Neurolinguistics Thursday

The Centre for Language and Brain, HSE holds a regular scientific seminar "Neurolinguistic Thursday" (usually Thursday 16:00-18:00). Seminar leaders are I. R. M. Bastiaanse (Scientific Supervisor of the Center) and O. V. Dragoi (Director of the Center). At the seminar, invited speakers and staff of the Center make presentations, we discuss new and current projects of the Center, published news in the wide area of the relationship between language and brain.

Previous seminars:

January 14, 2021

Lector: Anastasiya Lopukhina (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Good-enough language processing of sentences by adolescents, young and old adults
Format: online (zoom)

January 28, 2021

Lector: Anastasiya Ogneva (University of A Coruña)
Topic: Gender acquisition in Russian: a comparison between typically developing children and children with Developmental Language Disorder
Abstract: Previous research suggests that typically developing monolinguals acquire gender very early – the masculine-feminine distinction is established at approximately the age of 2 (Gvozdev, 1961; Ceitlin, 2005, 2009; Mitrofanova et al., 2018). However, neuter gender is acquired later, between 3 and 4 years of age, and neuter opaque forms are mastered at about the age of 6. Regarding gender acquisition by children diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), previous studies have argued that adjectival agreement seems to be impaired in DLD (Rakhlin et al., 2014; Tribushinina & Dubinkina, 2012; Tribushinina et al., 2018). However, it is not clear whether DLD children are sensitive to gender cues and what the developmental stages of gender acquisition are. In this talk, results of an experimental task studying the acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian will be presented.  
Format: online (zoom)

February 11, 2021

Lector: Anastasiya Lopukhina (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Predictability in adults’ and children’s speech: results and plans
Format: online (zoom)

February 15, 2021

Lector: Anastasiya Lopukhina (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Assessment of language development RuCLAB: results for typically developing children
Format: online (zoom)

March 4, 2021

Lector: Militina Gomozova (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Assessment of morphosyntactic development in typically and atypically developing children
Format: online (zoom)

March 11, 2021

Lectors: Olga Buivolova (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University), Yulia Akinina (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: In search for evidence of reversed pragmatic localization
Abstract: It is well-known that the right hemisphere damages can cause specific pragmatic deficits, such as difficulties with understanding non-literal language, irony, and metaphors, etc.
At the same time, there are cases of pragmatic impairments in people with bilateral and even left hemisphere damages. We want to investigate whether the non-typical language localization is connected with non-typical pragmatic localization. We have some hypotheses which we would like to share with our colleagues and get feedback on the research design and further directions.
Format: online (zoom)

March 18, 2021

Lector: Tatyana Shishkovskaya (Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution Mental Health Research Center)
Topic: Schizophrenia: neurophysiological basis, symptoms and speech markers
Format: online (zoom)

March 25, 2021

Lector: Mariya Khudyakova (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Schizophrenia: neurophysiological basis, symptoms and speech markers
Format: online (zoom)

April 8, 2021

Lector: Svetlana Dorofeeva (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Visual processing disorders and instruments for differential diagnosis of various types of visual object agnosia
Abstract: Impaired visual processing is one of the possible causes of disabilities in patients with brain damage, but their prevalence and clinical significance are underestimated. We will discuss the main types of visual object agnosia, approaches to their diagnosis and the main symptoms. We will additionally discuss the pilot version of the test for the differential diagnosis of different types of visual object agnosia, which is being developed at the HSE Center for Language and Brain.
Format: online (zoom)

April 15, 2021

Lectors: Elena Gorbunova (Laboratory for Cognitive Psychology of Digital Interface Users), Yulia Akinina (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Effects of graphic attention capturing tools to language processing in reading
Abstract: The Laboratory for the Cognitive Psychology of Digital Interface Users teamed up with the Center for Language and Brain to explore the effects of graphic attention capturing devices on reading. We will present a design draft of a series of experiments that aims to find out how standard and non-standard text emphasys styles modulate depth of semantic processing in a change blindness paradigm.
Format: online (zoom)

