ILCBs monthly newsletter N°10

ILCB's monthly newsletter

N°10 - January 15th, 2021

Bringing together experts in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, medicine and computer science to understand and to model how language functions.

Dear members of the ILCB,

Let me start this New Year’s Letter with a nice quote that is often attributed to Oscar Wilde: “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” With this metaphor in mind, I wish all of you a productive, adventurous, and exciting New Year.

We have just released our ILCB doc and postdoc calls for 2022, available here.There will be up to 3 PhD grants and 3 postdoc grants in 2022. The deadline for the postdoc call is coming up fast (end of February)! So please forward the link to your professional network.

We have updated and translated in English and French the application and selection procedures for both the PhD and postdoc grants; they are available on the web site.

To ease the candidates’ search for available and eligible supervisors or collaborators, we added a section underneath each call where they can find the names, keywords and possibly a short summary of a pre-proposal of potential supervisors or collaborators. If you are interested and available to supervise a PhD student or a postdoc in 2022, please fill out the following questionnaire: https://columbo.univ-amu.fr/index.php/738518?lang=en.

As a short reminder, all members of the ILCB are eligible for research funding that can cover small expenses, such as equipment, participant fees, publication fees, etc. If the requested funding is above 600 EUR, you will need to submit a formal request one week before our monthly advisory board meetings. The forms and procedure can be found here. Also, if you need assistance from the CReX, you must submit a request after having discussed with the CReX whether your request can be satisfied.

I look forward to seeing you all in 2022 at our lunch talks, workshops, and hopefully at our annual retreat (work in progress).

Best wishes,

Johannes

Quote of the month

“By illustrating the definitional confusion surrounding 'Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas' […], we hope to expose the limits of the [Classic] model, argue for its obsolescence, and suggest a path forward in defining a replacement.”

Pascale Tremblay & Anthony S. Dick
in Broca and Wernicke are dead, or moving past the classic model of language neurobiology
Brain and Language (2016) 162, 60-71.

Figure of the month

Temporally resolved neural dynamics underlying handwriting

EEG time-courses were co-registered with handwriting movements produced on a tablet (top). When participants write words to dictation, a structured and reliable pattern of neural activation is associated with each writing stroke (bottom). The rhythm of handwriting is synchronised to the phase of theta brain oscillations, with a stronger synchronisation when participants write with their dominant vs. non-dominant hand, or in their L1 (Chinese) vs. their L2 (English). This theta entrainment may play a fundamental role in the efficient coordination and monitoring of skillful handwriting.

Pei, Longcamp, et al. (2021) NeuroImage, 244, pp.118578.

Scientific portraits

Marien Gouyon

You all know Marien Gouyon from his relentless organizational efforts across the ILCB. We warmly thank Marien for that! But did you know that Marien has an international scientific trajectory? Marien has a PhD in social anthropology with a thesis entitled “Ana loubia. Ethnographie des homosexualités masculines à Casablanca” (2018, Editions du Croquant). He was […]