On 10/21 (Friday) at 3:30 in ILC S331, Liina Pylkkänen of NYU will give the following talk:

The syntactic, semantic and associative brain: How conceptual combination interacts with syntactic composition and associative processing in temporal cortex.

What is the neural basis of syntactic and semantic composition? Our lab’s research has revealed a consistent neural correlate of composition in the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL), tracking conceptual aspects of composition, and more elusive correlates of syntactic composition in posterior temporal cortex. Is the LATL fully independent of syntactic composition, or does it conceptually combine elements that also syntactically combine? That is, how does LATL activity relate to more structural aspects of composition? On the flip side, we can also investigate how the LATL interacts with *less* structural aspects of processing, namely pure association, which has also been shown to drive LATL activity, including in the monkey brain. I will report on our recent progress on these questions, as we gradually make headway in understanding how the combinatory machine works in our brains.

This talk can be watched in person in S331 in the ILC or remotely using the zoom link:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/92526730268?pwd=ZDE4MytyNnRucTY1TDZCZnJYRnA1dz09

Meeting ID: 925 2673 0268
Passcode: 406498