ILCB

Journée ILCB (CANCELLED)
2020-05-19 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France

Louis-Jean Boë GIPSA-lab, UGA–CNRS, Grenoble
2020-03-27 11:00 - 14:00 (Europe/Paris) | 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

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

Cerebral Processing of Voice Information: From Monkeys to Deep Learning
2020-01-24 12:00 - 14:00 | 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
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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.

Journée Annuelle des Doctorants 2019
2019-12-13 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
ProgrammeJAD2019

Rencontre recherches sur le jeune enfant
2019-12-11 13:00 - 17:00 | Maison de la recherche, 29 Avenue Robert Schuman,, Aix en Provence, 13100, France
Programme :
13h Visite du BabyLab de la Maison de la Recherche (Fabrice Cauchard)
13h45 Lola Rivoal et Maud Champagne Lavau (LPL) Isabelle Dautriche (LPC) 15h Pause Café
15h30 Abdellah Fourtassi (LIS) Clément François (LPL) Marianne Jover (Centre PsyCLE)
Lieu : Maison de la recherche, 29 avenue Schuman, salle 2.44
Date : 11 décembre, 13h-17h
Contact : marianne.jover@univ-amu.fr

What we learn and when we learn it: the interaction of maturation and experience in music and language
2019-11-29 12:00 - 14:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
What we learn and when we learn it: the interaction of maturation and experience in music and language
Virginia Penhune
Department of Psychology, Concordia University
Laboratory for Motor Control and Neural Plasticity
https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/psychology/research/penhune-lab.html
The impact of training or experience is not the same at all points in development. Children who learn to play a musical instrument or speak a second language early in life are often more proficient as adults. In the domain of music, a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that early training is important for musical skill, however, there has been little evidence directly demonstrating the impact of the age of start. To address this question, work in my laboratory has compared behavior and brain structure in early- (<7) and late-trained ( >7) adult and child musicians, showing differences in behavior and brain structure. More recently, we have compared early- and late-trained musicians with simultaneous and sequential bilinguals, showing differential effects of age-of-start in the arcuate fasciculus. I will discuss these findings in the context of our understanding of the interaction between normative development and specific experience, and describe a model of gene-environment interactions that integrates the contribution of age of start.

Using Data Science to Study Children's Cognitive Development
2019-11-22 11:00 - 12:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
“Using Data Science to Study Children’s Cognitive Development” Abdellah Fourtassi
Following the seminal work of Piaget, the traditional approach in cognitive development has focused on studying the structure of children’s knowledge in controlled situations (e.g., laboratory experiments). While this approach allows for precise inference about how children behave in certain tasks, it cannot provide an understanding of the social context within which knowledge emerges. In fact, it has been known, at least since Vygotsky, that children acquire new skills and concepts with the help of more competent members of society who scaffold the children’s learning, allowing them to attain skills that are just beyond their current abilities. In fact, much of the children’s abstract knowledge about the world, it has been argued, is mediated through discussions with their parents/caregivers.
In this talk, I explain how new advances in Data Science, especially in Natural Language Processing (NLP), allow us to 1) account for what and how information is presented to children by their parents through language, and 2) make precise predictions about the way this information can be used by children in controlled designs. Thus, NLP can create a fruitful synergy between controlled and naturalistic research methods. More generally, I argue that a complete theory of cognitive development requires interdisciplinary research across computer science and psychology.

Musicians at the cocktail party: Neural correlates of bottom-up and top down mechanisms
2019-11-15 12:00 - 14:00 | Amphi MASSIANI, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13331, France
“Musicians at the cocktail party: Neural correlates of bottom-up and top down mechanisms”
Robert Zatorre
Montreal Neurological Institute
McGill University
Segregating sound mixtures makes demands on multiple cognitive and neural mechanisms that musical training may enhance or exploit. In a series of studies we have documented the music-related enhancement behaviorally in the context of speech in noise, and also in a selective attention context with competing speech streams. Using functional MRI, we observed that musicians’ enhanced speech-in-noise perception was associated with better decoding of speech in auditory areas at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), whereas under low SNR conditions the enhancement was associated with decoding in frontal and motor cortical regions. We interpret this finding as indicating a shift from bottom-up to top-down mechanisms depending on the quality of the input, with musicians being better able to deploy either mechanism as a function of the conditions. We then used MEG to look at the neural representation of competing speech streams via decoding of the neural signature (amplitude envelope) of attended vs unattended items. The behavioral advantage associated with musical training was related to enhanced ability to represent both streams in auditory cortex, consistent with their capacity to follow multiple sound streams in music. These cognitive neuroscience approaches help us to develop better models to explain why musicians are good at cocktail parties (apart from their reputed drinking abilities).

Prospects for Collaborative Research between Latin Palaeography, Cognitive Psychology and the Neurosciences
2019-10-11 12:00 - 14:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Prospects for Collaborative Research between Latin Palaeography, Cognitive Psychology and the Neurosciences
Twenty years ago, Brian Stock, the distinguished Canadian historian of medieval literature and philosophy, published Augustine the Reader, a seminal resource for examining the patristic vocabulary for reading in the fifth century C.E. The Latin verbs videre and inspicere came to be closely associated with, and in some instances synonyms for the act of reading. A survey of surviving manuscripts of the fifth and sixth century reveals remarkable dissimilarities between them and the papyri of the classical age of Cicero and Quintilian. Codices, not scrolls, they incorporated patterns of space, signs (notae), ink color (red and eventually blue, green and yellow) and numerical annotations that facilitated the disambiguation of text and the extraction of meaning. Changes in the patterns of inserted intra-textual space, beginning with the cola et commata format perfected by Jerome for the Vulgate Bible, are especially worthy of note. These spatial innovations led to the aerated text format, normal in the ninth century, that I have described in Space Between Words. Speaking as a humanist who admires the “hard sciences”, it appears to me that innovations in the neurosciences over the past two decades, notably the ready availability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), offers the possibility of developing experiments for scientifically analyzing in precise terms the impact of the evolving graphic innovations that from the fifth to the twefth centuries came to support the modern practice of silent reading. My question today is: Is it now possible to formulate laboratory experiments capable of casting light on the psychological and neurological implications of the evolution of the Latin page that transpired between Antiquity and the central Middle Ages? And if so, what are the implications for analyzing the text format of Western European vernacular languages such as Irish and Old English?

