Cerebral Processing of Voice Information: From Monkeys to Deep Learning
2020-01-24 12:00 - 14:00 (Europe/Paris) | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Pascal Belin, Institut de Neurosciences de La Timone, CNRS & Aix-Marseille Université, France
—————————
How do we extract and process the treasure-trove of information in voices? Experiments involving techniques ranging from monkey neuroimaging to deep learning provide an increasingly detailed picture of the ‘vocal brain’ and its evolution in primates. Results suggest an organization in several ‘voice patches’ analogous to that of the face patch system.

Prof. Friedemann Pulvermüller (Freie Universität Berlin)
2020-02-07 12:00 - 14:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Brain-language models, prediction and the neural basis of communication

Louis-Jean Boë GIPSA-lab, UGA–CNRS, Grenoble
2020-03-27 11:00 - 14:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
The Dawn of Speech is Older Than We Thought

The production of speech repurposes an entire set of anatomical features that are primarily used for vital functions: breathing, sucking, chewing and swallowing. Hypotheses about the dawn of speech try to determine the period during which our ancestors began to produce, by exaptation, differentiated vocalizations associated with different social relationships. Anatomical and acoustic analyses of baboon vocalizations tend to show that the sounds themselves and the articulatory gestures that produce them are comparable to those of human vowels. If we interpret these vocalizations as audio fossils, the beginnings of speech would date back more than 20 million years, to the period when our ape ancestors separated from old world monkeys. The recent work that underlies this hypothesis invalidates a long controversy that motivated several multidisciplinary teams. By breaking the anatomical lock that claimed to restrict production of non-human primates’ vocalizations, they have opened the doors to many avenues of research that had previously seemed blocked.
L.J. Boë, T.R. Sawallis, J. Fagot, P. Badin, G. Barbier, G. Captier, L. Ménard, J.-L. Heim, J.L. Schwartz (2019) Which way to the dawn of speech?: Reanalyzing half a century of debates and data in light of speech science. Science Advances, 5, 12, eaaw3916 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw3916
F. Berthommier, L.J., Boë, A. Meguerditchian, T.R. Sawallis, G. Captier (2018) Comparative Anatomy of the baboon and human vocal tracts: Renewal of methods, data, and hypotheses. In Origins of Human Language: Continuities and Discontinuities with Nonhuman Primates. Ed. by L.J. Boë, J. Fagot, P. Perrier, J.L. Schwartz. Berne: Peter Lang.
DOI :https://doi.org/10.3726/b12405
L.J. Boë, F. Berthommier, T. Legou, G. Captier, C. Kemp, T. R. Sawallis, Y. Becker, A. Rey, J. Fagot (2017) Evidence of a vocalic proto‑system in the baboon Papio papio suggests pre-hominin speech precursors. PLOS ONE 12, e0169321 doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169321

Modèles bayésiens de la cognition et du langage par Julien Diard et Jean-Luc Schwartz
2020-07-02 11:00 - 12:00, 2020-07-09 11:00 - 14:00
Dans la série « Les cours (dé-)confinés de l’ILCB », nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncer deux prochains cours en ligne sur les approches bayésiennes dans le domaine des intégrations sensori-motrices, de la cognition, et du langage.
Cours 1 : Introduction à la modélisation bayésienne en sciences cognitives
Résumé : Les probabilités forment un outil très largement utilisé en sciences cognitives, de l’hypothèse du « cerveau bayésien » aux modèles « bayes-optimaux » du traitement de l’information sensorielle, en passant par les méthodes statistiques modernes. Dans cette première séance, nous vous présenterons un aperçu de ces approches bayésiennes en sciences cognitives, à travers différents exemples de modèles bayésiens du raisonnement, de la perception, et de la perception multi-sensorielle.
Date : jeudi 2 juillet, 11h-12h.
Lien d’accès : https://amuskype.univ-amu.fr/deirdre.bolger/QMMD5P3D
Cours 2 : COSMO, un cadre computationnel pour la modélisation bayésienne de la communication parlée
Résumé : Comment la modélisation bayésienne des processus cognitifs peut-elle nous permettre de répondre à des questions théoriques dans le domaine de la communication parlée ? Cette présentation aura la forme d’un TP en ligne, de mise en application des principes vus dans le cours 1. Elle sera basée sur le modèle probabiliste COSMO (« Communicating about Objects using Sensori-Motor Operations »).
Date : jeudi 9 juillet, 11h-12h.
Lien d’accès : https://amuskype.univ-amu.fr/deirdre.bolger/KS2XG07T

Evelina Fedorenko
2021-10-22 15:00 - 18:00 | via zoom
Le séminaire se tiendra en visioconférence via le lien : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/91316230672
Code secret : [REDACTED]
The first lunch talk of the year will take place on 22 October from 3 to 4.30 pm and it will be in visio.
We will have the pleasure to listen to Evelina Fedorenko . You will find below the summary of her speech and the zoom link to connect.

The language system in the human brain.

