How is BSL, Fingerspelling and written text represented in the brain?

This webpage gives you a summary of the project. If you are interested in participating, or know of someone who may be interested, you can find further information at the bottom of this page.  

What are our goals?

We know that deaf people that are good signers are often good readers. In this study, we plan to study the brain to find out why this is. We will do this by comparing how similar brain activity patterns are for English text, British Sign Language (BSL) signs, and fingerspelling. 

Who are we currently recruiting?  

We are recruiting right-handed deaf adults aged 18-67 years old that are users of BSL.  

Unfortunately, you will not be able to take part if you have a cochlear implant. 

What will participants be asked to do?  

Participants will be invited to attend two testing sessions of about 2 hours at 12 Queen Square (UCL). During the session, you will be scanned with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).  

We will record your brain activity while you complete simple language tasks involving reading text and watching BSL signs and fingerspelling.  

In the scanner you will lie still and make decisions about the signs and text that you see by pressing buttons. 

Impact? 

This project will reveal information about how English text, BSL and fingerspelling are stored in the brain and how these ‘representations’ relate to one another.  We expect that this will provide insights into how BSL can be used to best support reading development. 

Next steps: 

Contact the project leads: Sam (samuel.evans@ucl.ac.uk) or Brennan (b.terhune-cotter@ucl.ac.uk) if you have any questions or are interested in participating. 

Thank you so much for your interest in this exciting project. 

This study has been approved by the UCL Psychology and Language Sciences - ICN Local Research Ethics Committee, Project ID: 2096.