ILCB

Restitution des projets en ingénierie cognitive des M2 MASCO
2025-01-24 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003
Nous vous invitons à nous rejoindre le 24 janvier 2025 pour assister à la restitution des projets en ingénierie cognitive des étudiants en M2 MASCO.
Ce sera le moment de découvrir le fruit de leur travail acharné : durant les 2 semaines qui précèdent la restitution, les étudiants auront pour mission de développer un projet en équipe, en mettant en œuvre les connaissances et compétences acquises durant leurs études ainsi que leur créativité, autour de la captation et de la manipulation de signal neuro/physiologique et du prototypage.
…un ballon dirigeable contrôlé par les ondes cérébrales, un piano virtuel, un dispositif portatif qui vous aide à combattre ces moments de stress… qui sait ce que vous aller découvrir…
Cette année, la restitution débutera avec un séminaire, Une ingénierie de la perception : vers un langage des sons de Mitsuko Aramaki & Salomé Sudre de PRISME.
Retrouvez-nous le 24 janvier à 9h à l’Espace Pouillon sur le campus St Charles pour ce moment de découverte et pour soutenir les étudiants !
L’équipe d’organisation de l’ingéCo (Deirdre Bolger, Thierry Legou et Christelle Zielinski)

Different bodies, different minds: Biology as a central driving force in the building of cognitive functions?
2025-01-27 11:00 - 12:00 (Europe/Paris) | Amphi MASSIANI, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13331, France
Marie MONTANT
Abstract:
By focusing on language, I will try to show that cognitive architectures are built from goal-driven perceiving and acting bodies in their physical environment, a perceptive that holds for humans as well as other animals. To illustrate this theoretical position, firstly, I will show in humans that words conveying time information are tightly linked to body mouvements (Camille Grasso’s PhD thesis), that syntax is probably built on domain-general fine motor planification (Raphaël Py’s PhD thesis), that our lexica are grafted onto sensorimotor networks (Melissa Yavuz’s PhD thesis, Anna Poberezhnaia master’s thesis, Anne Kavounoudias collab.). Secondly, I will describe the approaches of Lise-Habib Dassetto (PhD) and Paul Best (Postdoc) that address the questions of how communicative systems appeared during evolution and what kind of method we can develop to conduct fair comparisons between humans and baboons (Lise H.D.) or pilot-whales (Paul B.).

The foundations of verbal working memory in the language system
2025-02-25 08:00 - 17:00
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.

The foundations of verbal working memory in the language system”
2025-02-26 12:00 - 13:00

Functionally specific multi-sensory brain networks and their plasticity
2025-02-28 12:00 - 13:00 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003
Professor : Olivier Collignon
Evolution has endowed humans with several senses allowing them to capture distinct forms of energies from their physical environment, opening different windows through which we can experience the world around us. Being able to capture redundant sensory information allows us to build stronger representations and react faster to an event (eg focusing on the lips while listening to a speaker in a cocktail party). How do we represent in our mind and brain a perceptual unit that we can see and hear (eg, a corresponding phoneme/viseme)? Is there representation somewhere in the brain that goes beyond the sensory experience we have of things? The presence of these different sensory systems also paves the way for considerable flexibility by allowing brain systems to supplement another following sensory deprivation. In the talk, I will rely on the most recent data collected in my lab to suggest that crossmodal plasticity in blind and deaf people recycles the intrinsic multisensory scaffolding of functional brain regions, with a specific emphasis on face and voice networks.

The Origin of Language: Insight from neuroethology of gestural communication in nonhuman primates
2025-03-17 11:00 - 12:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Adrien MEGUERDITCHIAN (Eq. DéPhy)

Where: Salle des Voûtes
Summary: Language is an unique communicative system involving hemispheric lateralization of the brain. To discuss the question of its origins, I will highlight the works on the communicative gestures in our primate cousins and their brain correlates. Indeed, nonhuman primates communicate mostly communicate not only with a rich vocal repertoire but also with manual and body gestures. In the last 20 years, we investigated this gestural system in the baboons Papio anubis, an Old World monkey species, as well as its lateralization and cortical correlates across development, using both ethological, psychology and longitudinal noninvasive in vivo brain imaging approach (MRI). In the present talk, I will summarize our main findings showing similar key intentional, referential “domain general” properties of language as well as some similar underlying structural hemispheric specialization including Broca, the Planum Temporale and the STS. I will also present our recent MRI longitudinal work documenting their brain ontogeny from birth and how they pave the way for the further emergence of gesture lateralization across development.
More

the annual docs&postdocs workshop,
2025-03-27 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Language of sounds and sounds of language