April 26, 2021

Lector: Dr. Mónica López-Vicente (Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology, Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
Topic: White matter microstructure correlates of age, sex, handedness and motor ability in a population-based sample of 3031 school-age children
Abstract: Understanding the development of white matter microstructure in the general population is an imperative precursor to identifying its involvement in psychopathology. Previous studies have reported changes in white matter microstructure associated with age and different developmental patterns between boys and girls. Handedness has also been related to white matter in adults. Motor performance, tightly dependent on overall neuronal myelination, has been related to the corpus callosum. However, the association between motor performance and global white matter microstructure has not been reported in the literature. In general, these age, sex, handedness, and motor performance associations have been observed using small and poorly representative samples. We examined the relationships between age, sex, handedness, and motor performance, measured with a finger tapping task, and white matter microstructure in the forceps major and minor and in 5 tracts bilaterally (cingulum, corticospinal, inferior and superior longitudinal fasciculi, and uncinate) in a population-based sample of 3031 children between 8 and 12 years of age. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were acquired using a single, study dedicated 3 Tesla scanner. We extracted and quantified features of white matter microstructure for each tract. We computed global DTI metrics by combining scalar values across multiple tracts into single latent factors using a confirmatory factor analysis. The adjusted linear regression models indicated that age was associated with global fractional anisotropy (FA), global mean diffusivity (MD), and almost all the tracts. Further, girls showed lower global MD than boys, while FA values differed by tract, and no age-sex interactions were found. No differences were observed in white matter microstructure between right- and left-handed children. We observed that FA in forceps major was associated with right-hand finger tapping performance. White matter FA in association tracts was only related to motor function before multiple testing correction. Our findings do not provide evidence for a relationship between finger tapping task performance and global white matter microstructure.
Format: online (zoom)

June 10, 2021

Lector: Daria Mitsuk (School of Linguistics, HSE University)
Topic: Sensitivity to prosodic or statistical signs in segmentation of the speech flow in adult native speakers of Russian and infants
Format: online (zoom)

Lector: Valeriya Lelik (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: CHILDES corpus for Russian language
Format: online (zoom)

July 8, 2021

Lectors: Dr. Teresa Ober (Learning Analytics and Measurement in Behavioral Science (LAMBS) Lab, University of Notre Dame)
Topic: Tutorial on systematic reviews and meta-analysis
Abstract: The systematic review portion will likely focus on the following: the theory and rationale of meta-analysis, identifying and developing research questions appropriate for meta-analysis, creating and protocol for the systematic review and drafting a pre-registration, accessing and organizing citations, PRISMA procedure for screening articles (and tools for collaborative article screening), procedures for data extraction and establishing inter-coder reliability, other resources for evaluating the quality of the systematic review.
For the effect size calculation and moderator/meta-regression analysis, I can plan to give some demos that involve the use of two R packages (metafor, robumeta) for analyzing the data. I should be able to pull some toy data to use for the latter portion to get some hands-on experience running the analyses. If it would be of interest, I'd like to focus on two types of meta-analysis: one which focuses on correlations as effect size estimates, and the other which focuses on group mean differences as effect size estimates. 
Format: online (zoom)

July 29, 2021

Lector: Matteo Maran  (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology, Germany)
Topic: Towards a causal role of Broca's area in language: A TMS-EEG study on syntactic prediction.
Format: online (zoom)

September 16, 2021

Participants: Maria Lebedeva, Antonina Laposhina, Tatyana Veselovskaya, Olga Kupreschenko, Alexandra Puchkova, Alexandra Berlin Henis, and members of the HSE Centerf or Language and Brain
Topic: meeting of the staff of the Center for Language and Brain, HSE University, with the staff of the Pushkin Russian Language Institute from the Laboratory of Cognitive and Linguistic Research.
Format: combined


September 23, 2021

Lector: Militina Gomozova (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University), Valeria Lezzhova (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Review of modern research on the topic of SLI, including the use of linguistic tests.
Format: combined


September 24, 2021

Lector: Vladislava Staroverova (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University), Anastasia Kromina (PhD-student, Center for Language and Brain, HSE University), Daria Antropova (Lomonosov Moscow State University)
Topic: Review of modern studies of the perceptual range using video oculography methods.
Format: combined

October 14, 2021

Lector: Diane Meziere (IDEALAB, Macquarie University, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Topic: Can Eye Movements Be Used to Predict Reading Comprehension Ability?
Format: online (zoom)


October 28, 2021

Lector: Maria Khudyakova (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Working meeting on the topic of discourse marking in linguistic research
Format: online (zoom)


November 11, 2021

Lector: Svetlana Malyutina (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Subjective and objective measures of speech function in elderly people with mild cognitive decline
Format: combined


November 18, 2021

Lector: Anastasia Kromina (PhD-student of the, Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Eye-movement trajectories while reading in hearing-impaired Russian Sign Language speakers
Format: combined

Lector: Daria Mitsuk (Student of the School of Linguistics, HSE University)
Topic: EEG correlates of non-adjacent dependency learning mechanisms under passive listening in Russian adults (and children)
Format: combined


December 9, 2021

Lector: Ann-Katrin Ohlerth (PhD Candidate, University of Groningen, the Netherlands/Scientific employee Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München, Germany)
Topic: Perioperative language mapping with a dual-task approach - the contribution of Action Naming in preventing language loss
Format: online (zoom)


December 16, 2021

Lector: Semen Kudryavtsev (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University) and Andrey Zyryanov (Center for Language and Brain, HSE University)
Topic: Investigation of electrophysiological mechanisms of language processing with EEG
Format: combined