The goal of my research program is to understand the representations and computations that enable us to share complex thoughts with one another via language, and their neural implementation. A decade ago, I developed a robust new approach to the study of language in the brain based on identifying language-responsive cortex functionally in individual participants. Originally developed for fMRI, we have since extended this approach to other modalities, like intracranial recordings. Using this functional-localization approach, I identified and characterized a set of frontal and temporal brain areas that i) support language comprehension and production (spoken and written); ii) are robustly separable from the lower-level perceptual (e.g., speech processing) and motor (e.g., articulation) brain areas; iii) are spatially and functionally similar across diverse languages (>40 languages from 11 language families); and iv) form a functionally integrated system with substantial redundancy across different components. In this talk, I will highlight a few discoveries from the last decade and argue that the primary goal of language is efficient information transfer rather than enabling complex thought, as has been argued in one prominent philosophical and linguistic tradition (e.g., Wittgenstein, 1921; Berwick & Chomsky, 2016). I will use two kinds of evidence to make this argument. First, I will examine the relationship between language and other aspects of cognition, including social cognitive abilities and complex thought/reasoning. I will show that the language brain regions are highly selective for language over diverse non-linguistic processes while also showing a deep and intriguing link with a system that supports social cognition. And second, I will examine different properties of language and argue that language both has a) properties that make it well-suited for communication, and b) properties that make it not suitable for complex thought. Both of these lines of evidence support the communicative function of language, and suggest that the idea that language evolved to allow for more complexity in thought is unlikely.

Participer à la réunion Zoom
https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/91316230672

ID de réunion : 913 1623 0672
Code secret : [REDACTED]
Une seule touche sur l’appareil mobile
+13126266799,,91316230672# États-Unis (Chicago)
+13462487799,,91316230672# États-Unis (Houston)

Composez un numéro en fonction de votre emplacement
+1 312 626 6799 États-Unis (Chicago)
+1 346 248 7799 États-Unis (Houston)
+1 669 900 6833 États-Unis (San Jose)
+1 929 205 6099 États-Unis (New York)
+1 253 215 8782 États-Unis (Tacoma)
+1 301 715 8592 États-Unis (Washington DC)
ID de réunion : 913 1623 0672
Trouvez votre numéro local : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/u/adPdwIRo0W

Participer à l’aide d’un protocole SIP
91316230672@139.124.199.80 ou 91316230672@139.124.199.200

Participer à l’aide d’un protocole H.323
139.124.199.80 ou 139.124.199.200
Code secret : [REDACTED]
ID de réunion : 913 1623 0672

Temporal niches in auditory communication
2021-10-29 12:00 - 17:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Luc. H Arnal and Keith B. Doelling, Institut de l’Audition, Centre Pasteur, Paris XII.
Communication signals such as speech or music, are complex signals that exploit acoustic features in a wide array of timescales. The auditory system responds differently to each timescale creating opportunity for sound designers, composers and human talkers to exploit these temporal niches to manipulate listeners’ affective states and reactions. Exploring human perception and reactions to a wide range of time scales (from a few to hundreds of milli-seconds) we will show that fast (>30 Hz) and slow (<10 Hz) temporal regularities are processed in a very different manner by the human brain and rely on distinct neural mechanisms. On the one hand, stimuli with high frequency dynamics – such as alarm signals – temporally overload the auditory system to induce aversive percepts, arguably by driving the sustained propagation of information in a bottom-up manner. On the other hand, slower stimuli – as featured in musical rhythms – permit the development of anticipatory processes, relying on slower, top-down oscillatory mechanisms. By analyzing the temporal dynamics in the acoustics of signals with different communicative goals (alarm, music) and their impact on the human brain, we identify and characterize specific neural systems and mechanisms shaping the diversity of auditory communication niches in the temporal domain.

Aurélie Bidet-Caulet
2021-11-26 12:00 - 14:30 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
How does the human brain resist auditory distraction?
One main challenge for the attentive brain is to resist distracting information. Auditory distraction can result from predictable irrelevant information (e.g. ongoing background noise) or from unexpected, transient and salient distracting events (e.g. phone ring, fire alarm…). Using intracranial EEG, scalp EEG and MEG data combined with behavioral measures, we have investigated brain activities in the time and frequency domains to characterize the brain mechanisms involved in shielding from distraction, in the healthy, developing (children and ageing data), or dysfunctional (stroke or migraine patients) brain. I will present a first set of data showing that distinct inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms support selective attention to reduce the impact of an irrelevant sound stream. Then, I will present data showing that the impact of an unexpected salient environmental sound results from a balance between top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of attention.

Language embodiment and relativity: Evidence in Chinese-English bilinguals
2022-01-14 12:00 - 15:00 | via zoom
Guillaume Thierry
Bangor University, Bangor, UK

As soon as we master a language, several of our cognitive abilities that do not readily require language to operate and are seemingly independent from it interact with language representations in a highly sophisticated fashion, reflecting the highly integrated nature of human cognition. Examples of such cognitive abilities are perception, attention, affective regulation, memory, reasoning, and decision making. Although it is intuitive that such cognitive functions continuously interact with language in many ways, there is a paucity of data regarding the nature of such interactions. The quest for data shedding light on these interactions is difficult, however, and experimental paradigms used in the past are often criticised due to insufficiently controlled materials and experimental tasks. For instance, language-based studies involving overt reports and questionnaires often fail to acknowledge that they cannot test cognitive effects beyond the realm of language, since all proceedings are language-mediated. Behavioural studies also regularly fail to establish the level of awareness involved in tasks which could strategically, and therefore artificially, involve language on a metacognitive level. Here, I will present data from a set of studies showcasing the intricate nature of language-cognition interaction in the human brain, and particularly that of bilingual individuals who have come to master a second language in life. I will show how some language representations acquired early in life (i.e., from the native language) are there for life, influencing human cognition in a wholly unconscious manner. I will also show how new representations acquired later in life (i.e., from a second language) compete with native language representations and influence cognition unconsciously and ubiquitously. In closing, I will attempt to assess the repercussions of our observations for linguistic relativity and embodied cognition theory.

