Graduate Institute of Linguistics -- National Taiwan University
Neurolinguistics
Spring 2004
Professor Kathleen Ahrens

Course Time: Tuesday 9:10am-noon
Location: GIL classroom
E-mail: kathleenahrens@yahoo.com.
Office hours: Tuesday 12:00-14:00 pm or by appointment
Office: Le-Xue-Guan Room 307. Phone: 363-0231 ext. 3490 ext. 307

Course Goals:
• To have students examine and formulate opinions on current neurolinguistic literature related to linguistic processes (especially semantics and pragmatics)
• To have the students learn how to critique neurolinguistic papers, especially issues related to stimuli and design
• To have students set up a neurolinguistic study and run pretests necessary to set up that study and incorporate their work into a final research paper.

Course Grading:
Final Research Paper – 33.3 %
Class Contribution – 33.3 %
Critiques _ Assignments 33.3 %

Other important points to note:
1) Prior exposure to graduate-level courses in psycholinguistics, syntax and semantics is strongly encouraged.
2) The class will be conducted in English.
3) The reading load and preparation time needed for this course is heavy, due to the nature of field (i.e. unfamiliar terminology, etc.) and the emphasis on the case-study approach.
4) All auditors must do the same reading preparation work as students who take the class for credit.

Course Policy on Absenteeism and Tardiness and Late Assignments
• No absences are allowed without my prior permission or a doctor’s note from the university health center or a public hospital.
• It is the student’s responsibility to find out what occurred and what was taught in class during his or her absence. If a surprise quiz, or assignment was given or due, it is the student’s responsibility to make up that work.
• Make-up work that requires the teacher’s presence (to listen to a recitation or presentation or to give an exam) will be completed at a time convenient to the teacher. It is the student’s responsibility to make arrangements with the teacher immediately upon his or her return to class.
• Students that are tardy will be required to do an extra assignment either during the class period or after class to make up for their tardiness.
• All assignments must be typed (not hand-written). Late assignments will have five points subtracted from the total grade for each day they are late, starting with the date they are due.
• Two unexcused class hours in one semester will lower your overall course grade by 5%.
• Each additional unexcused class hour over two will lower your grade by an additional 5%.

Class #1 – 2/17
Overview
Personal data form
Expectations – each student will prepare a professional presentation for each class, and will be prepared to discuss differing viewpoints in class. One page critiques are required Monday morning at 9am prior to the discussion day (on website) and turned in at the beginning of class. Each student will also pick one area and write up a literature review, annotated bibliography, and follow-up study (running pretests to set up the study) to turn in as a final paper

Class #2 – 2/24
Reading Assignments
Bottini, G, Corcoran, R, Sterzi, R, Paulesu, E., Schenone, P., Scarpa, P., Frackowiak, R. S. J., and Frith, C. D. (1994). The role of the right hemisphere in the interpretation of figurative aspects of language: a positron emission tomography activation study. Brain, 1241-1253.
Buchinger, C.; Floel, A.; Lohmann, H.; Van Randenborgh, J.; Henningsen, H., and S. Knecht. 2000. Right hemisphere contribution to metaphor processing in healthy subjects. Journal of Neurolinguistics 13. 276-79.
Kuperberg, G. R., McGuire, P. K., Bullmore, E. T., Brammer, M. J., Rabe-Hesketh, S., Wright, I. C., Lythgoe, D. J., Williams, S. C. R., and David, A. S. (2000). Common and Distinct neural substrates for pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic processing of spoken sentences: an fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12 (2), 321-341.
Pynte, J., Besson, M., Robichon, F-H, Poli, J. (1996). The time-course of metaphor comprehension: an event-related potential study. Brain and Language, 55, 293-316.

Discuss research areas of interest – start literature review

Class #3 – 3/2
Reading Assignment
Bookheimer S. (2002). FunctionalMRI of Language: New Approaches to Understanding the Cortical organization of Semantic Processing. Annual Review Neuroscience 25: 151-88.

Literature review& annotated bibliography

Class #4 – 3/9
Reading Assignment
Bookheimer S. (2002). FunctionalMRI of Language: New Approaches to Understanding the Cortical organization of Semantic Processing. Annual Review Neuroscience 25: 151-88.

Literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis

Class #5 – 3/16
Reading Assignment
Kuperberg, G. R., Holcomb, P. J., Sitnikova, T., Greve, D., Dale, a. M., and Caplan, D. (2003). Distinct patterns of neural modulation during the processing of conceptual and syntactic anomalies. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 15:2, 272-293.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references

Class #6 3/23
Reading Assignment
Coulson, S., and C. Van Petten. 2002. Conceptual integration and metaphor: an event-related potential study. Memory and Cognition 30. 958-68.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, suggestions for on or off-line pre-test

Class #7 --3/30
Reading Assignment
Kircher, T. T. J.; Brammer, M.; Andreu, N. T.; Williams, S. C. R., and P. K. Mcguire. 2001. Engagement of right temporal cortex during processing of linguistic context. Neuropsychologia 39. 789-809.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, set up of on or off-line pre-test

Class #8 – 4/6
Reading Assignment
Seger, C. A.; Desmond, J. E.; Glover, G. H., and J. D. E. Garbrieli. 2000. Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence for right-hemisphere involvement in processing unusual semantic relationships. Neuropsychology 14. 361-69.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, run on or off-line pre-test


Class #9 – 4/13
Reading Assignment
Kiehl, K. A.; Laurens, K. R., and P. F. Liddle. 2002. Reading anomalous sentences: an event-related fMRI study of semantic processing. Neuroimage 17. 842-50.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, run on or off-line pre-test

Class #10 – 4/20
Reading Assignment
Rossell, S. L., Price, C. J., & Nobre, A. C. (2003). The anatomy and time course of semantic priming investigated by fMRI and ERPs. Neuropsychologia, 41(5), 550-564.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, run on or off-line pre-test

Class #11 – 4/27
Reading Assignment
Hashimoto R. & Sakai K. (2002). Specialization in the left prefrontal cortex for sentence comprehension. Neuron, 35, 589-597.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, present findings for pretest

Class #12 – 5/4
Reading Assignment
Baumgaertner A., Weiller C. & Buchel C. (2002). Event-Related fMrI reveals cortical sites involved in contextual sentence integration. NeuroImage 16, 736-745.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, present findings for pretest

Class #13 – 5/11
Reading Assignment
George, M. St., Kutas, M., Martinez, A & Sereno, M I (1999). Semantic Integration in Reading: Engagement of the Right Hemisphere during Discourse Processing. Brain, 122(7), 1317-1325.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, methodology & results for pretest

Class #14 – 5/18
Reading Assignment
Ferstl, E. C., & von Gramon, D. Y. (2001). The role of coherence and cohesion in text comprehension: an event-related fMRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 11 (3), 325-340.

Introduction, literature review, annotated bibliography, research question and hypothesis, paper outline, references, paper draft due

Class #15 – 5/25
Term Paper Presentation

Class #16 – 5/1
Term Paper Presentation

Class #17 – 6/8
Term Paper Presentation



Some Websites of Interest for Neurolinguistics 2004

http://www.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/~enl/links.html -- Pling lab in Bielefeld (Look at links)

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Speechandhearing/labs/dnl/ -- Pling lab at CUNY (look at links)

http://www.neuropat.dote.hu/ (Explanation re slicing brain)

http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/web_sites.html (Neuroling and neursci sites)

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html Info about neuroscience for kids – very interesting site
http://www.dls.ym.edu.tw/neuroscience/neurok_c.html ( Neurosci for kids in Chinese!!)

www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html The Whole Brain Atlas

Progress Evaluation Report Format:

Course Evaluation
1. What three things do you like about this course? Why?

2. What three things do you not like about this course? Why?

3. Should the things mentioned in #2 above be changed? If so, how? If not, why not?

Personal Evaluation
1. What have you learned from this course that you hope you will still remember 10 years from now?

2. What areas do you still feel you need improvement in?

3. What do you need to do to make these improvements? How can I help?

4. What has been your biggest accomplishment this semester (does not have to be within the course)?

5. How are you doing in your other courses and in life in general? Are there any specific issues you want me to know about?

6. Other comments:

Case Evaluation:
1. What issues did this case focus on?

2. Was the data successful in distinguishing between theoretical issues?

3. What questions remain to be answered?

4. What kind of data do we need to answer these questions?





Personal Data Form Course Name: Neurolinguistics Year: 2000

Chinese Name:____________________ English Name:____________________
Student Number:__________________ Credit or Audit or Undecided? ______
Phone number during school year:___________________
E-mail:______________________
College attended:________________________
Major:_______________ Minor:_______________
Current year in school: ________________________
Future career goals: ________________________________________________
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Do you prefer to be with a large group of people or by yourself ?___________________
Do you prefer working with concrete data or abstract ideas/theory?________________
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Do you make decisions on the basis of people feelings or on the basis of what you feel is the correct thing to do?____________________________________________________
Do you approach tasks step by step or do you do assignments/tasks at the last minute? ________________________________________________________________
Area most interested in for thesis work:_______________________________________
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Other interesting background or points it would be helpful to know:_________________
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My personal strengths are:__________________________________________________
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My personal weaknesses are:________________________________________________
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What I hope to gain from this course:_________________________________________
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What I don’t want from this course: __________________________________________
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What I expect to be hardest for me in this course:________________________________
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What I expect to be easiest for me in this course:________________________________
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Amount of time available per week to devote to this course:_______________________