SNL 2022 – October 6-8, Philadelphia

Welcome to SNL 2022!

I would have been delighted to welcome you to any non-virtual city for our annual meeting this year, the first we have held in person since 2019. But I am especially delighted to welcome you to the city that I have called home for 26 years. Philadelphia hosted the First Continental Congress in 1774, and now it is hosting the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language. On behalf of all of the residents of the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection, I thank you for coming—whether it is your first or fortieth time—and I encourage you to explore and enjoy this fantastic city.

I also encourage you to explore and enjoy our fantastic scientific program. Each day of the program features one invited symposium in which a group of stellar scientists will present their latest findings on the themes of “Plasticity in a language-ready brain: complementary evidence from developmental deafness, blindness, and varied language experience across modalities” (organized by Marina Bedny and Qi Cheng); “Imaging the functional reorganization of the language network in recovery from aphasia” (organized by Stephen Wilson); and “How does the neural mechanism of language processing develop in children?” (organized by Jin Wang).

The program features three keynote speakers by scientists who together reflect the broad range of interests among our members: Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky will discuss variability in predictive language processing; Kara Federmeier will speak about the role of electrophysiology in understanding language comprehension; and Asifa Majid will review neurocognitive and cultural biases in language. We will also have the opportunity to hear talks by our Distinguished Career Award winner (Cathy Price); our Early Career Award winner (Michael Artur Skeide); and our Dissertation Award winner (Jin Wang).

For students and postdoctoral fellows, be sure to attend the social hour over lunch on Saturday; thank you to Suhail Matar, our current student and postdoctoral representative, for planning this activity.

And to everyone, please join us for the opening reception on Thursday evening and for a social hour during the poster session on Friday evening. Attendees are also encouraged to attend the SNL Business Meeting right before lunch on Saturday. The program concludes at the end of the day on Saturday, when I will hand the reins over to our next Chair, Liina Pylkkänen of New York University.

This meeting would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors: National Institutes of Health (Major Sponsor); Neurobiology of Language (The MIT Press) (Gold Sponsor); Brain & Language (Elsevier) (Awards Sponsor); Language, Cognition & Neuroscience (Routledge) (Awards Sponsor); Rogue Research Inc. (Silver Sponsor); ANT Neuro (Bronze Sponsor); Brain Vision LLC (Bronze Sponsor). Please visit these sponsors during our meeting.

I would like to thank the program committee for all of the thought, energy, and, of course, the many, many hours that they put into planning an exciting scientific program: Ingrid Johnsrude, Suhail Matar, Carolyn McGettigan, Liina Pylkkänen, Stephen Wilson, and Patrick Wong, with a special thanks to Michele Diaz, the Chair of the Program Committee. Thank you to all who took time to review and provide feedback for the abstract submissions. And last but by no means least, a huge round of applause for Shauney Wilson, Shawna Lampkin, and their team for remembering how to run an in-person meeting and for doing it so well.

On behalf of all of these people, I would like to thank you for your active participation in SNL and welcome you to our annual meeting in Philadelphia. Have a wonderful time and don’t forget to tag us on social media @SNLmtg during the meeting!

Sharon Thompson-Schill
Chair, Society for the Neurobiology of Language