Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

My research investigates the way we learn to read, in particular how we learn the relationship between a word’s spelling and its sound and meaning.

I often use word learning paradigms, in which participants learn to read made-up or unfamiliar words, sometimes written in unfamiliar alphabets.

I also use neuroimaging to look at how the brain represents newly learned words.My new ESRC funded project aims to understand how children's written word representations change as they gain experience with them in real life settings, such as the classroom. This project will use both behavioural methods and fMRI. If you are interested in working on this project or related ideas please get in touch.

Principal Investigator: Jo Taylor

My research focuses on developing biologically plausible accounts of human cognition, particularly in the domains of speech and language, and language-linked cognitive function. Particular areas of interest are exploring the role of language in thought by examining the effects of severe aphasia on non-language cognition, and the use of intensive behavioural stimulation regimes to facilitate recovery from aphasia and apraxia. Current research uses a range of methods, including behavioural investigations with healthy adults and people with post-stroke communicative impairments, and also fMRI and TMS methodologies.

Core research themes are: aphasia; apraxia of speech; neurobiology of speech and language; the role of language in thought; cognition in severe aphasia; usage-based models of word and sentence processing. 

Principal Investigator: Prof Rosemary Varley

My research to date has focused on the functional organisation of brain regions supporting language processes in healthy individuals and in people with acquired language disorders such as aphasic stroke, using a combination of behavioural and functional neuroimaging research methods. My research work has followed three lines of enquiry:

• Investigating the functional organisation of the normal language system, with particular attention to language comprehension.
• Investigating compensatory processes engaged in the healthy brain when language processing is difficult.
• Investigating changes in the organisation of the language system following brain lesions such as aphasic stroke and the neural changes that contribute to functional recovery from aphasia.

Current and planned research centres on investigation of higher-order aspects of language comprehension, such as ambiguity resolution and inference-making, in healthy and aphasic populations.

Principal Investigator: Dr Jane Warren