Teaching an old word new tricks? Phonological updates in the bilingual mental lexicon
2022-02-04 12:00 - 15:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Isabelle Darcy
Indiana University / ILCB / IMéRA
Listening to speech in your native language is easy. Recognizing the words spoken in conversation is generally an automatic and smooth everyday process in the first language (L1). Even in noisy or otherwise less than ideal conditions, performance is surprisingly robust. But anyone who has attempted to follow a conversation in a second language (L2) knows how demanding this can be, even when you know all the words. Even for reasonably clear speech, identifying individual words out of the speech stream is difficult. Charles and Trenkic (2015) reported that international university students missed about 30% of the words they heard during lectures.
For bilinguals, the perceptual processing of L2 speech sounds and the stored representations of the words themselves are influenced by the L1. For example, two words such as “lake” and “rake” may sound the same and may be stored as one word (= one homophonous pronunciation /leik/ for two concepts) for Japanese learners of English, because the /r/-/l/ distinction is difficult to perceive and represent for them due to the lack of this distinction in their L1. One consequence of these effects is the difficulty to know which word to activate when hearing /leik/, but also the difficulty to learn to pronounce the words differently.
Yet, many questions remain as to how bilinguals store the phonological form of words (their pronunciation) in the corresponding lexical entry in long-term memory, and how these representations change over time. Our lab has obtained evidence for dissociations between perception and lexical storage, which suggest that even after perception of a difficult phonological dimension improves, modifying lexical representations that use this phonological dimension remains hard. This means that even after a Japanese learner learns to distinguish /r/ from /l/, their representations of the words might still be the same.
In this talk I will outline research conducted in my lab to understand the phonological structure of the bilingual mental lexicon, how words are stored, and whether (and how) bilinguals are able to update previously inaccurate lexical representations.

How do people interpret implausible sentences?
2022-03-25 12:00 - 14:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Martin Pickering (Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences)
Abstract:
People sometimes interpret implausible sentences nonliterally, for example treating “The mother gave the candle the daughter” as meaning the daughter receiving the candle. But how do they do so? We contrasted a nonliteral syntactic analysis account, according to which people compute a syntactic analysis appropriate for this nonliteral meaning, with a nonliteral semantic interpretation account, according to which they arrive at this meaning via purely semantic processing. The former but not the latter account postulates that people consider not only a literal-but-implausible double-object (DO) analysis in comprehending “The mother gave the candle the daughter”, but also a nonliteral-but-plausible prepositional-object (PO) analysis (i.e., including to before the daughter). In three structural priming experiments, participants heard a plausible or implausible DO or PO prime sentence. They then answered a comprehension question first or described a picture of a dative event first. In accord with the nonliteral syntactic analysis account, priming was reduced following implausible sentences than following plausible sentences and following nonliterally interpreted implausible sentences than literally interpreted implausible sentences. The results suggest that comprehenders constructed a nonliteral syntactic analysis, which we argue was predicted early in the sentence.

The role of laughter in human social interactions
2022-04-29 12:00 - 13:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Sophie Scott (Director, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL)
In this talk I will explore the neuroscience and evolution of laughter, a positive emotional vocalisation. I will draw parallels between human use of laughter and laugher and play vocalisations in other mammals, and I will also show some distinct differences between humans and other animals. I will explore the neural basis of laughter processing and discuss how this may relate to some individual differences in laughter use and experience.

Language in the brain and algorithms.
2022-10-07 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Jean-Rémi KING : Chercheur à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris et Meta AI.
It took less than five years for AI to revolutionize the field of natural language processing. Can the resulting algorithms help us understand this complex cognitive ability? Here, we develop state-of-the-art language models and compare them to the adult human brain. To do so, we are integrating large-scale datasets of magneto/electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and intracranial recordings while individuals read or listen to natural sentences. Our analyses demonstrate systematic similarities between AI models and the brain, which allow us to (1) efficiently decode speech from brain activity and (2) delineate the location and temporal course of the hierarchy of language representations. Overall, these studies show how the interface between AI and neuroscience sheds new light on the computations at the heart of human language.