Journées de l’ILCB à Porquerolles
2025-04-23 - 2025-04-25

Exploration interdisciplinaire des rêves et du cerveau.
2025-05-21 - 2025-05-22 | IMéRA
Peter SIMOR, neuropsychologue cognitif et directeur du Laboratoire du sommeil et de la cognition à l’Université Eötvös Loránd de Budapest, sera l’invité de la dernière séance du séminaire Inter-disciplines de l’IMERA les 21 et 22 mai prochains, sur le thème “Exploration interdisciplinaire des rêves et du cerveau.” https://www.imera.fr/agenda/peter-simor-exploration-interdisciplinaire-reves-cerveau/
L’accès est libre et ouvert à tous. Rappelons par ailleurs que les doctorants peuvent faire valoir leur présence à ces sessions au titre de la formation doctorale. Pour cela, ils doivent s’inscrire grâce au lien ci-dessous. Merci de les en avertir, et de leur suggérer de nous contacter, si vous pensez que cela pourrait les intéresser. https://adum.fr/script/formations.pl?mod=3678991&site=CDAMU
La rencontre se fera comme chaque fois en deux temps.

– MERCREDI 21 MAI, 14h-17h
Salle de réunion du premier étage de la Maison Neuve
IMERA Place Le Verrier 13004 MARSEILLE
Séminaire autour des travaux de Peter Simor, animé par Antoni Rodriguez Fornells, Professeur de neurosciences cognitives, Université de Barcelone (résident Iméra), Gabriella Crocco (Iméra), Olivier Morizot et Florence Boulc’h (IRES)
Cette séance vise à préparer collectivement la compréhension du discours qui sera développé le lendemain lors de la grande conférence. Elle se focalisera pour l’occasion sur l’analyse de l’article de Yuval Nir et Giulio Tononi : “Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology“. A travers cette lecture guidée, notre objectif sera de préparer le questionnement de Peter Simor sur la nature des rêves.
– JEUDI 22 MAI, 16h30-18h30
Salle de conférences, Maison des astronomes
IMERA Place Le Verrier 13004 MARSEILLE
Grande conférence de Peter Simor
Between the shores of sleep and wakefulness: from sleep-wake regulation to subjective experiences
Despite its apparently quiet nature and homogeneous nature, sleep is a markedly heterogeneous state with respect to biological functions, neurophysiological properties, information processing and mental experiences. The sleeping brain is constantly monitoring the balance between the internal homeostatic demands and the need to monitor the external environment in order to detect potential threats or relevant information. Far from passive, the sleeping brain continually negotiates between internal homeostatic needs and the imperative to remain attuned to the external world, in case of threats or salient stimuli. In doing so, it oscillates along a dynamic continuum between deeper, disconnected states and lighter phases marked by heightened information processing. Oneiric (dream) experiences seem to take part in this process and reflect the underlying cyclic patterns of sleep and wake regulation. Are dreams simply epiphenomena or inherent aspects of the sleeping brain? Do they reflect random neural activations or convey personally meaningful information? In this talk, I will explore these questions through the lens of contemporary dream science and cognitive neuroscience, integrating insights from interdisciplinary fields such as neuropsychoanalysis and consciousness research.

Bibliographie préparatoire
Yuval Nir and Giulio Tononi. Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology Trends in Cognitive Science 14(2), 2009. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.12.001

The foundations of verbal working memory in the language system
2025-05-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003

Workshop : Curiosity and intrinsic motivation in infant-child learning
2025-06-27 10:00 - 2025-07-01 17:00 | IMéRA
27 June 2025 / 1 July 2025 from 10am to 1pm – Maison Neuve, Iméra