Paul Saenger
Curator of Rare Books emeritus, The Newberry Library, Chicago

Brains in Harmony: the role of brain-to-brain synchrony in naturalistic social interactions
2019-07-02 12:00 - 14:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Brains in Harmony: the role of brain-to-brain synchrony in naturalistic social interactions
Neuroscience research has produced tremendous insight into how the human brain supports dynamic social interactions. Still, laboratory-generated findings do not always straightforwardly generalize to real-world environments. To fill this gap, I collaborate with scientists, artists, and educators to take neuroscience out of the laboratory, into schools, museums, and underserved neighborhoods. We consistently find a relationship between brain-to-brain synchrony and successful social interaction. For example, empathy, joint action, and social motivation predicts synchrony in dyadic interactions, and synchrony among high schoolers is related to classroom social dynamics and student engagement. Taken together, our multidisciplinary approach may provide a potential new avenue to investigate social interactions outside of the laboratory.

Suzanne Dikker (New York University Department of Psychology USA)

Inter-ACT: A workshop on action and communication bridging psycholinguistics and social neuroscience
2019-06-20 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
9.20 Introduction to the Workshop
9.30 Dr. Anna K. Kuhlen (Institute for Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany)
Neuro-cognitive studies on language production in shared task settings
Typically, people speak in the context of social interaction. Yet, surprisingly little is known about how the neuro-cognitive processes of language production are shaped by social interaction. I will present experiments that investigate language production in settings in which two speakers jointly name pictures and take turns speaking and listening. Starting point are behavioral experiments demonstrating that speakers seek lexical access not only for pictures they name themselves but also for pictures named by a task partner– which can cause interference when subsequently naming semantically related pictures. Based on these findings I will discuss electrophysiological (EEG) experiments that aim to specify the mechanism behind such partner-elicited interference. Lastly, I will present ongoing experiments that scale up joint picture naming to settings in which task partners speak to each other with communicative intentionality. In conclusion I will reflect on factors that may affect whether speaking is experienced as a joint activity.
10.20 Prof. Emily Cross (University of Glasgow, Scotland)
Perceiving and Interacting with Artificial Social Agents
Understanding how we perceive and interact with others is a core challenge of social cognition research. This challenge is poised to intensify in importance as the ubiquity of artificial intelligence and the presence of humanoid robots in society grows. My group’s research applies established theories and methods from psychology and neuroscience to questions concerning how people perceive, interact, and form relationships with robots. In this talk, I review recent evidence from behavioural and brain imaging studies that aim to provide deeper insights into the relationship between social cognition and brain function. Examples from work comparing social perception of humans compared to robots highlights the importance of examining how perception of and interaction with artificial agents in a social world is revealing fundamental insights about human social cognition.
11.10 Coffee break
11.30 Dr. Guillaume Dumas (Institut Pasteur, Paris, France)
Social Neuroscience of Human-Human and Human-Machine Interaction
How are neural, behavioural and social scales coordinated in real time so as to make possible the emergence of social cognition? Answering this question requires to study the dynamics of coordination in real human interactions. However, even at the simplest dyadic scale, methodological and theoretical challenges remain. First, we will see how situated social paradigms combined with brain recordings of multiple individuals simultaneously (hyperscanning) allowed demonstrating how states of interactional synchrony at the behavioural level correlate with the emergence of inter-individual synchronisation at the brain level. Then, we will discuss the Human Dynamic Clamp (HDC), a paradigm integrating equations of human motion at the neurobehavioral level in a virtual partner. Overall, we will discuss how combining human-human and human-machine interactions thus presents new approaches for investigating the neurobiological mechanisms of social interaction, and for testing theoretical/computational models concerning the dynamics at the neural, behavioural, and social scales.
12.20 General discussion
13.00 – 15.00 Lunch
15.00 Presentations of PhDs and Postdocs
15.30 Round table reserved to PhDs and Postdocs
17.00 End of the Workshop – Cheese and Wine
Organized by Giusy Cirillo, Birgit Rauchbauer and Raphaël Fargier

Journées de l’ILCB / BLRI à Porquerolles
2019-05-15 - 2019-05-17 | IGESA PORQUEROLLES, Rue de la Douane, Ile de Porquerolles, 83400
Wednesday 15th

14h-15h30 Introduction, posters overview
15h30-18h Poster session
18h Apéritif, concert

Thursday 16th

9h30-12h30: Long thematic workshops

Multimodal interaction, social brain (Roxane Bertrand, Magalie Ochs, Driss Boussaoud, Adrien Meguerditchian)
Multimodal experimentations (coord. Jean-Michel Badier, Thierry Legou)
Reading, Writing, Brain and Disorders: From theory to applications (coord. Jo Ziegler)

14h-15h30: Short thematic workshops

Machine Learning (Sylvain Takerkart, Thierry Artières)
Convergence, synchronization (Noël Nguyen)
Vocal Brain (Pascal Belin)

