Brain and Language: LING 411/412/489, NSCI 411/611/489/689
Fall 2008

Goals: The goal of this course is to understand: how the brain is organized to produce and comprehend language, the time course of linguistic processing, and the linguistic disorders attendant on brain damage. 

Code of Academic Integrity

 “The integrity of Newcomb-Tulane College is based on the absolute honesty of the entire community in all academic endeavors. As part of the Tulane University community, students have certain responsibilities regarding work that forms the basis for the evaluation of their academic achievement. Students are expected to be familiar with these responsibilities at all times. No member of the university community should tolerate any form of academic dishonesty, because the scholarly community of the university depends on the willingness of both instructors and students to uphold the Code of Academic Conduct. When a violation of the Code of Academic Conduct is observed it is the duty of every member of the academic community who has evidence of the violation to take action. Students should take steps to uphold the code by reporting any suspected offense to the instructor or the associate dean of the college. Students should under no circumstances tolerate any form of academic dishonesty.” For further information, point your browser at http://college.tulane.edu/honorcode.htm.

Violations of the Code of Academic Integrity will not be tolerated in this class. I will rigorously investigate and pursue any such transgression.

Students with disabilities who need academic accommodation should:

• Contact and register with the Office of Disability Services (ODS). For more information, visit the ODS website at http://erc.tulane.edu/disability/.
• Bring official notice to me from the ODS indicating that you need academic accommodation. This should be done within the first week of class.

Schedule of assignments, Fall 2008 (preliminary)

Date	Topic	Readings & videos	ppt	mp3	Q	Service learning
Aug 27 (W)	1.     Introduction to the class
29 (F)	GUSTAV
Sept 1 (M)	LABOR DAY	(read next week’s assignments)
3 (W)	GUSTAV	(read next week’s assignments)
5 (F)	GUSTAV	(read next week’s assignments)
8 (M)	2.     Introduction to the brain; How we know what we know	Osterhout et al. (2006)
10 (W)	3.     Visual cognition	Norman (2002:73-96), Palmeri & Gauthier (2004)
12 (F)	4.     Visual object categorization, category-specific deficits, agnosia	Grill-Spector (2004), Bright et al. (2005)
15 (M)	5.     Visual object categorization & ERP	Proverbio et al. (2007)			Q1
17 (W)	6.     Reading & dyslexia	Dien (2008)
19 (F)	7.     Auditory cognition	Kubovy & Van Valkenburg (2001), Arnott et al. (2004)				Orientations
22 (M)	8.     Speech perception	Hickok & Poeppel (2004)			Q2	"
24 (W)	9.     Phonetics & phonology	various webpages				"
26 (F)	10.  Phonetics & phonology	some of Indefrey & Levelt (2004)				"
29 (M)	11.  Auditory deficits	Polster & Rose (1998)		[sorry, dead batteries!]	Q3
Oct  1 (W)	12. Lateralization of phonology	Myers §4
3 (F)	13. Lateralization of phonology 2	Myers §4
6 (M)	14. Lateralization of phonology 3	Myers §4			Q4
8 (W)	15. Lateralization of word semantics	Myers §5
10 (F)	16.  Lateralization of word semantics 2	Myers §5				Turn in timesheets
13 (M)	17.  Wernicke’s aphasia				Q5
15 (W)	18.  Wernicke’s aphasia 2
17 (F)	19.  Transcortical sensory aphasia	relevant parts of Indefrey & Levelt (2004); Boatman et al. (2000)
20 (M)	20.  Transcortical motor aphasia, Mixed transcortical aphasia, Conduction aphasia	Hickok (2000), Catani, et al. (2005)			Q6
22 (W)	21. Broca’s aphasia
24 (F)	22.  Global aphasia, anomia, apraxia, dysarthria			[recording failed - some kind of problem]
27 (M)	23. Right hemisphere discourse deficits	Myers §6			Q7
29 (W)	24. Right hemisphere discourse deficits	Myers §6
31 (F)	25. Right hemisphere discourse deficits	Myers §6, 8
Nov  3 (M)	26. Referential vs. modalizing speech	Nespolous et al. (1998)			Q8
5 (W)	27. Hemispheric differences in reasoning	Parsons & Osherson (2001)
7 (F)	28. Reasoning & text comprehension	Friese et al. (2008)
10 (M)	29.  Introduction to EEG & ERP				Q9
12 (W)	30.  The Linguistic ERPs & N1/N100
14 (F)	31. Mismatch negativity (MMN)
17 (M)	32.  ELAN				Q10
19 (W)	33.  LAN		[see next one]	[cancelled]
21 (F)	34. N400
24 (M)	35.  P600
23 (W)	THANKSGIVING BREAK
26 (F)	THANKSGIVING BREAK
Dec 1 (M)	36.  P600, cont.
3 (W)	37.  Williams vs. Downs	Bellugi et  al. article			Q11
5 (F)	38.  Bloody video, course evaluations					Turn in timesheets
15 (M)	39.  FINAL EXAM day, 8-12	Oral presentations		two samples:

• Arnott, Stephen R., Binns, Malcolm A., Grady, Cheryl L., and Alain, Claude 2004. Assessing the auditory dual-pathway model in humans. NeuroImage 22, 401-408.
• Beauchamp, Michael S. 2005. See me, hear me, touch me: multisensory integration in lateral occipital-temporal cortex. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 15, 145-153.
• Bellugi, U., Lichtenberger, L., Mills, D., Galaburda, A. M., & Korenberg, J. R. (1999). Bridging cognition, the brain and molecular genetics: evidence from Williams syndrome. Trends in Neurosciences, 22:5, 197-207.
• Boatman, Dana, Gordon, Barry, Hart, John, Selnes, Ola, Miglioretti, Diana, and Lenz, Frederick 2000. Transcortical sensory aphasia: revisited and revised. Brain 123, 1634-1642.
• Bright, Peter, Moss, Helen, Stamatakis, Emmanuel, and Tyler, Lorraine K. 2005. The anatomy of object processing: The role of anteromedial temporal cortex. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology B 3-4, 361-377.
• Catani, Marco, Jones, Derek K., and ffytche, Dominic H. 2005. Perisylvian language networks of the human brain. Annals of Neurology 57, 8-16.
• Dien, Joseph 2008. The neurocognitive basis of reading single words as seen through early latency ERPs: A model of converging pathways. Biological Psychology.
• Grill-Spector, Kalanit 2004. The functional organization of the ventral visual pathway and its relationship to object recognition. In Kanwisher, Nancy, and Duncan, John (eds), Functional Neuroimaging of Visual Cognition. Attention and Performance XX. Oxford University Press.
• Hickok, Gregory 2000. Speech perception, conduction aphasia, and the functional neuroanatomy of language. Language and the Brain: Representation and processing, 87-104.
• Hickok, Gregory, and Poeppel, David 2004. Dorsal and ventral streams: A framework for understanding aspects of the functional anatomy of language. Cognition 92, 67-99.
• Indefrey, Peter, and Levelt, Willem J. M. 2004. The spatial and temporal signatures of word production components. Cognition 92, 101-144.
• Kubovy, Michael, and Van Valkenburg, David 2001. Auditory and visual objects. Cognition 80, 97-126.
• LaPointe, Leonard L. 2005. Aphasia and Related Neurogenic Language Disorders 3e. New York & Stuttgart: Thieme.
• Nespoulous, J.-L., Code, C., Virbel, J., & Lecours, A. R. (1998). Hypotheses on the dissociation between "referential" and "modalizing" verbal behavior in aphasia. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 311-331.
• Norman, Joel 2002. Two visual systems and two theories of perception: An attempt to reconcile the constructivist and ecological approaches. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25, 73-96; discussion 96-144.
• Osterhout, Lee, Kim, Albert, and Kuperberg, Gina 2006. The neurobiology of sentence comprehension. In Spivey, Michael, Joanaisse, M., and McRae, K. (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Palmeri, Thomas J., and Gauthier, Isabel 2004. Visual object understanding. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, 291-303.
• Parsons, Lawrence M., and Osherson, Daniel N. 2001. New evidence for distinct right and left brain systems for deductive versus probabilistic reasoning. Cerebral Cortex 11, 954-965.
• Polster, Michael R., and Rose, Sally B. 1998. Disorders of auditory processing: evidence for modularity in audition. Cortex 34, 47-65.
• Proverbio, Alice M., Del Zotto, Marzia, and Zani, Alberto 2007. The emergence of semantic categorization in early visual processing: ERP indices of animal vs. artifact recognition. BMC Neurosci 8, 24.
• Sacks, O. (1985). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Simon & Schuster.
• Scott, Sophie K., and Johnsrude, Ingrid S. 2003. The neuroanatomical and functional organization of speech perception. Trends in Neurosciences 26, 100-107.
• Friese, U., Rutschmann, R., Raabe, M., & Schmalhofer, F. (2008). Neural indicators of inference processes in text comprehension: an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(11), 2110-2124.

Go back to Harry Howard's home page