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 […]

MaSCoPin

  The students of the Master 1 in Cognitive Sciences have a friendly Christmas tree they call “MaSCoPin”. It is characterized by a mixture of vegetable and cortical elements and by the brilliance of its classic language areas. Thanks for the good mood and thanks for sharing!     L’amical sapin de Noël des étudiant·e·s […]

Linguistic et neuro-physiological comparison of human-human and human-robot conversations

A body of natural conversations helped develop lexical alignment between participants and two types of interlocutors: a human and a robot. fMRI data indicates a negative correlation of this alignment with cingulate cortex activity, suggesting a reduction in internal resource use when the participant’s lexicon is aligned to that of the speaker Hallart, C., Maes, […]

Functionally homologous representation of vocalizations in the auditory cortex of humans and macaques

– Macaques and humans show voice-selective anterior temporal voice areas (aTVA) – Similar representation of sounds are present in primary auditory cortex of both species – Representational similarity analysis (RSA) reveals that aTVAs categorize conspecific vocalizations apart from other sounds – There is a functional homology in the high-level auditory cortex of humans and macaques […]

When written words speak louder than actions…

Some native speakers of French have difficulty distinguishing the English /θ/-/f/ phonemic contrast (e.g. three vs. free). Could articulatory gestures or word spellings help them to learn new English words containing these confusable sounds? (A) Using a picture-word matching paradigm, three learning methods were compared. AUD: auditory forms of new words were presented alone; AUD+ORTHO: […]

When a native contrast is perceived as non-native

Accentual variation at the word level refers to various ways of pronouncing the same lexical item (Figure A). This kind of variation does not have a contrastive role in French, so it should be processed non-linguistically by native French listeners. This hypothesis was tested in an ABX task by manipulating the ear of presentation, where […]

Collaborative projects at ILCB

This month’s figure is… a figure! You were recently surveyed regarding the collaborative projects, past and current, you are involved in.  We received no less than sixty-six  “project sheets”. These project sheets have been very useful to start preparing the mid-term summary of the institute. The survey is still open, so you can still submit […]

How do people process words that refer to time?

(A) Basic design for “yes” responses (words). Word position and contingency with mental line are manipulated. (B) Task design. A prime (“yesterday” or “tomorrow”) was followed by a real target word or pseudo-word; lexical decisions were made after the onset of the target by moving a pen on the trackpad towards the left or right. […]

A language-ready brain in baby monkeys?

(A) MRI images of 10-day-old baby baboon brain. The Planum Temporale, an area essential for language in humans, is larger in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere (green) in (B) a majority of newborn baboons, and (C) in a quasi-identical proportion to human babies. (D) Longitudinal measures in an older age class (7-10 […]