16h-17h: Focus talks

Epilepsy and language (Agnès Trébuchon)
Spatio-temporal inverse problems in EEG and MEG (Bruno Torresani)

17h-18h: Synthesis 1

Synthesis of the “Reading and writing” workshop
Synthesis of the “Vocal Brain” workshop

Friday 17th

9h30-10h30: Focus talk

Data, acquisition, diffusion (Noël Nguyen, Stéphane Dufau, Olivier Coulon)

10h30-12h30: Synthesis 2

Multimodal interaction
Convergence
Multimodal experimentations
Machine Learning

Special ILCB Workshop "Speech, Language and the Brain"
2019-05-14 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Special ILCB Workshop “Speech, Language and the Brain”
Salle des Voutes – Faculté St Charles Marseille

Sonja Kotz : Dept. of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Maastricht University
Ken Pugh : President and Director of Research at Haskins Laboratories
Anne-Lise Giraud : University of Geneva
Karsten Steinhauer : School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University

9h – 9h45 Prof. Sonja Kotz : Cortico-subcortico-cortical circuitry involvement in perception and speech
9h45 – 10h30 Prof. Kenneth R. Pugh : Building the literate brain: How learning to read depends upon, and changes, brain organization for spoken language.
11h – 11h45 Prof. Anne-Lise Giraud : Speech processing with (and without) cortical oscillations
11h45 – 12h30 Prof. Karsten Steinhauer : Eliciting ERP components for morphosyntactic agreement mismatches in grammatical sentences
12h30 à 14h Lunch

Speech processing with (and without) cortical oscillations
Anne-Lise Giraud
Perception of connected speech relies on accurate syllabic segmentation and phonemic encoding. These processes are essential because they determine the building blocks that we can manipulate mentally to understand and produce speech. Speech segmentation and encoding might be underpinned by specific interactions between the acoustic rhythms of speech and coupled neural oscillations in the theta and low-gamma band. To address how neural oscillations interact with speech and intervene in phonological processing, we use neurocomputational models, and establish that recognition performance are generally better with than without neural oscillations. Based on these models we hypothesize that if low-gamma oscillations are disrupted speech perception might cause difficulties to map phonemic with graphemic representations when learning to read. Using MEG, and EEG combined with fMRI, and neurostimulation, we found that dyslexia is associated with a specific deficit in low-gamma activity in auditory cortex, and that this deficit alone accounts for several facets of the disorder. We further show that boosting 30Hz neural activity in left auditory cortex using transcranial alternative current stimulation selectively improves phonological performance and reading efficiency. Altogether these results suggest a causal role of oscillatory processes in speech perception.

Cortico-subcortico-cortical circuitry involvement in perception and speech
Sonja Kotz
Wile the role of the cerebellum, less is known about its contributions to perception and speech. Considering temporo-cerebellar-thalamo-cortical circuitry and its respective connectivity patterns, cerebellar contributions should be further explored across domains as they (i) simulate cortical information processing and (ii) compare expected and actual outcomes of stimulation, leading to adaptation in cortical target areas. I will discuss frameworks and present empirical evidence encompassing action, perception, and speech in support of this idea.

Building the literate brain: How learning to read depends upon, and changes, brain organization for spoken language.
Kenneth R. Pugh
The development of skilled reading involves a major re-organization of language systems in the brain. We will present ongoing research from our lab on the genetic and neurobiological foundations of learning to read across writing systems, with particular focus on bi-directional dependencies between brain pathways that are critical in linking spoken and written language. Our research suggests that print/speech convergence in language cortex accounts for individual differences in reading outcomes in high and low risk learners. New longitudinal findings from our lab using computational models to better understand critical gene-brain-behavior connections in early language and speech motor development and reading and are discussed in detail (including new findings with magnetic resonance spectroscopy and multimodal brain imaging that reveals how excitatory and inhibitory neurochemistry moderates language and reading development in high risk children). Finally, we discuss recent studies that extend this brain research into second language learning.

Eliciting ERP components for morphosyntactic agreement mismatches in grammatical sentences
Karsten Steinhauer
French subject-verb agreement has specific properties relevant to the study of agreement processing, which have not been systematically studied in the ERP literature. Furthermore, there is increasing interest in ERP methods that do not rely on violation paradigms. Therefore, we examined whether the auditory presentation of a grammatical sentence in French combined with a picture that doesn’t match its morphosyntactic features would elicit the same ERP components as in classic error-based paradigms. We created various cross-modal number (singular/plural) mismatches to elicit LAN-P600 for agreement mismatches (Molinaro et al, 2011; Royle et al, 2013) and semantic verb/action (rather than noun/object) mismatches to elicit N400s (Royle et al., 2013; Willems et al, 2008).
Twenty-eight French-speaking adults listened to sentences describing scenes depicted while their EEG was recorded. We varied the type and amount of number cues available in each sentence using two manipulations. First, we manipulated the verb type, using either verbs whose number cue was audible through subject (clitic) pronoun liaison (LIAISon verbs: e.g., elle/s aime/nt [ɛlɛm]/[ɛlzɛm] ‘she/they love’), or verbs whose number cue was audible on the verb ending (CONSonant-final verbs, e.g., il/s rugi-t/-ssent [ilʁyʒi]/[ilʁyʒɪs] ‘he/they roars/roar’). Second, we manipulated the sentence-initial context: each sentence was preceded either by a neutral context (e.g., In the evening) providing no number cue, or by a subject noun phrase (NP, e.g., Les lions [lelijɔ̃] ‘The lions’) containing a subject number cue on the determiner. Number mismatches were created through mismatches between the number of visually-presented agents and morphosyntactic number cues in the auditory stimuli.
Accuracy for acceptability judgments was nearly at ceiling throughout our conditions (86.5% to 97.6%). As expected, the semantic action/verb mismatch elicited classic N400s followed by additional negativities. Number mismatches in sentence-initial contexts elicited broadly distributed N400s followed by a P600, suggesting that non-linguistic visual information can be immediately used (in less than 500 ms) to make strong predictions about appropriate linguistic representations. For number mismatches disambiguated on LIAIS verbs, we observed an early-onset sustained anterior negativity (eAN), followed by a centro-parietal N400 and a P600, indicating that eANs are not specific to phrase structure violations (Hasting & Kotz, 2008; contra Friederici, 2002, 2011). CONS verbs elicited an eAN which faded due to an overlapping P600 and reappeared after the P600, a pattern previously described for various syntactic violations in auditory ERP studies (Steinhauer & Drury, 2012). Thus, eAN and P600 temporarily cancelled each other out. The fact that the frontal negativity lasted beyond the P600 duration (as in previous auditory agreement studies, e.g., Hasting & Kotz, 2008) suggests that the P600 does not always reflect the final stage of sentence evaluation processes.
The present study demonstrates for the first time that perfectly grammatical sentences can elicit classic ERP components usually found in morpho-syntactic violation paradigms. We discuss how distinct psycholinguistic processes modulated the ERPs as a function of (1) number (singular vs plural mismatch) and (2) type of mismatch disambiguation (determiner, LIAIS and CONS verb). Possible applications of this new cross-modal paradigm in developmental research will also be addressed.

