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. 

CLASSROOM COMPONENT

SERVICE-LEARNING OPTION

Place and time: 12-12:50 pm, Newcomb 119

Graduate section: TBA

Place and time: You are required to work for 20 hours in a context of linguistic assessment and treatment. You must register for LING 489-10, NSCI 489-010, or NSCI 689-010.

Textbook: The textbook used in this course is Right Hemisphere Damage by Penelope Myers (Singular Publishing, 1999).

Timesheets: You are responsible for keeping track of your service hours and for getting them approved by your on-site supervisor. Your hours should be reported twice during the semester to the Center for Public Service, on the dates indicated in the schedule.

Other readings & videos: Most of the readings are pdf files of journal articles, available on the Blackboard site for the class. We will also see a video in class.

Written Reflection: You must keep a journal of your daily experiences in the clinical context, using the class’s Blackboard site. Also, from time to time you will be asked to respond to questions on the discussion board.

You should come to class having read and mulled over the readings listed for that day in the schedule. Use the texts as a resource to clarify lecture material and to deepen your own appreciation of topics of interest.

Training Session: You must attend a training session (2 hours including transport) TBA. As a courtesy to our community partners, no make-ups will be scheduled.

OBJECTIVES
For you to demonstrate your understanding of the goals of the course, you will perform the following tasks:
  1. take a quiz, during the first 10 minutes of most Monday classes, covering the material since the previous Monday. No make-up quizzes will be given, but you may drop one. (11-1 * 7% = 70%)
  2. prepare a final project, explained on a separate sheet. Graduate students are expected to put more effort into the final project. (25%)
  3. participate in an EEG experiment [undergraduates]; help run an experiment [graduates] (5%)
  1. execution of service-learning responsibilities (timesheets, etc.)
  2. the written reflection will be done as a journal on Blackboard

CONTACTS

Prof. Harry Howard

862-3417 (voice mail 24 hours a day)
Office: Newcomb Hall 322-D, MW 11-12, T4-5 & by appt
Homepage: http://www.tulane.edu/~ling/LING411/
Blackboard: syllabus, readings, grades
Facebook: friend me

Bridget Smith
Senior Program Coordinator, Campus-Community Partnerships
Tulane University's Center for Public Service
327 Gibson Hall
o: (504) 862-3322
f: (504) 862-8061
bridget1 at tulane dot edu

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:

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.  Speech comprehension, identification of word form; N100: identification of phonemes; 150-200 ms: identification of word category; 150-200 ms: syntactic structure building (ELAN)
15.  300-400 ms: identification of lemma & morphological information (N400)

  

Q4

  

8 (W)

16.  400-500 ms: integration of lemma & morphological information (N400)

          

10 (F)

17.  Word semantics

        

Turn in timesheets

13 (M)

18.  Lateralization of word semantics

Myers §5

    

Q5

  

15 (W)

19.  Wernicke’s aphasia

LaPointe (2005:§8)

        

17 (F)

20.  N400-700: open- vs. closed class words

          

20 (M)

21.  300-500 ms: phrase structure and gap-filling (LAN)

      

Q6

  

22 (W)

22.  Conduction aphasia

Hickok (2000), Catani, et al. (2005)

        

24 (F)

23.  Transcortical sensory aphasia

Boatman et al. (2000); something else

        

27 (M)

24.  Anomia

      

Q7

  

29 (W)

25.  500-1000ms: P600

          

31 (F)

26.  Right hemisphere discourse deficits

Myers §6

        

Nov  3 (M)

27.  Hemispheric differences in reasoning

Parsons & Osherson (2001)

    

Q8

  

5 (W)

28.  Language and the hippocampus

          

7 (F)

29.  Speech production

relevant parts of Hickok & Poeppel (2004), Indefrey & Levelt (2004)

        

10 (M)

30.  Speech planning

      

Q9

 

12 (W)

31.  Broca’s aphasia

          

14 (F)

32.  Broca’s aphasia

          

17 (M)

33.  Transcortical motor aphasia

      

Q10

  

19 (W)

34.  Apraxia, Global aphasia

          

21 (F)

35.  Dementia

          

24 (M)

36.  Bilingualism

          

23 (W)

THANKSGIVING BREAK

          

26 (F)

THANKSGIVING BREAK

          

Dec 1 (M)

37.  Williams syndrome

video “Don’t be shy, Mr. Sacks” + Sacks

        

3 (W)

38.  Williams vs. Downs

Bellugi et  al. article

        

5 (F)

39.  Bloody video, course evaluations

      

Q11

Turn in timesheets

15 (M)

40.  FINAL EXAM day, 8-12

Oral presentations

        

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.
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.

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Current version 08/27/08; Last change 6-oct-08.