Typology of multilinguals' languages and its relation to brain and cognition
2022-11-18 12:00 - 13:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Olga Kepinska : Universität Wien
Learning and using additional languages has been time and again shown to be related to functional and structural changes to the brain. One aspect of multilingualism that has not been examined systematically so far is the typology of multilinguals’ languages: Do differences and similarities between languages multilinguals know contribute to the development of their cognition and brain? In this talk, I will discuss a methodology for describing the continuum of multilingual language experience that accounts for typological distance. We applied it in two studies with groups with diverse language backgrounds. In the first, we investigated n = 162 5-6-year-olds with various language backgrounds on a monolingual-to-quintilingual continuum. Overlaps in lexical distances between participants’ languages were found to be related to aspects of their dominant-language lexical knowledge and to brain activation patters during a dominant-language lexical task. In the second study, we looked at typological distance at the level of phonology and its relation to brain structure. In particular, we investigated how neuroanatomical indices describing the transverse temporal gyrus (TTG, cortical structure housing early auditory cortex) were related to cross-linguistic phonological information of n = 136 adult participants exposed to between 1 to 7 languages. We found that language experience with phonologically distant languages was associated with cortical thickness of the second TTG. These results refine our understanding of the neural underpinnings of multilingual language experience and will be discussed in the larger context of genetic versus environmental influences on the brain.

Towards a computational neurophysiology of covert auditory processing in health and disease
2022-12-09 12:00 - 13:00 | SALLE 15-409, Université Aix-Marseille 3 Pl. Victor Hugo,, Marseille, 13003, France
Le lunch talk Jean-Julien Aucouturier, est annulé en raison des perturbations dans les transports.
Nous sommes sincèrement désolé pour cette annulation de dernière minute.
Bien à vous
Etienne Thoret
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jean-Julien Aucouturier
Abstract: The past 10 years have seen the emergence in the cognitive neuroscience community of a novel class of ‘data-driven’ methods inspired by psychophysical reverse-correlation, which allow researchers to model a participant’s behavioral responses to arbitrarily generated visual or auditory stimuli (Adolphs et al. 2016). Taking the example of some of our recent results on the perception of speech prosody (Ponsot et al., PNAS 2018; Goupil et al. Nature Communications 2021), I will show how to extend these new methodologies to the analysis of neurophysiological data, in order to identify the sensory mechanisms that underly covert auditory processing in both healthy participants, stroke and coma patients.
Bio: Jean-Julien Aucouturier was trained at SONY Computer Science Laboratories with François Pachet and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (2006). JJ has then held several postdoctoral positions in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Tokyo with Takashi Ikegami and at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute with Kazuo Okanoya. After a decade at IRCAM in Paris where he directed the ERC-funded CREAM music neuroscience team, he is now Directeur de recherche CNRS (equiv. Full Professor) at the FEMTO-ST Institute (CNRS/Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté) in Besançon, France. His research program in FEMTO-ST is based on data-driven, system-science approaches to clinical neurophysiology, with a focus on the auditory/speech modality, and health technology applications in neurology and psychiatry. Lab website: https://neuro-team-femto.github.io

Neural encoding of speech sounds in neonates and infants: developmental trajectory and modulating factors
2023-01-20 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Carles Escera
(1)Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona,
(2)Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona,
(3) Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu (IRSJD), Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona
Sites:
www.ub.edu/brainlab
http://www.neurociencies.ub.edu/the-auditory-motor-emotional-and-numerical-brain/
https://www.irsjd.org/ca/recerca/28/neurociencia-cognitiva

ABSTRACT
Infants master their native language with remarkable ease, following a common developmental trajectory across different languages and cultures. There is ample consensus on critical behavioral attainments at given time points during development, such as cooing (1-4 months), babbling (6-10 months) and uttering the first words (12 months). Yet, the underlying neural underpinnings of these language attainments are poorly understood. The acquisition of spoken language requires a sophisticated neural machinery to disentangle the fine-grained spectro-temporal acoustic features differentiating speech sounds. This neural machinery is partially functional in utero, from the 27th gestational week, and keeps its natural maturation processes under genetic, biological, nutritional and environmental influences. From the very same moment of birth, the baby is exposed to a much richer acoustic environment (the mother’s bomb behaves as low-pass filter), fostering rapid experience-dependent plastic changes in the neural encoding of complex sound features, that I will argue, support early language acquisition.
In my talk I will discuss the results of a series of studies carried out in my laboratory with the Frequency-Following Response (FFR), a non-invasive scalp-recorded auditory evoked potential that reflects compound phase-locked neural activity elicited to the spectrotemporal components of the acoustic signal, along the entire auditory hierarchy. These studies have so-far allowed us to establish the standards for recording the neonatal FFR in a hospital routine, to show that fundamental frequency (F0) encoding is adult-like at birth whereas temporal-fine structure encoding shows a striking maturation at the age of one month, to continue to develop up to the age of 6 months, and that fetal conditions challenging normal fetal growth, such as fetal growth restriction of fetal overweight, result in compromised neural encoding of F0 at birth. Furthermore, our results show that the prenatal exposure to environmental music –and to a mono/bilingual acoustic environment- during pregnancy, fosters the neural encoding of speech sounds (F0) at birth. Altogether, these result support the FFR as a powerful to investigate the neural underpinnings of early language acquisition.
Funding. Project PID2021-122255NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ FEDER, UE; Fundación Alicia Koplowitz; 2022AR-IRSJDCdTorres; ICREA Acadèmia.