PROGRAMME

Embodied and Situated Language Processes Conference
2025-09-23 - 2025-09-26 | Théâtre Antoine Vitez, 29 Av. Robert Schuman, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
ESLP 2025 will be hosted by Aix Marseille Université, organized by the members of the CRPN (UMR CNRS 7077, Aix Marseille Université) in collaboration with SCALab (UMR CRNS 9193, Université de Lille).
The Embodied and Situated Language Processing (ESLP) Conference, provides an interdisciplinary forum discussing current developments in grounding during online language processing. It welcomes a broad spectrum of methods to examine the interaction of language and sensory and motor processing, such as behavioural, neurophysiological and computational approaches, to foster research in the context of theories of semantic grounding or embodiment and pragmatic situated communication and language use.
This year’s conference will expand its scope to include perspectives on non-human cognition. The historic city of Aix-en-Provence, with its rich academic heritage and strong tradition in cognitive science research, provides the perfect backdrop for fostering interdisciplinary exchanges between researchers.

Programme
Conference registration

Workhop " Social Cognitive Neuroscience Across Species"
2025-09-25 - 2025-09-26
socialworkshopslide
👉 Program Workshop Social Cognitive Neuroscience Across Species

Cultural evolution creates language-like structure: from humans to humpback whales and beyond
2025-09-26 14:00 - 15:30 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Simon Kirby
University of Edinburgh

All known languages are made up of statistically coherent sequences – words – whose frequency distribution follows a power law known as a Zipfian distribution. Despite the ubiquity of these features across languages their origins are poorly understood. In this talk, I will argue that they arise because they facilitate learning and therefore emerge through the process of cultural transmission of language. I will summarise results from an experiment in which non-linguistic sequences evolve as they are transmitted from generation to generation of participants. By using insights from infant speech segmentation, I analyse those sequences and observe the emergence of Zipf’s law over generations. This work makes a prediction that we should find Zipfian distribution of statistically coherent sequences wherever systems culturally evolve, including in other species. However, so far these features have only been found in humans. In the second part of the talk I will turn to the culturally evolving song of humpback whales and apply the same analytic technique to 8 years of whale recordings. We show for the first time in another species that these characteristic statistical properties are indeed present in whale song. By doing so, we demonstrate a deep commonality between two species separated by tens of millions of years of evolution but united by both having culture. Finally, in the last part of the talk I will present ongoing work on the development of the same features in a third unrelated species.

Multidimensional Semantics for Concrete and Abstract Concepts
2025-09-29 11:00 - 12:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Penny M. Pexman
Western University, Canada

Multiple representation theories posit that concepts are represented via a combination of properties derived from sensorimotor, affective, linguistic, and other experiences. One advantage of this approach is that it helps address the challenge of abstract meanings, like wisdom and friendship, which are central to our mental and social lives and yet cannot be directly experienced through the senses. I will describe a series of studies in which my colleagues and I have tested predictions of multiple representation theories for acquisition and processing of concrete and abstract word meanings, exploring the roles of sensorimotor, interoceptive, and social experience. The development of large-scale word norms and behavioural megastudies has enabled consideration of multiple lexical and semantic dimensions and exploration of the possibility that these dimensions have simultaneous and interacting effects on behaviour. Using these “big data” I will consider how these multiple factors might be mapped in semantic space.

BIO: Penny Pexman is Vice-President (Research) and Professor of Psychology at Western University She joined Western in 2023, having previously spent 25 years at the University of Calgary, where she served in a number of research leadership roles including Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Arts and Associate Vice-President (Research). Penny was Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology and Associate Editor of the Journal of Memory and Language. She is past President of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science, past Governing Board Chair for the Psychonomic Society, a current member of Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society, and co-founder of Women in Cognitive Science – Canada.
Penny’s research expertise is in cognitive development, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience. In broad terms, she is interested in how we derive meaning from language, and how those processes are changed by experience. She has published more than 150 journal articles on those topics. For over 2 decades her work has been continuously funded by two of Canada’s federal funding organizations (SSHRC and NSERC), including NSERC’s prestigious Discovery Accelerator Supplement. She is an elected fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science and has been honoured with 9 awards for mentorship and teaching excellence.

