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Motor Resonance during Linguistic Processing as Shown by EEG in a Naturalistic VR Environment

Visualization of an EEG experiment involving a “Go/NoGo” task conducted as part of a study on the effect of pre-motor activity on the processing of action words. The experiment was conducted in a fully immersive virtual reality (VR) environment.

Ana Zappa, Deirdre Bolger, Jean-Marie Pergandi, et al.
2019. Brain and Cognition 134 : 44–57.

On the Development of Breathing and Vocalization in a Prelinguistic Child: A Case Study

Breathing plays a fundamental role in speech production of human adults. The capacity of controlling breathing develops over the first year of life, a critical period for babbling. We tracked one infant from about 7 to 9 months of age, measuring breathing and vocalization during spontaneous interactions with the mother. Analysis of the acoustic (waveform, spectrogram) and respiratory (thoracic volume changes) signals showed a maturation of breathing control, with exhalation phases getting longer and more adult-like over time. The relation between vocalization and respiration also shifted, with phonation occurring more often during inhalation at about 7 months and during exhalation at about 9 months. Thus, breathing is a rhythmic frame that should be integrated into models of speech acquisition.

Fuchs, Susanne, Marianne Jover, Aude Noiray, and Caterina Petrone.
2025. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, July 10, 1–15  —  @HAL

Olga Kepinska

Olga Kepinska, a linguist and a cognitive neuroscientist, has been recruited as CNRS researcher at Laboratoire Parole et Langage, starting this Fall. Olga’s research explores individual differences in (second) language acquisition from a neurocognitive perspective, notably the impact of complex environments on brain development and on language skills. Olga also investigates language typology, its relation to multilingual language competence, and its neural signatures. At Aix-Marseille, she is launching research on fetal language acquisition and brain development in multilingual contexts, for which she received an ERC Starting Grant.

Olga Kepinska obtained her PhD in Linguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics in the Netherlands (2017). She completed postdocs at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Connecticut in the US, with Prof. Fumiko Hoeft, and at the Brain and Language Lab of Prof. Narly Golestani at the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub and the Department of Behavioral & Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, Austria.