Stimulating speech: auditory-motor interactions in perception and production
2023-02-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Kate WATKINS Professeure à l’Université d’Oxford
I will describe a series of experiments employing non-invasive brain stimulation in combination with measures of brain function, which explore how motor-to-sensory and sensory-to-motor interactions can be modulated during speech perception and production tasks.
To study the role of the motor cortex in speech perception, we use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt the motor cortex representations of the articulators. We then record the effects of this disruption on speech perception using behaviour, EEG and MEG. We found that the motor cortex contributes to early stages of speech processing in the auditory cortex but not to processing of non-speech stimuli. The early effects are left-lateralised and can be fine-tuned by attention. We recently explored these lateralised effects further using perception of lexical tones in Mandarin and non-tonal language speakers. The effect of speech motor cortex disruption is left-lateralised for tone perception in Mandarin speakers and right-lateralised for non-tonal language speakers.
We have also explored the effects of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over speech motor cortex and the cerebellum on speech adaptation to a formant perturbation suggesting different contributions from these regions to the adaptation process.
Taken together our work demonstrates the strength of brain stimulation methods especially when used in combination with other measures. The work presented confirms the importance of interactions between motor and sensory systems that are necessary for both speech perception and production.

Neural dynamics of feedforward and feedback speech processing
2023-03-10 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Adeen Flinker, PhD, New York University, Grossman School of Medicine, Tandon School of Engineering
Speech production is a complex human function requiring continuous feedforward commands together with reafferent feedback processing. The cortical organization of these processes are largely characterized by dual stream models of speech (Hickok & Poeppel 2007, Rauschecker & Scott 2009), wherein Frontal cortex mainly serves as an articulatory network mapping feedforward commands. Leveraging human intracranial recordings, I will present a series of studies addressing the role of prefrontal cortex in processing feedforward and feedback speech commands in support of a mixed representation across frontal cortex. I will argue for a functional subdivision of precentral gyrus wherein the ventral division sends feedforward commands and serves as the source of a corollary discharge, while the dorsal division carries out auditory feedback processing of reafferent speech.

Voices in the head: diversity of endophasia framed in a neurocognitive model
2023-05-05 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Hélène LOEVENBRUCK : Directrice de Recherche à l’Université Grenoble Alpes
“I am not a man, I am Cantona.”
“I love football.”
As you silently read these quotes, can you hear Eric Cantona’s voice? Can you imagine his next sentence?
Inner speech, or endophasia, can take various formats depending on the individual or the situation. It can feel expanded, like a little voice in the head, or rather condensed. It can occur as a monologue or a dialogue. It can seem intentional or irruptive. Recent data on atypical covert verbal forms, such as auditory verbal aphantasia (reported lack of inner voice), verbal hyperphantasia (reported vivid inner voice), and auditory verbal hallucination, challenge theories that postulate a universal quality of endophasia. In ConDialInt, a neurocognitive model rooted in a predictive control theory, such forms can be accounted for by considering a gradual variation along three essential dimensions: condensation, dialogality and intentionality. The inner voice phenomenon is seen as an exaptation of the sensory predictions involved in the control of overt speech. Speech production is considered to be hierarchically controlled, from conceptualisation to articulation, via formulation, motor planning and programming. At each level, control is based on the comparison between initial input and prediction. Endophasia is viewed as an interruption in the speech production process. Condensed forms emerge when the interruption occurs early, before the formulation stage. Expanded forms, inner voices, recruit the full production process, interrupted only prior to articulation. Dialogal forms are taken to include indexical and perspective properties. Intentional forms are seen as rigorously monitored predictions, whereas unintentional forms are loosely monitored. Agency feeling is assumed to rely on the timing of initial and predicted signals. The ConDialInt model is compatible with neuroanatomical data obtained for a variety of inner speech situations. It also accounts for atypical endophasia. Verbal hyperphantasia vs aphantasia are explained by variation in the condensation dimension. Auditory verbal hallucinations are construed as unintentional dialogal endophasia bestowed with a lack of agency. These propositions have implications for levels of representation in theories of language processing and cognition in general.

Here the zoom link : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/87516300272?pwd=[REDACTED]
ID de réunion : 875 1630 0272
Code secret : [REDACTED]

Why we should care about the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex in language production
2023-06-02 11:00 - 17:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Stephanie Ries
Associate Professor, San Diego State University

The dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), including the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas as well as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, has been a region of interest in studies of cognitive control and other areas of neuroscience for many years. Yet, traditional models of language production do not typically include this brain region, and its potential role in language and speech production has therefore only been more recently investigated. In this talk, I will review evidence from several research groups (including but not limited to my own) using fMRI, brain stimulation, and scalp and intracranial EEG in “monolinguals” and bilinguals with and without neurological damage that suggest that the dmPFC may play a bigger role than we previously had thought in language production. In particular, it seems likely involved in a response selection mechanism potentially taking place separately from lexical selection, in addition to speech monitoring. The implications of these findings for traditional cognitive models of language production will be discussed.

https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/83037452791?pwd=[REDACTED]
ID de réunion : 830 3745 2791
Code secret : [REDACTED]

Rob Hartsuiker
2023-07-10 11:00 - 12:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Titre à préciser

Annulé
2023-10-27 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Prediction in Language Processing: Some Ideas About How It’s Done
Tamara Swaab, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief: Cognition
Professor, Department of Psychology and
Center for Mind and Brain
University of California, Davis
Title of Talk: Prediction in Language Processing: Some Ideas About How It’s Done.
Rooted in century old ideas of Kant, recent theories of perception, cognition, language, and neuroscience propose that active generation of top-down predictions of imminent sensory input guide our perceptual experiences. These predictions can be based on long-term knowledge representations stored in memory, experience based probabilistic constraints and immediate contextual constraints. Several prominent contemporary approaches to language interpretation assign significant impact to predictive processing during language interpretation. According to these accounts, comprehenders engage in a set of processes by which they can predict and pre-activate imminent bits of the linguistic input. Some models suggest that predictive processing during language comprehension happens reflexively and under all circumstances. I will present the results of a series of studies from our lab that suggest that comprehenders do not automatically and uniformly predict, but instead flexibly adapt predictive processing depending on its utility in a given processing environment.

