The Language Neuroscience Podcast

In this episode, I talk with David Moses and Jessie Liu about their recent NEJM paper ‘Neuroprosthesis for decoding speech in a paralyzed person with anarthria’, in which they decoded intended utterances from the brain of an individual with anarthria using an electrode array implanted of sensorimotor cortex and machine learning.Moses DA, Metzger SL, Liu JR, et al. Neuroprosthesis for decoding speech in a paralyzed person with anarthria. N Eng J Med 2021; 385: 217-27. [doi]New York Times articleRelated papers:Bouchard KE, Mesgarani N, Johnson K, Chang EF. Functional organization of human sensorimotor cortex for speech articulation. Nature 2013; 495: 327-32. [doi]Chartier J, Anumanchipalli GK, Johnson K, Chang EF. Encoding of articulatory kinematic trajectories in human speech sensorimotor cortex. Neuron 2018; 98: 1042-54. [doi]Anumanchipalli GK, Chartier J, Chang EF. Speech synthesis from neural decoding of spoken sentences. Nature 2019; 568: 493-8. [doi]Moses DA, Leonard MK, Makin JG, Chang EF. Real-time decoding of question-and-answer speech dialogue using human cortical activity. Nat Commun 2019; 10: 3096. [doi]Makin JG, Moses DA, Chang EF. Machine translation of cortical activity to text with an encoder–decoder framework. Nat Neurosci 2020; 23: 575-82. [doi]Chang lab website

In this episode, I talk with Roy Hamilton, Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, about his work using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), and in particular the application of these neuromodulatory techniques to enhance recovery from aphasia.Laboratory for Cognition and Neural StimulationPenn Brain Science, Translation, Innovation, and Modulation CenterHamilton RH, Pascual-Leone A. Cortical plasticity associated with Braille learning. Trends Cogn Sci 1998; 2: 168-174. [doi]Naeser MA, Martin PI, Treglia E, Ho M, Kaplan E, Bashir S, Hamilton R, Coslett HB, Pascual-Leone A. Research with rTMS in the treatment of aphasia. Restor Neurol Neurosci 2010; 28: 511-529. [doi]Hamilton RH, Chrysikou EG, Coslett B. Mechanisms of aphasia recovery after stroke and the role of noninvasive brain stimulation. Brain Lang 2011; 118): 40-50. [doi]Price AR, Peelle JE, Bonner MF, Grossman M, Hamilton RH. Causal evidence for a mechanism of semantic integration in the angular gyrus as revealed by high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation. J Neurosci 2016; 36: 3829-3838. [doi]Carr RM, Lane-Fall MB, South E, Brady D, Momplaisir F, Guerra CE, Montoya-Williams D, Dalembert G, Lavizzo-Mourey R, Hamilton R. Academic careers and the COVID-19 pandemic: Reversing the tide. Sci Transl Med 2021; 13: eabe7189. [doi]

Stephen talks with Willem “Pim” Levelt, Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and author of “A history of psycholinguistics: The pre-Chomskyan era”, about the early history of the neuroscience of language.

Stephen talks with Pascale Tremblay, Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences at Université Laval, about how she co-founded the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, her paper "Broca and Wernicke are dead, or moving past the classic model of language neurobiology", and her work on the language tracts of the brain.https://langneurosci.org/podcast/ep10

Stephen is joined by Maya Henry, Andrew DeMarco, and Sarah Schneck to discuss some of our favorite presentations from the Clinical Aphasiology Conference 2021.https://langneurosci.org/podcast/ep9

Julius Fridriksson, Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of South Carolina, discusses aphasia treatment, including the effectiveness of semantic and phonological approaches, challenges in analyzing treatment, and training for individuals with aphasia using speech entrainment. He also talks about the future of aphasia treatment and gives advice for young researchers.

Stephen talks with Saloni Krishnan, Lecturer in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, about her work, in particular her recent paper 'Functional organization for verb generation in children with developmental language disorder'.

Stephen talks with Karen Emmorey, Professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Diego State University, about sign language and the brain.

Stephen talks with Andrea Gajardo-Vidal and Diego Lorca-Puls about their recent paper ‘Damage to Broca’s area does not contribute to long-term speech production outcome after stroke’.

Stephen talks about neural oscillations and neural entrainment with Jonas Obleser, Professor of Psychology at University of Lübeck