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Hierarchical processing and the neurobiology of language

Speaker: Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Matthias Schlesewsky, Department of Germanic Linguistics, University of Marburg, and Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz

Talk Title: Hierarchical processing and the neurobiology of language

Abstract: Hierarchical processing has been posited as a basic property of neurobiological organisation both in the visual (e.g. Felleman & Van Essen, 1991) and auditory (Rauschecker, 1998) systems. It is also an important characteristic of a recent neurobiological model of speech processing (Rauschecker & Scott, 2009), which builds upon insights from the auditory system of non-human primates. By contrast, long-standing neurocognitive assumptions about the organisation of language in the brain (e.g. the notion that Broca's region in left frontal cortex is crucial for grammatical processing) are often incompatible with the tenet of hierarchical processing. Here, we outline a new neurobiological approach to language processing which applies the principle of hierarchical organisation to sentence and discourse comprehension (Bornkessel- Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, in press). We show how the architectural consequences of this basic design principle help to reconcile a number of theoretical and empirical puzzles within the existing literature on the neuroscience of language. Furthermore, they lead to novel and sometimes surprising hypotheses (e.g. regarding the neural bases for structuring sentences in time).

Biography: Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky
Department of Germanic Linguistics, University of Marburg
and Matthias Schlesewsky
Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz

Host: Michael Arbib

Location: Ray R. Irani Hall (RRI) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Assistant to CS chair