The Role of Social Experience in the Grounding of Abstract Concepts
2025-09-30 09:30 - 12:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Thesis defense of
Daria Goriachun
Under the direction of de Johannes Ziegler (CRPN) et Núria Gala (LPL)
Jury :
Johannes Ziegler – Directeur de thèse
Núria Gala – Co-directrice de thèse
Anna Borghi – Rapporteure
Penny Pexman – Rapporteure
Gabriella Vigliocco – Présidente du jury
Kristof Strijkers – Examinateur
Abstract :
Understanding abstract concepts like justice or freedom, which do not refer to physical objects, poses a challenge for theories of language processing. This thesis investigates how social experience—both the degree to which words are socially relevant (their socialness) and the social context of communication—affects their processing. Across several experiments, participants processed abstract and concrete words, alone or in pairs. Results show that the social dimension of words affects processing, particularly when participants cooperate. Social interaction thus modulates the way abstract concepts are understood, suggesting that our social experiences can provide grounding for concepts not directly linked to perception or action.

What self-supervised speech models know about animal sounds: Deep transfer learning and the evolution of acoustic communication across species
2025-10-02 14:00 - 18:00 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Thesis defense of Jules Cauzinille
Thesis supervisors : Benoit Favre (directeur de thèse), Arnaud Rey, Ricard Marxer

Jury :
Benjamin Lecouteux (président du jury)
Nicolas Farrugia (rapporteur)
Marie Tahon (rapporteur)
Emmanuel Chemla (examinateur)

Abstract:
This thesis introduces a novel approach to the study of vocal communication and its evolution across species through the use of deep transfer learning. We ask whether, and how, self-supervised models trained on speech data may provide suitable representations of bioacoustic information. Our initial focus is on non-human primates and is motivated by the apparent gap between state-of-the-art speech processing methods and the way the vocalizations of our closest living relatives are handled in recent computer science literature. We present experiments centred around transferring knowledge from speech to gibbon songs and propose a set of hypotheses on the evolution of acoustic communication and its phylogenetic ties. A second set of experiments aims at challenging initial hypotheses by extending the experimental framework across a broader range of species and tasks where we explore speech models’ latent representations through innovative probing strategies. We conclude on theoretical perspectives related to the convergent evolution of vocal communication across species, while advocating for the integration of speech in future research aimed at developing general bioacoustic foundation models.

Fête de la science
2025-10-03 - 2025-10-13 | Parc de Bagatelle, 125 Rue du commandant rolland, Marseille, 13008, France
Programme

ILCB’s Annual welcome back party
2025-10-10 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
9:30 Acceuil café
10:00 Introduction
10:10 Olga Kepinska : Multilingualism and Linguistic Diversity as a window into prenatal language acquisition
11:10 Philippe Albouy : Brain oscillations and cross-frequency coupling as markers of auditory working memory functions
12:00 Lunch

Towards a Comparative Approach to Interactional Systems: Cross-disciplinary Contributions from Ethology and Linguistics
2025-11-28 14:30 - 17:00 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003
Thesis defense of Lise Habib-Dassetto
Supervisors:
Marie MONTANT, Maîtresse de Conférences – Aix-Marseille Université
Cristel PORTES, Professeure – Aix-Marseille Université
Alban LEMASSON, Professeur – Université de Rennes 1

Les membres du Jury:
Thibaud GRUBER, Rapporteur, Associate Professor – Université de Genève
Elise HUCHARD, Rapporteur(se), Directrice de Recherche – CNRS
Maël LEROUX, Examinateur, Maître de Conférences – Université de Rennes 1
Roxane Bertrand, Présidente du jury, Directrice de Recherche – CNRS