Journée de séminaire à l’occasion de la soutenance HDR de Cristel Portes
2023-12-01 10:00 - 19:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Programme
10h Brechtje Post (University of Cambridge, England)
10h Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie (Université de Nantes & LLING)
11h Coffee break
11h30 Stefan Baumann (University of Cologne, Germany)
12h15 Lunch ILCB
14h Soutenance HDR, Cristel Portes (Aix-Marseille University & CNRS/LPL)

Présentation de Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie (Université de Nantes & LLING)

Title: Faisceau d’indices phonétiques fins et interprétation : le cas des questions non-canoniques
Abstract: En m’appuyant sur les résultats de différentes études menées dans le but de caractériser la prosodie associée à des formes particulières de questions (questions alternatives (Delais-Roussarie & Turco 2019), questions rhétoriques (Beyssade & Delais-Roussarie 2022), questions non-canoniques de surprise (Celle & Pélissier 2022)), je tenterai de montrer que l’interprétation d’un énoncé, notamment d’une question non-canonique, est le résultat d’une convergence d’indices de nature diverse (grammaticaux, mais aussi phonétiques, gestuels, situationnels). Au plan simplement prosodique, des détails phonétiques fins tels que le débit, le registre, les trajectoires des mouvements mélodiques ou la qualité vocale interviennent sans doute davantage que la forme et la distribution des contours intonatifs nucléaires.

Présentation de Stefan Baumann (Université de Cologne, Allemagne)
Title: Head movements and pitch accents as cues to information status in (L1 and L2) French
Abstract: Languages differ in the way prosodic prominence is implemented to mark information status or focus (e.g. Kügler & Calhoun, 2020). At a parallel level of description, gestures have been found to occur more frequently with new and inferable referents than with given ones (e.g. Debreslioska & Gullberg 2020). For foreign languages, previous research has shown that deaccenting given information may be challenging for speakers of languages which use this strategy less (e.g. Rasier & Hiligsmann 2007). As for gestures, there is evidence that learners tend to over-explicitly mark referring expressions such as pronouns (Yoshioka 2008). To our knowledge, an analysis of information status expressed through both prosodic and gestural prominence (here: head movements) in L2 speech has not been carried out so far. In the present study, 25 Catalan learners of French were video recorded giving a short description of their best friend in French. The recordings were annotated in terms of information status (RefLex Scheme, Riester & Baumann 2017), pitch accents (F_ToBI, Delais- Roussarie et al. 2015), perceived prominence (DIMA, Kügler et al. 2022) and head movement types and apexes (M3D, Rohrer et al. 2020). Results show that Catalan learners of French marked new and inferable information more than given information either with pitch accents alone or with a combination of pitch accents and gestures. Given information was generally marked as less prominent than new(er) information (more initial accents, fewer rises, lower level of perceived prominence, fewer head movements) but still received a large proportion of pitch accents. However, no difference between the types of accent and only slight differences between the types of head movement were found in non-given categories. The results of an analysis of the same task by 7 French native speakers are compared with the learners’ results. L1 French speakers mark the extreme values of information status (i.e. given and new) in a more pronounced way using more fine-grained differences in pitch accent type.
References: Debreslioska, S., & Gullberg, M. (2020). What’s New? Gestures accompany inferable rather than brand-new referents in discourse. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1935.
Delais-Roussarie et al. (2015) Intonational Phonology of French: Developing a ToBI system for French In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds.), Intonation in Romance. OUP.
Kügler, F., Baumann, S. & Röhr, C.T. (2022). Deutsche Intonation, Modellierung und Annotation (DIMA) – Richtlinien zur prosodischen Annotation des Deutschen. In: Schwarze, C. & Grawunder, S. (Eds.),
Transkription und Annotation gesprochener Sprache und multimodaler Interaktion (pp. 23–54). Narr. Kügler, F. & Calhoun, S. (2020). Prosodic encoding of information structure: A typological perspective. The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody (pp. 454–467). Oxford Academic.
Rasier, L. & Hiligsmann, P. (2007). Prosodic transfer from L1 to L2. Theoretical and methodological issues. Nouveaux cahiers de linguistique française, 28, 41–66.
Riester, A. & Baumann S. (2017). The RefLex Scheme – Annotation Guidelines. SinSpeC. Working Papers of the SFB 732, vol. 14. University of Stuttgart.
Rohrer, P., Vilà-Giménez, I, Florit-Pons, J., Esteve-Gibert, N., Ren, A., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Prieto, P. (2020).
The MultiModal MultiDimensional (M3D) labeling system. Yoshioka, K. (2008). Gesture and information structure in first and second language. Gesture, 8, 236–255.
Présentation HDR Cristel Portes
Titre : De la prosodie du discours au sens de l’intonation en dialogue(s)
Résumé : Même s’il est aujourd’hui moins controversé que cela ne le fut que l’intonation fait partie de la grammaire des langues, définir quelles sont les primitives de l’analyse intonative et comment elles contribuent au sens d’un énoncé reste un défi et un enjeu majeur. Mes recherches défendent l’idée de la ‘normalité linguistique’ de l’intonation et du sens de l’intonation en essayant d’en identifier la spécificité. Je défends l’idée d’une ‘double articulation’ des configurations intonatives en unités porteuses de sens (les accents mélodiques et les tons de frontière), elles-mêmes décomposables en unités sans signification (les tons). Je défends la thèse que le sens de l’intonation reflète la dimension intimement dialogique et interactionnelle du langage à plusieurs égards : 1) il indique quelles parties de l’énoncé font référence aux connaissances partagées par les interlocuteurs versus à l’enjeu spécifique de l’énoncé ; 2) il indique comment le locuteur assume et/ou attribue à l’interlocuteur les connaissances ou les croyances mises en jeu par la situation évoquée par l’énoncé ; 3) il suggère les attentes du locuteur concernant la forme que l’énoncé suivant devrait avoir, sa source et ses relations potentielles avec l’énoncé en cours.
Title: From the prosody of discourse to intonational meaning in dialogue(s)
Abstract: Even if it is less controversial today than it used to be that intonation is part of the grammar of languages, it is still a challenge and a major issue to define what the primitives of intonational analysis are and how they contribute to the meaning of the utterance. My research defends the idea of the ‘linguistic normality’ of intonation and intonational meaning by attempting to identify its specificity. I defend the ‘double articulation’ of intonational patterns into meaning-carrying units (pitch accents and boundary tones), which can themselves be broken down into meaningless units (tones). I argue that the meaning of intonation reflects the intimately dialogical and interactional dimension of language in several respects: 1) it indicates which parts of the utterance refer to the knowledge shared by the interlocutors versus to the specific issue at stake in the utterance; 2) it indicates how the speaker assumes and/or attributes to the addressee the knowledge and beliefs brought into play by the situation evoked by the utterance; 3) it suggests speakers’ expectations about the form that the following utterance should take, its source and its potential relations with the utterance in progress.
Jury/committee: Stefan Baumann, Claire Beyssade, Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie, Mariapaola D’Imperio, Martine Grice, Brechtje Post, Michael Wagner.

