Online resources [ General resources | Lecture related material ]

 

General resources

The brain and its structure

• Helpers on this website
• Neuroanatomy Tutorial, Labelled Images
• William H. Calvin and George A. Ojemann, Inside the Brain:  Mapping the Cortex, Exploring the Neuron (New American Library, 1980), index and preface. See also http://WilliamCalvin.com/Bk1. I did not read it yet, I do not guarantee the accuracy.

Dictionaries, glossaries, on-line encyclopedia

• xrefer to check definitions of terms used in lectures. For instance, a definition of agrammatism and related concepts (grammar, language, etc.)
• MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. For instance, the entry for "Language, Neural Basis of", with links to all related entries.
• Wikipedia. "Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate free content encyclopedia". For instance, an entry on Language Acquisition

 

Lecture related material on the net

Lecture:

   1   |   2   |   3   |   4   |  
   5   |   6   |   7   |   8   |  
   9   |  10   |  11   |  12   | 
  13   |  14   |  15   |  16   | 
  17   |  18

 

 

Lecture 1

Language in the Brain

• History of localization of function (lecture slides from Gregory Hickok)
• Basic Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology (lecture slides from Gregory Hickok)

 

Lecture 2

Techniques and technologies

• Brain imaging @ science fair projects
• PET links
• fMRI links

In the news

• Magnetic imaging scoops medical Nobel (Nature news)  
• Predicting performance from functional imaging data: methods matter by Sidtis et al. (2003), in Neuroimage  

 

Lecture 3

Language and the corpus callosum

Handouts and lecture notes

• Differences Between Left and Right Hemisphere
• Split Brain research
• Right brain/left brain (links to scientific as well as unscientific material)

Paper(s)

• The Split Brain Revisited by Michael S. Gazzaniga
• The Split brain by Zaidel and colleagues  
• hemispheric processing and Interhemsipheric transfer , A special issue of Brain and Language to be published soon  

 

Lecture 4

The processing style of the right hemisphere

Paper(s)

• Erps to Parafoveally Presented Metaphors: The Role of the Right Hemisphere
• Burgess, C., & Simpson, G.B. (1988). Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meanings. Brain and Language, 33, 86-103.

 

Lecture 5

From eye to brain

Handouts and lecture notes

• Visual Pathways: Lecture Notes by Alex Huk    
• FUNCTIONAL BRAIN AREAS IN THE HUMAN with plenty of neat illustrations of the visual areas.    
• The EYE, Visual Physiology, and The visual pathways. Chapters of an on-line book on anatomy and physiology. ©1999-2000 by Prentice Hall, Inc, A Pearson Company, Distance Learning at Prentice Hall    
• Visual cortex handout with nifty illustrations, by Professors John Gabrieli.    

Papers

• To see but not to read; the magnocellular theory of dyslexia by Stein and Walsh.

In the news

• Brain fakes it Nerve-cell activity when eyes are shut reveals internal views of the world. In Nature, 30 October 2003

 

Lecture 6

From ear to brain

Handouts and lecture notes

• Hearing. Chapter of the on-line book on anatomy and physiology. ©1999-2000 by Prentice Hall, Inc, A Pearson Company, Distance Learning at Prentice Hall    
• Our sense of Hearing at Neuroscience for kids (they are serious and good quality handouts, worth exploring their website)    

 

Lecture 7

Word recognition: Written and spoken forms

Handouts and lecture notes

• Visual word recognition by Mark Seidenberg in the MITECS encyclopedia.

Paper(s)

• Evaluation of the dual route theory of reading: a metanalysis of 35 neuroimaging studies by Jobarda et al. (2003) in Neuroimage, 20 (2), 693-712
• Cathy Price
• Words in the Brain's Language by Friedemann Pulvermüller, published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
• Mark's Seidenberg's Language and Cognitive Neuroscience lab, with online publications.

 

Lecture 8

Surface and phonological dyslexia

• Maccs' center language project (M. Coltheart), DRC's simulation data for dyslexias, and why he believes his model brings an important contribution to the field

Demonstrations

• Go to Neuropsychology: A multimedia course to try a demo of the plaut's model of written word pronunciation (Chapter: 1. Language, Section, 7. Word Production II, bottom of the page)

Paper(s)

• David Plaut's homepage, with online publications.
• Connectionist modelling of surface dyslexia based on foveal splitting: Impaired pronunciation after only two half pints by Richard Shillcock and Padraic Monaghan. Both working at Edinburgh University in case you have some thoughts about a MSc project in this area.

