bilateral Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) of the Subthalamic Nucleus (STN) on language function in Parkinson’s Disease (PD). It fills an important gap in recent reviews, by considering other language tasks in addition to verbal fluency. Methods: We critically and systematically …
Objective: Large structural brain changes, such as chronic stroke lesions, alter the current pathways throughout the patients’ head and therefore have to be taken into account when performing transcranial direct current stimulation simulations. Approach: We implement, test and distribute the first MATLAB pipeline that …
Foreign language attrition (FLA) appears to be driven by interference from other, more recently-used languages (Mickan et al., 2020). Here we tracked these interference dynamics electrophysiologically to further our understanding of the underlying processes. Twenty-seven Dutch native speakers learned 70 new Italian words over two …
The cognitive architecture that allows humans to retrieve words from the mental lexicon has been investigated for decades. While there is consensus regarding a two-step architecture involving lexical-conceptual and phonological word form levels of processing, accounts of how activation spreads between them (e.g. in a serial, …