In search for the cognitive foundations of Euclidean geometry ............................................................................................................................................ Towards processing theories of conversation
2019-04-26 11:00 - 14:00 | Malmousque, Chemin de la Batterie des Lions, Marseille, 13007, France
11h Dr. Véronique Izard (Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, CNRS & Université Paris Descartes) : In search for the cognitive foundations of Euclidean geometry
12h Prof. Antje S. Meyer (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen The Netherlands) : Towards processing theories of conversation

13h Lunch
Confirm attendance (mandatory) by sending an email to lunchtalks@ilcb.fr

In search for the cognitive foundations of Euclidean geometry
Euclidean geometry has been historically regarded as the most “natural” geometry. Taking inspiration from the flourishing field of numerical cognition, in the past years I have been looking for the cognitive foundations of geometry: Do children, infants, and people without formal education in geometry have access to intuitive concepts that bear some of the content of Euclidean concepts? Results have been mixed. In particular, we found that angle, a central tenant of Euclidean geometry, is not intuitive for children. These results call into question the status of Euclidean geometry as a natural geometry.

Towards processing theories of conversation
Most experimental research into spoken language has focused either on speaking or on listening. However, these processes should also be studied together, not only because they naturally co-occur in conversation and likely affect each other, but also because an integrated research approach can lead to novel insights into the architecture of the cognitive system supporting language use. I will provide an overview of a research program on speaking and listening in dyadic contexts. The starting point is the model of turn-taking in conversation proposed by Levinson and Torreira (2015). Though based exclusively on observational data the model makes strong processing predictions. A key claim is that speakers begin to plan their utterances as early as possible during their interlocutor’s turn, in order to be prepared to respond quickly. Experimental evidence showed that speakers indeed begin to plan their utterances before the end of the preceding turn but, contrary to the prediction, not necessarily as early as possible. Rather than following a fixed rule (“plan as early as possible”) they appear to be quite flexible in their utterance planning. Current work aims at uncovering the factors that limit this flexibility. It appears that, in addition to social and pragmatic factors that define the speaker’s processing goals, capacity limitations arising in different components of the cognitive system play an important role. I will end by discussing how speakers might achieve smooth turn-taking without intensive linguistic dual-tasking.

Understanding publication practices, (models and time-courses) across disciplines to improve the impact of your inter-disciplinary research
2019-03-28 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
An inter-disciplinary discussion at ILCB
In our modern science practices, it would not be surprising to hear that the three most important assets for a scientist are… publication, publication, publication!
But what exactly is a publication? The answer to this question could be very different across disciplines, and many of its significant aspects are evolving.
Across disciplines, the increment of knowledge is conceived and packaged in diverse formats (working papers, proceedings, monographies, articles, etc.) which are attributed vastly diverse value.
Across disciplines, the relationship between the author, the reviewers and the publishers can be vastly different. The business models of scientific publication have experienced major innovations in recent times, and presumably more changes lie ahead.
Across disciplines, the course of conception, dissemination, and archiving of a scientific contribution are practiced quite differently. The public discussion of findings can precede or follow publication. In some disciplines, the predictions preceding an empirical study can now be archived in advance as pre-registrations, which can be referred to later to clarify whether the authors observed exactly what they predicted or predicted exactly what they observed, thus strengthening the impact of the contributions.
The inter-disciplinary “Institut Convergences ILCB” (Institute for Language, Communication, and the Brain) organizes a scientific discussion about current publication practices across disciplines. The issues above and related topics will be discussed by 4 specialist speakers.
This scientific discussion will have two goals. First, to create common knowledge, across practitioners of different disciplines, of what their collaborators in other domains consider a scientific contribution. Second, to reflect upon and hopefully improve the publication strategies of researchers.
Schedule
11h00 – 11h10: Motivations for this seminar by F.-Xavier Alario, P. Blache, E. Runnqvist (ILCB)
11h10 – 11h50: Peer review across disciplines: from mutual ignorance to standards setting? by Didier Torny (Mines ParisTech – Paris)
11h50 – 12h30: Registered Reports: A vaccine against bias in science and publishing by Chris Chambers (Cardiff University, Editor of the journal Cortex)
12h30 – 13h30: Lunch on site
13h30 – 13h40: An insight into the publishing models in the Humanities and Social Sciences by Sandra Guigonis (OpenEdition, Centre pour l’édition electronique ouverte)
13h40 – 14h20: Researchers regain control of their means of publication by Marie Farge (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)
14h20 – 14h50: Round table (30 debate)
14h50 – end: Coffee, discussions, etc.
Abstracts in the next page
Didier Torny, Peer review across disciplines: from mutual ignorance to standards setting?
Peer review is often claimed as the only way to provide certified knowledge to scientific communities and various audiences. However, this very recent label includes a multitude of different, even contradictory, practices, devices, values. Interdisciplinary research, and the existence large publishing groups around the world have first created unexpected meetings between once unique forms of evaluation and publication, then some actors have tried to unify practices through different channels (guidelines, technical infrastructure, shared rules). The presentation will illustrate some contemporary examples of this rich history, including questions of the anonymity of authors and reviewers and the introduction of post-publication peer review in journals.