Abstract:
Animal communication research often focuses on the search for meaning and structural rules within signals produced by an emitter, drawing comparisons to human language. Most studies examine only a single communicative modality (vocal, visual, or tactile). This thesis takes a complementary approach by considering communication, in both humans and non-humans, as an interactive social act. It draws on Levinson’s Interaction Engine theory, which posits that humans possess universal predispositions for coordinated interaction, providing evolutionary foundations for language. Human interactions are organized, cooperative, and governed by conventions, such as turn-taking and repair mechanisms. They are also mediated through multimodal communication. To investigate these mechanisms in animals, we adopt principles of ethology, treating communication as a biological trait shaped by evolutionary processes. The thesis is structured along three axes: theoretical, methodological, and empirical. Theoretically, we propose comparing the interactional systems of different species to highlight general properties as well as species-specific patterns. We also advocate integrating all communicative modalities and examining how species’ social and ecological environments shape interactions. Methodologically, we introduce Multi-Interaction, a new framework and open-access tool applicable across species, designed to process multi-agent and multimodal communicative sequences. This method makes it possible to study communicative signals as well as actions produced during exchanges. For the first time, it systematically incorporates intra- and inter-individual overlaps, i.e., the simultaneous production of gestures, vocalizations, facial expressions, and actions, rather than treating these elements sequentially. This approach aims to minimize information loss. It also provides new quantitative measures to describe these sequences. Empirically, we implement these theoretical and methodological approaches in two studies of a captive group of Guinea baboons and in a comparative study across four primate species. Our results show that Guinea baboon interactions are flexible and adapt to social contexts. Individuals contribute in varying proportions depending on their sex and the centrality of their partner. Two interactants also produce inter-individual overlaps in varying proportions according to their sex and the frequency of their exchanges. These results suggest that interactions serve to maintain and negotiate social, hierarchical, and reproductive relationships. We show that, compared to actions, ritualized communicative signals streamline temporal coordination between interactants. Moreover, the size of the interactional repertoire decreases with social experience, indicating that repetition fosters efficiency and conventionalization. Finally, our comparative study of Guinea baboons, chimpanzees, red-capped mangabeys and human infants, highlights different uses of multimodal and multi-component communication, consistent with the social and ecological environments of each species. These results support the Social Complexity Hypothesis (which links the complexity of communication to the constraints of group living) as well as ecological efficacy-based hypotheses (which explains the use of multimodality as an adaptation to ecological constraints). This thesis argues that interactional behaviors across species should be seen as flexible and adaptive biological traits, shaped by conventions as well as by social and ecological pressures.

Keywords: animal communication, social interaction, multimodal communication, evolution, sociality, ecology, primates

Neuroimaging Meeting (RMN)
2025-12-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Amphithéâtre de CERIMED, 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin, Marseille, 13005
We’re looking forward to two presentations on ongoing local projects.

– Mattia Cazzolla (INT) : “Processing and Analysis of Fetal Diffusion MRI” (with O. Coulon, G. Auzias, F. Rousseau, J. Sein, N. Girard, B. Leroux).
– Camilla Di Pasquasio (INT) : “Using fMRI to assess the social competence of an autonomous conversational robot” (results from Convers1 and project Convers2, with T. Chaminade, M. Cavazza, B. Bigi, B. Nazarian).

NLP & Cognition: Exploring the Interfaces
2025-12-12 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
The NLP & Cognition working group (GT) of the GDR TAL – CNRS is pleased to announce its upcoming meeting:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PKVes0OPHQ5kJUkYroZV85sAKtKe2eSfnM1JbwBgGxw/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.h07fvminzexw

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Social Cognition and Stress
2026-01-19 | Le CAMPUS SAINT CHARLES, place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003
Campus Saint Charles, Amphithéatre Charve
Date : Monday January 19th 2026 9h-17H
PROGRAM
9h-9h50 Emilie Caspar , Université de Ghent
Applying Neuroscience to Post-Genocide Contexts: Participation in Violence, Intergroup Biases, and Trauma
09h50 Themis Apostolidis – Aix Marseille Université
Health, Illness and Society: The Social Representations Perspective
10h40 Pause café
11h10 Corinne Dano, CHU d’Anger
Social Cognition Deficit in Alcohol Use Disorder in Clinical Practice
12h Déjeuner (salle des voutes)
13h30-14h20 Louise Kirsch, Université Paris Cité
The Interplay Between Social Touch and Stress
14h20-15h10 Magalie Ochs, Aix Marseille Université
From User to Embodied AI: Automatic Analysis and Generation of Multimodal Socio-Affective Behaviors for Human-Machine Interaction
15h10 Pause café
15h40 Sylvie Thirion, Aix Marseille Université
Stress, Allostatic Load and Social Cognition: Neurobiological Bases of Vulnerability and Resilience
16h30 Final remarks
*NB some presentations will be in French

WHERE
Hybrid – attend in person at Campus Saint-Charles (Charves Amphitheater) or join online
REGISTRATION
Free but mandatory here.. https://drivenbyothers.sciencesconf.org/

BRAINNHACK
2026-01-28 - 2026-01-30
Programm

Restitution des projets Ingénierie Cognitive MASCO 2026
2026-01-30 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
UE IngéCo -20Jan_2026