 

Lecture 9

Deep dyslexia and the right hemisphere

Handouts and lecture notes

• Deep dyslexia, Max Coltheart's lecture notes

Paper(s)

• Plaut & Shallice (1993)

 

Lecture 10

Dependence upon peripheral systems: Neglect dyslexia and attentional dyslexias

In the news

• Researcher battles ailment that makes patients visualize only right side of things (post-gazette, Pittsburgh)

Handouts and lecture notes

• Visual neglect, entry in MITECS
• Neglect dyslexia (Max Coltheart's lecture notes)
• Pure Alexia or letter-by-letter reading (Max Coltheart's lecture notes)
• Visual dyslexia (Max Coltheart's lecture notes)

Paper(s)

• Behrmann, M., Plaut, D. C. and Nelson, J. (1998). A literature review and new data supporting an interactive account of letter-by-letter reading. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 15, 7-51
• PURE ALEXIA: Letter-by-Letter Reading A Special Issue of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology
• Neurocase, neglect dyslexia

 

Lecture 11

Memory and language

Handouts, lecture notes

• An interactive lecture on memory (really nifty demos on this site)

Paper(s)

• Baddeley introducing working memory (Tics, 2000)
• Locating and Fractioning Working Memoring Using Functional Neuroimaging: Storage, Maintenace, and Executive Functions, a paper by Hartley and Speer
• Vocabulary Acquisition and Verbal Short-Term Memory: Computational and Neural Bases, a paper by Gupta and MacWhinney (Brain and Language, 1997)

 

Lecture 12

Sentence processing: Broca’s aphasia

Handouts and lecture notes

• Paul Broca, founder of neurology
• Carl Wernicke, founder of neurology

 

Lecture 13

Syntax and the normal brain

• (no link yet).

 

Lecture 14

The modularity debate: (counter)evidence from syntax

• Laurie Stowe's homepages, with online publications.

 

Lecture 15

Autism and Christopher, the linguistic savant

Handouts, lecture notes

• The Savant Syndrome: Islands of Genius

Handouts, lecture notes

• Independent living on the autistic spectrum (written from a person with Asperger Syndrome).

 

Lecture 16

Language in animals

In the news

• Chimps learn like us on Canada discovery, by Siria Gastelum, May 31, 2002
• Looking for language in all the right places (Nature Neuroscience, July 2002)
• Alex the parrot (New Scientist)

Handouts and lecture notes

• Talking primates, an urban legend?
• website dedicated to koko, the signing gorilla
• Ape talk
• Ape Communication Studies""
• Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute
• friends of washoe
• Apes and Cognition at planet of Apes.
• Language in animals. On-line lecture
• Current project in Animal Learning, Language, and Cognition
• Alex, the talking parrot

 

Lecture 17

Acquisition and the critical period

In the news

• Romania’s wild boy is reclaimed by his mother (Scotsman, Fri 22 Feb 2002)
• Mowgli's sisters (Sydney Morning Herald, May 4 2002)
• Romania’s wild boy is reclaimed by his mother (Scotsman, Fri 22 Feb 2002)
• Mowgli's sisters (Sydney Morning Herald, May 4 2002)
• Wild things (Fortean times)
• Taming the monkey-boy (Scotsman , Sunday, 17th October 1999)
• Understanding 'Foreign Accent Syndrome' (University of Oxford press releases)
• Bilinguals kick out their tongue (in Nature science, Feb 2002)

Handouts and lecture notes

• Prenatal brain development (neat video!!)
• Pinker on language acquisition
• The origin of babble
• Feral children
• Language Acquisition under extreme conditions

Paper(s)

• A critical period for right hemisphere recruitment in American Sign Language processing by Aaron J. Newman, Daphne Bavelier, David Corina, Peter Jezzard & Helen J. Neville published in Nature Neuroscience

 

Lecture 18

Language exotica

• (no link yet).