Chris Chambers, Registered Reports: A vaccine against bias in science and publishing
In 2013, Cortex became the first journal to offer Registered Reports, a format of preregistered empirical publication in which peer review happens prior to data collection and analysis (see https://cos.io/rr/). The aim of Registered Reports is to overcome publication bias and various forms of researcher bias (e.g. selective reporting of statistically significant results and hindsight bias), by performing peer review in part before studies commence. Publishability is then decided by the importance of the research question and quality of the methodology, and never based on the results of hypothesis testing. In this talk I will introduce the concept of Registered Reports and provide an update on its progress at at Cortex and beyond, including its uptake by more than 150 journals, including outlets in the Nature group, generalist journals including Royal Society Open Science, and emerging clinical trial formats. I will also discuss early evidence of impacts on the field and emerging Registered Report funding models in which journals and funders simultaneously assess proposed protocols. Together with a wide range of allied initiatives, Registered Reports are helping to reshape the life and social sciences to place theory, transparency and reproducibility at the forefront.

Sandra Guigonis, An insight into the publishing models in the Humanities and Social Sciences
OpenEdition is a comprehensive digital publishing infrastructure at the service of scientific information in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It provides the academic communities with four publishing and information platforms: OpenEdition Journals (504 journals), OpenEdition Books (6,775 books), Hypotheses (2,870 Research blogs) and Calenda (41,094 announcements of international academic events). The portal is thus a space dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of research, publishing tens of thousands of scientific documents that promote open access, while respecting the economic equilibrium of publications. It benefits therefore from a comprehensive overview on the publishing models in the HSS, be it traditional practices or emerging trends.

Marie Farge, Researchers regain control of their means of publication
The scientific edition is currently owned by an oligopoly of a few publishers, who consider it an exceptionally juicy market. Thus, scientists have lost control of their publishing tools and have become “cash cows”, forced to produce ever more and faster…. I will explain how the “Gold Open Access” model, designed by these publishers to preserve their market, undermines scientific creativity and the public finances that support research. I will show how the “Green Open Access” model and the “Diamond Open Access” model, designed by researchers to disseminate their publications, avoid these perverse effects. I will present as examples the platforms https:// dissem.in and https://www.centre-mersenne.org/.

Competitive neurocognitive networks underlying learning and memory: from stress to brain stimulation by Dezso Nemeth
2019-03-01 12:00 - 14:30 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
by Prof Dr Dezso Nemeth
Affiliation:

Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
IMÉRA, Aix-Marseille Université
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest

Human learning depends on multiple cognitive systems related to dissociable brain structures. These systems interact not only in cooperative but sometimes competitive ways in optimizing performance. Previous studies showed that manipulations reducing the engagement of frontal lobe-mediated explicit, attentional processes can lead to improved performance in striatum-related procedural learning. Here I present four studies in which we investigated the competitive relationship between implicit statistical learning and frontal lobe-mediated executive functions. Our result shed light not only on the competitive nature of brain systems in cognitive processes, such as language, learning, and memory but also could have important implications for developing new methods to improve human learning.

Workshop Doctorants et Post-Doctorants
2019-02-08 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Program ILCB-day February 8th (Salle de voûtes, St Charles, Marseille)
Morning dedicated to three group presentations by the PhD-students and post-docs of the ILCB followed by interactive discussions around transversal topics with all the members of the ILCB.
9.30 – 10.30: “Interactions”
10.30 – 11.30: “Learning and networks”
11.30 – 12.30: “Comparative approaches”
12.30 – 14.00 LUNCH
Afternoon devoted to the reflection and discussion around the topic of interdisciplinary research in cognitive science
14.00: Keynote presentation on “Interdisciplinary research in cognitive science” by Daniel Andler (ENS, Paris)
15.00: Poster session: all ILCB members are invited to present a poster to fuel informal discussions amongst the members of the ILCB

ILCB Lunch-talk by Nuria Sebastian, Ghislaine Dehaene
2019-01-25 10:00 - 14:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
10h00 Are human infants able to use symbols?, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz
11h00 Coffee
11h20 The onset of bilingualism: Specificities in the first year of life, Nuria Sebastián Galles
12h20 Discussion
13h00 Lunch