Adaptation to a bilingual input and variability in early language acquisition
2026-02-06 10:30 - 12:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Prof. Laura Bosch from Barcelona University

Abstract:
Infants and children growing up in bilingual/multilingual environments should no longer be considered as exceptions to the norm, even for those living in monolingual societies. But bilingualism is a broad construct, covering a diversity of dual language exposure contexts, modulated by differential properties of socio-educational environments and language typologies. Adequately addressing the heterogeneous nature of bilingual language acquisition remains challenging. Research developed in the last twenty-five years, reflects important changes in the type of questions that have been addressed: from an initial focus on early language differentiation issues, to more recent studies focusing on the identification of adaptive mechanisms, understanding variability in acquisition, and getting more nuanced views on the processes that lead to building separate but interconnected language systems from a dual language input. In this talk, I will first summarize studies based on infants simultaneously exposed to close language pairs (e.g., Spanish and Catalan), and I will then contrast these studies with data obtained from populations exposed to more distant languages. Language proximity stands out as a factor likely to modulate acquisition in such domains as phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic acquisition. The talk will successively cover two separate but interconnected areas: the early building of native language phonetic/phonological categories, and word-learning strategies in dual vocabulary building. This narrow focus might contribute to identify research questions that remain open for future studies on early bilingualism.

Workshop organized by the ILCB docs&post-docs
2026-03-20 | FRUMAM, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
The annual workshop organized by ILCB docs&postdocs will take place on March 20 in Marseille, St Charles, and is open to all researchers and students within the ILCB community. The main objective of the workshop is to foster interactions and exchanges among students and researchers from the different ILCB labs, and we therefore strongly encourage all ILCB members to attend.
The program will include short talks by PhD students, postdocs, and researchers, a keynote lecture by our ILCB Iméra fellow Philippe Albouy, and a poster session. New this year: all registered participants may present a poster (upon notification, for organizational purposes).
Reminder: all PhD students and postdocs within the ILCB perimeter are warmly invited to join the Docs&Postdocs group. For further information, please contact elin.runnqvist@univ-amu.fr and nadera.bureau@univ-amu.fr.

Seminars
2026-04-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Amphi 7 Université, 29 avenue Robert Schuman, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Usha Goswami :Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge
Dyslexia, Rhythm, Language and the Developing Brain
Recent insights from auditory neuroscience provide a new perspective on how the brain encodes speech. Using these recent insights, I will provide an overview of key factors underpinning individual differences in children’s development of language and phonology, providing a context for exploring atypical reading development (dyslexia). Children with dyslexia are relatively insensitive to acoustic cues related to speech rhythm patterns. This lack of rhythmic sensitivity is related to the atypical neural encoding of rhythm patterns in speech by the brain. I will describe our recent data from infants as well as children, demonstrating developmental continuity in the key neural variables.

Martin Pickering : University of Edinburgh
An augmented psychology of language

8th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Cognitive Science of Culture
2026-04-22 - 2026-04-24 | Théâtre Antoine Vitez, 29 Av. Robert Schuman, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
8thAnnual Meeting of the Society for the Cognitive Science of Culture. The Society aims to promote research into the role of culture on cognition, with a particular focus on extending research beyond WEIRD populations.
The meeting will take place from 22nd to 24th April 2026 at Aix-Marseille University in Aix-en-Provence, France.
This year, we are honoured to welcome four outstanding keynote speakers.
Prof. Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge
Brain Beats: Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience of Rhythmic Language
Prof. Helmut Leder, University of Vienna
Beauty as sensory pleasure?
Prof. Patrick Lemaire, Aix-Marseille University
Mathematics across cultures: What can we learn about the role of culture on cognition?
Dr. Daniele Schön, Aix-Marseille University
Music as window into language processing and rehabilitation
We invite abstract submissions for 20-minute talks and posters from the full spectrum of research interested in the relationship between cognition and culture in its many forms across domains including psychology, neuroscience, behaviour, linguistics and literature, visual art and music.
Please visit the submission website for further information: https://culturalcogsci.org/AnnualMeeting.html
Submission Deadline: January 31st 2026
Early bird registration: Until February 28th 2026
The SCSC 2026 Organizing Committee

dedicated to “Quantitative imaging and its applications.”
2026-05-04 | Amphithéâtre de CERIMED, 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin, Marseille, 13005
