[BIC-announce] CRLMB Speaker Series lecture

[Vincent Gracco]

The Centre for Research on Language, Mind and Brain is presenting a  
talk by Dr. Sheila Blumstein, Alfred D. Mead Professor of Cognitive  
and Linguistic Sciences at Brown University, entitled "Phonetic  
category structure and the mapping of sound structure to the lexicon:  
Evidence from lesion studies and functional neuroimaging," to be held  
in Room 1034 of of the McIntyre Medical Building, on Friday, April 4  
from 1:30 - 3:00 p.m.

Abstract:
The processes underlying both speaking and understanding appear to be  
easy and seamless. And yet, speech input is highly variable, the  
lexical form of a word shares its sound shape with many other words in  
the lexicon, and often a given word will have multiple meanings. The  
goal of this research is to examine how and in what ways the neural  
system is, on the one hand, sensitive to the variability in the speech  
and lexical processing system, and, on the other, is able to resolve  
this variability in determining phonetic category membership, lexical  
form, and word meaning. Evidence from studies of aphasia and  
functional neuroimaging will be examined with particular focus on  
categorical perception of speech, lexical competition, and meaning  
ambiguity in words. Results suggest that the processing of speech and  
lexical form recruits a distributed neural system that includes  
temporal, parietal, and frontal structures, and the processing of word  
meaning recruits temporal and frontal structures. The inferior frontal  
gyrus appears to play a domain general role across levels of the  
linguistic grammar in resolving variability not only of phonetic  
structure but also of phonological, lexical, and meaning competition.


Vincent L. Gracco, Ph. D.
McGill University
Faculty of Medicine
School of Communication Sciences & Disorders
1266 Pine Avenue West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1A8

Telephone:	(514) 398-7386
Fax:	(514) 398-8123
E-mail:	vincent.gracco at mcgill.ca


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