Are human infants able to use symbols?
Human adults commonly use symbolic systems (e.g. speech, numbers, writing code, algebraic formula) to represent aspects of the external world, and they easily and flexibly go from symbols to objects and vice-versa. This “symbolic mind” might be related to a distinct human neural architecture, in particular, the expansion of the associative areas and the development of new long-distance fiber tracts, such as the arcuate fasciculus. More efficient connections to and from the frontal lobe and a longer memory buffer may lead to the discovery of more abstract structures, and ultimately enable to represent the external world with a symbolic system.
This neural architecture is in place at full-term birth and brain imaging studies have revealed that higher-level associative regions, such as frontal areas, are involved in infant’s cognition from start. We may thus expect that infants might share the same symbolic competence than adults and that they can easily learn labels to represent classes of objects. To support this claim, I will present brain imaging data showing the infants’ structural and functional brain architecture and ERP data obtained through a new paradigm as a first step to test symbolic representations in the infant brain.
Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, INSERM U992, Neurospin, Saclay (France)
The onset of bilingualism: Specificities in the first year of life
How different is the process of language learning in infants exposed to two languages from birth? It was not so long ago when the available evidence pointed to a delay in language learning in bilinguals. At present, a bulk of studies indicates the existence of specific adaptations to the process of language learning. In the present talk I will focus on the emergence of such adaptations during the first months of life.
Nuria Sebastian, University Pompeu Fabra-Center for Brain and Cognition Department (Barcelone)

PhD&post-doc welcoming day
2019-01-18 10:00 - 19:30 | Malmousque, Chemin de la Batterie des Lions, Marseille, 13007, France
10-10.30: Welcome:
breakfast and introduction to ILCB PhD &post-doc group

10.00-11.30: group work session 1
Groups of the ILCB day February 8th focusing on the cross cutting topics of the ILCB and “interdisciplinarity” , 3 groups -interactions ; learning and networks; comparative approaches- with 3-4 members/group). The session will contain presentations of the same slides used for the meeting in October (1 per person introducing their research project), a discussion and elaboration of a preliminary common slide that connects all projects of the group. The idea is to end up with a presentation to be presented to the whole institute in February in which each person present their project in 5 minutes, and someone introduces or concludes with the presentation of the group slide that highlights the commonalities of the projects (I.e., a common topic that is part of the ILCB research program) and the interdisciplinary way in which this topic is being addressed.

11.30-13.00: group work session 2: Work in different groups (45 minutes): preparation of questions to be discussed during each of the interventions of the publication day March 28th organized by Xavier Alario (e.g., preregistration, open access, replication crisis, peer review system, statistics thresholds etc.). Presentation of proposed questions and discussion across groups( 45 min), modifications in function of this and unification of format at the end of the session.
13-14: lunch buffet
14-15.30: Work in groups session 3 (with coffee/dessert buffet):
Same groups as in the morning: modification, unification and streamlining of format of individual slides in function of previous session, finalization of common slide
15.30-16.00
Group presentations 1
Interactions
16-16.30
Group presentations 2
Learning and networks
16.30-17.00
Group presentations 3
Comparative approaches
17-20.00: Apéro
together with the members of the conseil de direction

Information-oriented and cross-language aspects on speech and cortical rhythms by François Pellegrino
2018-12-08 12:00 - 15:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Information-oriented and cross-language aspects on speech and cortical rhythms by François Pellegrino (CNRS & Université de Lyon, Dynamics of Language Lab UMR5596)
During the last two decades a growing body of evidence has shown a close relationship between temporal structure of speech and neural oscillatory activities, especially in the theta and gamma bands. More specifically, several recent models suggest that the neural capacity to track speech dynamics and rhythmic patterns is crucial for speech processing and understanding. However, it is well known that speech periodicity is limited and thus that the story is probably more complex than acknowledged previously.
In this talk I present results of a cross-language comparison of 17 languages in terms of syllabic speech rate, Shannonian information rate and of their shared tendency to very unevenly distribute information among their segments and syllables. These results are discussed in the light of cortical rhythms in the theta band and I introduce a (very) speculative hypothesis stating that there may be a functional distinction between syllables whose role is to convey information and syllables whose role is to provide a rhythmic carrier entraining neural oscillations.

Les dysfonctionnements phonétiques et/ou phonémiques dans l’aphasie, chez l’enfant et chez l’apprenant d’une langue seconde : Une tentative de simplification ? Erreurs, Contraintes structurales et/ou Stratégies Palliatives by Jean-Luc Nespoulous
2018-11-16 12:00 - 14:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Les dysfonctionnements phonétiques et/ou phonémiques dans l’aphasie, chez l’enfant et chez l’apprenant d’une langue seconde : Une tentative de simplification ? Erreurs, Contraintes structurales et/ou Stratégies Palliatives
La lésion cérébrale qui provoque une aphasie engendre certes ipso facto un déficit linguistique. Ce déficit ne se caractérise cependant pas, dans la très grande majorité des cas, chez ces patients, par une « perte de compétence », comme l’avait cru R. Jakobson sur la base de données cliniques rapportées par d’autres (K. Goldstein et A.R. Luria, en particulier) et très largement « sur-interprétées » par lui-même !
Il n’est qu’à voir, pour s’en convaincre, la variabilité des « erreurs » réalisées par un même patient (en situation de production de mots, par exemple) pour constater que ses productions sont la résultante de problèmes de « performance » ou de « traitement », souvent comparables à ceux que peut connaître, au quotidien quoique à un moindre degré, tout locuteur non-aphasique (Cf. les travaux de V. Fromkin (1973), M. Garrett (1980).
Nous tenterons, dans notre exposé, de montrer en quoi les « erreurs » produites par les aphasiques – aux plans phonétique et phonémique –, en dépit de leur variabilité intra-individuelle, inter-tâches… – se trouvent néanmoins contraintes par les propriétés structurales de leur langue maternelle.
Jean-Luc Nespoulous
(Professeur Emérite en Sciences du Langage Université de Toulouse Institut Universitaire de France)

