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Dear members of the ILCB community, |
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ILCB is honoured to announce that two its very active external members will receive the prestigious Doctor Honoris Causa distinction from Aix-Marseille University.
Prof. Usha Goswami of the University of Cambridge is a member of our International Advisory Board. She will be staying at LPL for three months, so there will be plenty of opportunities to meet her.
Prof. Martin Pickering of the University of Edinburgh has visited the ILCB countless times, has collaborated with many ILCB members, and has been an honorary member for many years.
Congratulations to both of them!
To celebrate this special occasion, Usha Goswami and Martin Pickering have kindly agreed to give two exceptional Honoris Causa keynote lunch talks on April 10th, in Amphi 7 – Université (Schuman site, ALLSH). Registration is free but mandatory.
Before that, I would like to remind you of our next ILCB scientific workshop, which will take place next Friday (March 20) on Communicating Minds: Humans, Machines, and Other Animals. Please see the program below.
Finally, as we are currently preparing the 2025 annual report, I kindly remind you to check your scientific productions and to tag in HAL those that have benefited from the ILCB environment or funding. |
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Topological data analysis of human vowels: Persistent homologies across representation spaces |
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Topological data analysis is a mathematical framework that characterizes the global shape of complex data by identifying structural features—such as clusters, loops, or holes—that remain stable despite noise or small variations. We studied how vocal signals, example shown in (a), should be represented so that topology-based algorithms can correctly classify it.
We compared the topological features extracted from several signal representations, including spectrograms (b), spectrogram zeros (c), and Takens’ embeddings (d). Using a publicly available dataset of 11,200 recorded vowel utterances, we conducted an empirical analysis demonstrating that these topological features provide additional discriminative information for both speaker and vowel classification. Moreover, features derived from different signal representations appear to be complementary. Our results suggest that low-persistence topological features, often dismissed as "topological noise", encode important information about speech.
Guillem Bonafos, Pierre Pudlo, Jean-Marc Freyermuth, Samuel Tronçon, and Arnaud Rey.
2026.
Speech Communication 178 (March): 103363 — @HAL
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« Eh ! Je peux pas encore parler ! Quatre langues : impossible ! Italien : encore la moitié. L'allemand : … Anglais : moi, la première langue, mais impossible ! Pourquoi ? Je peux pas. Tandis que moi… Mon fils, lui, il est… Anglais : correctement. Et russe. Russe : mais comme moi ! Et maintenant, moi, impossible ! Pourquoi ? Oui, bien sûr, je sais des mots mais les phrases, c'est foutu. Tandis l'allemand, c'est bon encore. Même, j'étais interprète. Tandis que l'anglais, moi avoir… impossible maintenant ! Je suis bouché ou je ne sais pas, moi. Le français, oui. Le français, surtout. Des mots : je peux pas décrocher. Je peux pas. »
Conversation avec Monsieur Vi. ; septembre 1969.
André Roch LECOURS et François LHERMITTE L’Aphasie, 1979. Flammarion, Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
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Soirée académique Aix-Marseille Université
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Aix-Marseille organise très bientôt sa soirée académique le 7 Avril 2026. Seront remis les doctorats Honoris Causa et les prix de thèse etc. Sur invitation. Détails sur le site d'amu. |
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Workshop organized by ILCB docs & post-docs |
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📅 March 20th, 2026 — 📍Marseille (Saint-Charles).
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. |
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8th annual meeting - The Society for the Cognitive Science of Culture |
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📅 22nd to 24th of April, 2026 — 📍Aix-en-Provence (Le Cube)
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16ème journée scientifique du Centre IRM :
Imagerie quantitative et ses applications
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Aims and scope
The contributions will highlight methodological advances, particularly in spectroscopy, quantitative mapping, and in vivo histology. They will illustrate how these methods 1) enable an understanding of individual differences and brain plasticity, for example in development and aging or language learning, and 2) show promise for the identification of biomarkers and therapeutic targets, for example in the case of neurodegenerative diseases.
Confirmed speakers
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📅 May the 4th, 2026 —
📍 CERIMED, Campus Timone. |
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ILCB Summer School — 9th edition
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Summary of upcoming events
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Workshop organized by Docs & Post-docs for the ILCB |
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📅 March 20th, 2026 — 📍FRUMAN, Campus Saint-Charles, Marseille
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💡 "Dyslexia, Rhythm, Language and the Developing Brain", seminar by Prof. Usha Goswami, Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge
💡 "An Augmented Psychology of Language", seminar by Prof. Martin Pickering, University of Edinburgh
📅 April, 10th, 2026, 10:00 — 📍Campus Schuman, Aix-en-Provence |
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8th annual meeting - The Society for the Cognitive Science of Culture |
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📅 April 22nd to 24th, 2026 — 📍LE CUBE, Campus Schuman, Aix-en-Provence |
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16th MRI scientific day: Quantitative imaging and its applications |
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📅 May the 4th, 2026 — 📍CERIMED, Campus Timone, Marseille
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Integrating Neural Noise and Neuroinflammatory Hypotheses: Exploring the Comorbidity of Dyslexia, Depression, and Stress |
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💡 Lunch Talk by Prof. Fumiko Hoeft,
University of Connecticut —
📅 May 22nd, 2026 — 📍TBA |
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9th ILCB summer school |
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📅 Aug. 24th to 28th, 2026 — 📍LE CUBE, Campus Schuman, Aix-en-Provence |
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Please always check the events page on the ILCB website for the latest update. |
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ILCB is affiliated to Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, INSERM, and Université d'Avignon
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Copyright © ILCB 2026
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