Neuroscience Research

A list of projects by key contacts

Key contacts: Dr. Tae Twomey, Indie Beedie

• The effect of deafness on auditory brain regions

In hearing people, the auditory areas of the brain primarily respond to auditory input. We are interested in understanding the structural differences in auditory regions between deaf and hearing people using a specialised magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We are interested in examining the changes that may be associated with deafness.  

Key contact: Dr. Eva Gutierrez-Sigut

• Lateralisation of language processing in deaf people

Exploring language processing and the brain, specifically which side of the brain is most involved in different forms of language processing in deaf people. Hearing people who are right handed use the left side of their brain to carry out the majority of their language processing. We are examining whether the same is true of people who are deaf using Functional Transcranial Doppler Sonography  (fTCD), a reliable non-invasive measure of the speed of blood flow to the main arteries supplying the brain during language tasks. This research will inform our understanding of how the brain processes language.

We are currently looking for deaf participants with a cochlear implant(s) who received their implant before they 9 years old for this study. Participants should also be right handed and profoundly deaf before three years old and aged 18-50 years old.

Key contact: Dr. Velia Cardin

• Does the deaf auditory cortex play a role in cognition?

As a consequence of sensory deprivation early in life, affected sensory cortices process information from other senses: crossmodal plasticity. However, our research suggests that typical auditory regions are also recruited for higher-order cognitive functions.

In this project, we will answer the following questions:

1.  After crossmodal plasticity, does the auditory cortex have a sensory or cognitive function?
2. Is the role of the deaf auditory cortex supramodal, or different for vision and somatosensation?

> Find out more on our website.

Key contact: Prof. Bencie Woll

• Bilingualism in deaf and hearing people: learning and neuroplastic processes

The studies involve the investigation of unimodal and bimodal bilingualism, examining both spoken and signed languages (Russian Sign Language and British Sign Language). A mix of linguistic, psycholinguistic and neuroscience approaches are used to address bilingualism in hearing and deaf people - specifically, the effects of modality on language learning and language processing - by exploring the differences between learning a second language in the same modality compared to learning a second language in a new modality.

Key contact:  Dr. Evelyne Mercure

• Influence of early experience on language processing and neural representation: A study of hearing infants with a Deaf mother

This project assesses the impact of early language experience on the development of communication and the neural representation of language in hearing infants with Deaf parents in comparison to hearing infants with monolingual and bilingual hearing parents

Key contact: Prof. Mairéad MacSweeney

• The neurobiological basis of language: insights into late language acquisition and reading from deafness 



In this project we use different behavioural and neuroimaging methodologies to find out how the brain processes language. We do this by working with people who are born profoundly deaf and by looking at different aspects of their language skill such as BSL processing, speechreading and reading. In particular we are interested in the impact of age of language acquisition on how the brain processes language.

• Measuring brain lateralisation during language processing with fTCD

Functional Transcranial Doppler Sonography (fTCD) is a reliable non-invasive measure of the speed of blood flow in the main arteries supplying the brain. We use fTCD  to investigate language lateralisation during different language tasks. FTCD allows us to investigate brain lateralisation under conditions that would prove challenging with other neuroimaging techniques (e.g, fMRI), such as overt production of BSL or in studies with children, especially deaf children with cochlear implants. We aim to investigate how the patterns of lateralisation differ for different language tasks and how they relate to behavioural measures such as reading and speechreading abilities. Importantly, we aim to investigate how these lateralisation patterns develop as a function of biological and experiential factors in children born profoundly deaf.

Key additional contacts: Dr. Heather Payne and Dr. Eva Gutiérrez-Sigut

• Examining the influence of sensory and language experience on brain function

Exploring language processing in people born deaf offers direct insights into the cognitive and neurobiological conditions under which language develops. When a language is acquired from birth, the left perisylvian cortex is recruited for language processing, regardless of whether this is delivered auditorily via speech or visually via a signed language (MacSweeney et al., 2002). In our current work we are now exploring how age of sign language acquisition and language task demands influence this language processing network

Key additional contacts: Dr. Tae Twomey