Aligning ears and mouths: the consequences of synchronizing heard and spoken language by David Poeppel
2018-10-12 12:00 - 14:00 | Amphithéâtre de CERIMED, 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin, Marseille, 13005
12h Prof. David Poeppel, Max-Planck-Institute Frankfurt &New York University
• 13h Lunch
• Confirm attendance (mandatory) by sending an email to lunchtalks@ilcb.fr

Aligning ears and mouths: the consequences of synchronizing heard and spoken language

The brain has rhythms, and so does speech. It is a fortuitous outcome of recent research that the temporal structure of speech and the temporal organization of various brain structures align in systematic ways.
(One might ask, of course: how could it have been otherwise?)
The role that oscillatory activity might play in perception and cognition continues to be elucidated through experiments of various types.
An empirical observation that is now well established is that the auditory system reliably ‘entrains’ to the temporal modulations of speech - although the underlying mechanisms and the functional relevance remain vigorously debated.
Here I address the question of whether these widely discussed phenomena extend to the relation between perception and action.
How motor systems and perceptual systems interact has been a foundational question in psychology and neuroscience, and on the basis of new behavioral and neural experiments on sensorimotor synchronization,
I will argue against my own previous positions and demonstrate an unanticipated and compelling role for synchronization of speech through the ears and speech through the mouth.

Processing time with our auditory system by Christian Lorenzi
2018-09-21 12:00 - 15:00
• 12h Prof. Christian Lorenzi, CNRS & Ecole normale supérieure, Paris, France

Processing time with our auditory system

Debate on how speech information is represented in the auditory system has revolved around the role of two neural/perceptual features encoding the temporal modulations of the acoustic signal (the “temporal envelope”, ENV, and “temporal fine structure”, TFS), their relative contribution to intelligibility and how that might be degraded by lesions to the peripheral and central auditory system.

We will review psychophysical studies that investigated the development of ENV/TFS perception, the effects of cochlear and central lesions, and the relationship between ENV/TFS perception and speech intelligibility.

Our results suggest that: i) the processing of ENV and TFS is “functional” by 6 months, and fine-tuned by language exposure between 6 and 10 months, ii) ENV is more important for speech identification, whereas TFS is more important for the segregation of competing sound sources, iii) reduced ability to process ENV and/or TFS explains deficits typically associated with cochlear and central damage and ageing.

*References: *

Shamma, S., & Lorenzi, C. (2013). On the balance of envelope and temporal fine structure in the encoding of speech in the early auditory system. /Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 133, /2818-2833/./

Lorenzi, C., Debruille, L., Garnier, S., Fleuriot, P., & Moore, B.C.J. (2009). Abnormal auditory temporal processing for frequencies where absolute thresholds are normal. /Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 27-30./

Lorenzi, C., Gilbert, G., Carn, H., Garnier, S., & Moore, B.C.J. (2006). Speech perception problems of the hearing impaired reflect inability to use temporal fine structure. /Proceedings of the National Academy of Science/ /USA/, /103(49)/, 18866-18869.

Information-oriented and cross-language aspects on speech and cortical rhythms
2018-08-12 12:00 - 14:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
During the last two decades a growing body of evidence has shown a close relationship between temporal structure of speech and neural oscillatory activities, especially in the theta and gamma bands. More specifically, several recent models suggest that the neural capacity to track speech dynamics and rhythmic patterns is crucial for speech processing and understanding. However, it is well known that speech periodicity is limited and thus that the story is probably more complex than acknowledged previously.
François Pellegrino presented results of a cross-language comparison of 17 languages in terms of syllabic speech rate, Shannonian information rate and of their shared tendency to very unevenly distribute information among their segments and syllables. These results were discussed in the light of cortical rhythms in the theta band and I introduce a (very) speculative hypothesis stating that there may be a functional distinction between syllables whose role is to convey information and syllables whose role is to provide a rhythmic carrier entraining neural oscillations.
François Pellegrino works at CNRS & Université de Lyon, Dynamics of Language Lab UMR5596

The lunch talk was held at Salle des voûtes, St Charles, the 12/08/2018.

The Temporal Dynamics of Word Processing in Hearing and Deaf Readers by Phillip Holcomb
2018-05-18 12:00 - 14:00 | Salle de conférences, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
The Temporal Dynamics of Word Processing in Hearing and Deaf Readers
In my talk I will discuss a recent line of research in our lab where we are comparing electrophysiological measures of word processing in hearing and deaf adult readers. Because congenitally deaf adults acquire reading skills without the benefit of having first learned a spoken language they offer a unique contrast with hearing readers which allows certain hypotheses about the role of prior language experience on the mechanisms underlying visual word recognition to be tested.
Phillip Holcomb,
Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego (United States)

The Temporal Dynamics of Word Processing in Hearing and Deaf Readers by Phillip Holcomb
2018-05-18 08:00 - 17:00
The Temporal Dynamics of Word Processing in Hearing and Deaf Readers by Phillip Holcomb, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego (United States)
In my talk I will discuss a recent line of research in our lab where we are comparing electrophysiological measures of word processing in hearing and deaf adult readers. Because congenitally deaf adults acquire reading skills without the benefit of having first learned a spoken language they offer a unique contrast with hearing readers which allows certain hypotheses about the role of prior language experience on the mechanisms underlying visual word recognition to be tested.