Understanding Understanding -- in General, and in Large Language Models
2024-02-09 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
David Schlangen : Professor, “Foundations of Computational Linguistics”, University of Potsdam
Abstract:
In the first part of the talk I will present an overview of the activities of my group (Foundations of CompLing at Uni Potsdam), organised around the quest to understand how linguistic communication can yield shared understanding. I will present an analytical framework in which similarities and differences in method and approach between text NLU (natural language understanding) and SLU (situated language understanding) can be described.
In the second part, and motivated by this framework, I will present a new computational framework for the evaluation of “chat-optimized LLMs” (cLLMs) like ChatGPT for their capabilities in task-oriented interaction.

Leveraging the auditory oscillatory function to treat speech and language disorders.
2024-03-15 12:00 - 14:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Anne-Lise Giraud
Abstract:
The neural computations that make oral communication possible must operate on multiple time scales, both in parallel and recursively. Neuronal oscillations at different scales and their precise coordination are a key instrument of this necessary multiplexing, a phenomenon we are exploring in humans through surface and intracortical EEG. In this presentation, I will recall the key computational principles and show how we can exploit them to address fundamental questions about neurodevelopmental pathologies and propose therapeutic solutions.
Link Zoom : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/82661920965?pwd=[REDACTED]

Beyond typology: experimental explorations of language universals
2024-04-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Jennifer Culbertson
Human languages exhibit striking variation. At the same time, certain linguistic patterns crop up again and again, while others seem to be extremely rare. What these tantalising observations tell us about human language is one of the most contentious questions in linguistics. Do similarities between languages reflect a special capacity for language that has evolved only in humans? Do they reflect more general features of the human mind, potentially shared with our ancestors? Are they just down to accidents of history? Traditionally, linguists have argued for one or another of these answers based on limited sources of evidence. For example, it is common to base claims on small samples of languages, case studies of how a handful of languages change over time, or examples of how individual languages are learned. In this talk, I highlight problems with these traditional sources of evidence and survey what I see as the solution: cross-cultural experiments. I show how this approach can be used to bring crucial empirical evidence to bear on how language is shaped (or not!) by the human linguistic and cognitive system.

Subdivide and Conquer. brain processing of musical melody, harmony and rhythm
2024-05-24 11:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Peter Vuust : Director of the Center for Music in the Brain (MIB), MSc, PhD, Prof. in Neuroscience, Dept. of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Prof. in Music, the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark, Bassist and composer

Music is ubiquitous across human cultures—as a source of affective and pleasurable experience, moving us both physically and emotionally—and learning to play music shapes both brain structure and function. Music processing in the brain—namely, perception of melody, harmony, and rhythm—has traditionally been studied as an auditory phenomenon using passive listening paradigms. However, when listening to music, we actively generate predictions about what is likely to happen next. This enactive aspect has led to a more complete understanding of music processing involving brain structures implicated in action, emotion, and learning.
The present talk is highlights how music perception, action, emotion, and learning all rest on the human brain’s fundamental capacity for prediction—as formulated by the predictive coding of music model and elucidates how this formulation of music perception and expertise in individuals can be extended to account for the dynamics and underlying brain mechanisms of collective music making. This sheds new light on what makes music meaningful from a neuroscientific perspective.

About Peter Vuust
Professor Peter Vuust, Ph.D. is a unique combination of a top-level jazz musician and a world class scientist. He leads the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Music In the Brain” and holds joint appointments as full professor at the Danish Royal Academy of Music and Dept of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University.
He has published more than 150 scientific papers in high ranking international journals, most recently the review “Music in the brain” in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (March, 2022). He uses state-of-the-art brain scanning techniques such as fMRI, PET, EEG, MEG and behavioral measures and is a world leading expert in the field of music and the brain – a research field he has single-handedly built up in Denmark as leader of the center for Music In the Brain (MIB) currently employing more than 30 researchers. Among many other grants, he has received DKK 98 million (~ US $ 15 billion) as PI, from the Danish National Research Foundation.
In addition, Prof Vuust is a renowned jazz bassist and composer; leading the Peter Vuust Quartet with Alex Riel, Lars Jansson and Ove Ingemarsson of which seven records have been released so far. He has also played on more than 100 recordings and been sideman with international jazz stars such as Lars Jansson, Tim Hagans, John Abercrombie, Dave Liebman and many more. He is the recipient of the 2009 Jazz Society of Aarhus’ “Gaffel”-prize. His album “September Song” was widely acclaimed by reviewers and received a nomination for a Danish Music Award in 2014. In 2022, he released the album “Further to Fly”, which contained jazz arrangements by Peter Vuust of the Songs of Paul Simon with unanimously excellent reviews.
As professor at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark, he has taught electric and acoustic bass as well as music theory, ear training and ensemble playing. He has given many keynote talks and masterclasses at international conferences and institutions on a wide range of topics ranging from the neuroscience of music to improvisation and composition. He has written three monograph’s “Polyrhythm and –meter in modern jazz; a study of Miles Davis’ Quintet from the 1960s”, “Music on the Brain”, and most recently a book on musical leadership.

Development of the lexical-semantic organization in the infant brain: electrophysiological evidence
2024-06-14 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Dr. Pia Rämä
Until recently, there has been little evidence regarding how and when infants begin to integrate words into an inter-connected lexical-semantic system. Recent event-related potential (ERP) studies show that lexical-semantic system emerges together with early vocabulary during the second year of life (Rämä et al., 2013; Rämä et al., 2018). These studies also suggest that the N400 component is an useful tool to investigate lexical-semantic development in infancy. Some further evidence shows that lexical-semantic organization develops later in bilingual than in monolingual infants. There is mixed evidence as to whether lexical-semantic activation occurs similarly in dominant and non-dominant languages in bilingual language learners (e.g., Sirri & Rämä, 2019). In my talk, I will present our findings regarding neurophysiological mechanisms underlying lexical-semantic activation in monolingual and bilingual infants, and I will also describe my recent findings on the effect of speaker familiarity on processing of word meanings.
References
Rämä, P., Sirri, L., & Serres, J. (2013). Development of lexical–semantic language system: N400 priming effect for spoken words in 18-and 24-month old children. Brain and language, 125(1), 1-10.
Rämä, P., Sirri, L., & Goyet, L. (2018). Event-related potentials associated with cognitive mechanisms underlying lexical-semantic processing in monolingual and bilingual 18-month-old children. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 47, 123-130.
Sirri, L., & Rämä, P. (2019). Similar and distinct neural mechanisms underlying semantic priming in the languages of the French–Spanish bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 22(1), 93-102.

Revisiting the origins of meaning
2024-11-29 11:00 - 12:00 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003
Klaus Zuberbuhler

The three core properties of language – meaning, syntax and social interaction – have received considerable comparative research attention in recent years, driven by a desire to advance theories of language evolution. Somewhat surprisingly, progress on the origins of meaning has been least remarkable, after the initial pioneering discoveries of referential signals in primate communication some 50 years ago. Here, I will revisit the problem of animal meaning and reference, first, by taking stock of the current state of the art and, second, by pointing out possible new directions of research. I will discuss new conceptual and methodological tools that are likely to provide progress in our understanding of the evolutionary transition from animal signal meaning to human linguistic meaning.

The foundations of verbal working memory in the language system”
2025-02-26 12:00 - 13:00
Steve Majerus
Professeur à l’Université de Liège
https://www.uliege.be/cms/c_9054334/fr/repertoire?uid=u182078

Many models of verbal working memory acknowledge interactions with verbal long-term memory. The nature of these interactions remains, however, a matter of debate. I will present a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies showing that (1) even subtle aspects of language knowledge such as syntactic positional knowledge can influence verbal working memory, (2) the capacity and neural substrates of verbal working memory cannot be defined independently of the linguistic nature of the stimuli to-be-maintained, (3) recruitment of deep semantic knowledge may not characterize all WM situations. Our results support hybrid linguistic models of verbal WM considering that verbal WM is grounded in the language system but cannot be reduced to it.