The computational neuroanatomy of speech production in the context of a dual stream framework for language by Greg Hickok
2018-04-06 12:00 - 15:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
The computational neuroanatomy of speech production in the context of a dual stream framework for language by Greg Hickok (Dept. Cognitive Sciences & Language Science – University of California Irvine)
The dual stream framework for the cortical organization of language is grounded in evolutionary biology in that it proposes an organization that is homologous to that found in non-linguistic sensorimotor systems from which it is hypothesized to have evolved. While it was controversial when first proposed in the early 2000s, a substantial body of evidence now supports the basic claims. Significant progress has been made in working out the functional anatomy of the model, particularly the dorsal auditory-motor pathway, which will be the primary focus of this talk. I will provide a brief overview of the dual stream framework, show how well-established psycholinguistic models of speech production are neatly relatable to it, and then detail a decade of progress in understanding the neuroanatomy and some computational details of dorsal stream function. A major conclusion is that the integration of psycholinguistic and motor control models of speech production represents a promising new direction for research on the neurobiology of speech and language progressing, including its evolutionary origins.

ILCB Journée ILCB
2018-02-23 10:00 - 16:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Vendredi 23/02
Campus St Charles, Salle des voûtes

10.00- 10.30
“Natural conversation between humans and artificial agents : Advances and neuroscientific insights”
(Birgit Rauchbauer & Matthieu Riou)

10.30-11.10
“Compensatory mechanisms and plasticity: evidence from language disorders”
(Ambre Denis-Noël, Alexia Fasola & Anna Marczyk)

11.15-11.40
COFFEE BREAK

11.40-12.20
“The effect of voice modulation in language evolution and acquisition”
(Axel Barrault, Clémentine Bodin & Piera Filippi)

12.20-13.10
“Higher-order representations in comprehension and production”
(Royce Anders, Tom Dagens, Raphaël Fargier & Joshua Snell)

13.10-16.00
LUNCH BUFFET AND POSTER SESSION WITH CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALL ILCB MEMBERS

Some recent developments in models of retrieval processes by Prof. Shravan Vasishth
2018-02-12 08:00 - 17:00
Some recent developments in models of retrieval processes by Prof. Shravan Vasishth (University of Potsdam)
In this talk, I will discuss some recent empirical and theoretical developments in cue-based retrieval theory [1-13]. I will begin by talking about what we know so far about the underlying mechanisms driving retrieval processes in sentence comprehension and the evidence for and against the cue-based retrieval account [14]. Then I will present some recent work showing that two alternative models of retrieval are viable candidate theories [15].

1. Richard L. Lewis and Shravan Vasishth. An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory retrieval. Cognitive Science, 29:1-45, 2005.

2. Richard L. Lewis, Shravan Vasishth, and Julie Van Dyke. Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(10):447-454, 2006.

3. Shravan Vasishth, Sven Bruessow, Richard L. Lewis, and Heiner Drenhaus. Processing Polarity: How the ungrammatical intrudes on the grammatical. Cognitive Science, 32(4):685-712, 2008.

4. Shravan Vasishth, Katja Suckow, Richard L. Lewis, and Sabine Kern. Short-term forgetting in sentence comprehension: Crosslinguistic evidence from head-final structures. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25(4):533-567, 2011.

5. Felix Engelmann, Shravan Vasishth, Ralf Engbert, and Reinhold Kliegl. A framework for modeling the interaction of syntactic processing and eye movement control. Topics in Cognitive Science, 5(3):452-474, 2013.

6. Lena A. Jäger, Zhong Chen, Qiang Li, Chien-Jer Charles Lin, and Shravan Vasishth. The subject-relative advantage in Chinese: Evidence for expectation-based processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 79-80:97-120, 2015.

7. Stefan L. Frank, Thijs Trompenaars, and Shravan Vasishth. Cross-linguistic differences in processing double-embedded relative clauses: Working-memory constraints or language statistics? Cognitive Science, page n/a, 2015.

8. Umesh Patil, Sandra Hanne, Frank Burchert, Ria De Bleser, and Shravan Vasishth. A computational evaluation of sentence comprehension deficits in aphasia. Cognitive Science, 40:5–50, 2016.

9. Molood Sadat Safavi, Samar Husain, and Shravan Vasishth. Dependency resolution difficulty increases with distance in Persian separable complex predicates: Implications for expectation and memory-based accounts. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 2016.

10. Umesh Patil, Shravan Vasishth, and Richard L. Lewis. Retrieval interference in syntactic processing: The case of reflexive binding in English. Frontiers in Psychology, 2016. Special Issue on Encoding and Navigating Linguistic Representations in Memory.

11. Felix Engelmann, Lena A. Jäger, and Shravan Vasishth. The effect of prominence and cue association in retrieval processes: A computational account. Manuscript (under revision), 2017.

12. Fuyun Wu, Elsi Kaiser, and Shravan Vasishth. Effects of early cues on the processing of Chinese relative clauses: Evidence for experience-based theories. 2017. In Press, Cognitive Science.

13. Paul Mätzig, Shravan Vasishth, Felix Engelmann, and David Caplan. A computational investigation of sources of variability in sentence comprehension difficulty in aphasia. In Proceedings of MathPsych/ICCM, Warwick, UK, 2017.

14. Lena A. Jäger, Felix Engelmann, and Shravan Vasishth. Similarity-based interference in sentence comprehension: Literature review and Bayesian meta-analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 94:316-339, 2017.
https://github.com/vasishth/MetaAnalysisJaegerEngelmannVasishth2017

15. Bruno Nicenboim and Shravan Vasishth. Models of retrieval in sentence comprehension: A computational evaluation using Bayesian hierarchical modeling. 2017. Accepted, Journal of Memory and Language.
http://mc-stan.org/events/stancon2017-notebooks/stancon2017-nicenboim-vasishth-retrieval-models.html

*substitute for the Lunch Talk of October
