The fifth annual meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language will feature three keynote sessions as well as two lively debates about the the role of the right hemisphere in figurative language processing and the interaction between semantic and phonological information in reading. State-of-the-art keynotes will be delivered by Janet Werker, Terry Sejnowski and Bob Knight.

Keynote Sessions

Janet F. Werker

Initial biases and experiential influences on infant speech perception development

Wednesday, November 6, 1:30 – 2:30 pm, Crystal Ballroom

Janet Werker is Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, and is internationally renowned for her research investigating the perceptual foundations of language acquisition.

Terry Sejnowski

The Dynamic Brain

Thursday, November 7, 1:15 – 2:15 pm, Crystal Ballroom

Terry Sejnowski is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he heads the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, and is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Sejnowski is well known as a pioneer in the field of computational neuroscience, particularly in the areas of learning and memory.

Robert Knight

Language Viewed from Direct Cortical Recordings

Friday, November 8,  6:15 – 7:15 pm, Crystal Ballroom

Robert Knight is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UC Berkeley and is the former director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Knight is widely known for seminal work within multiple areas of neuroscience, including prefrontal cortex function, neural oscillations, and more recently, speech perception and production.

Panel Discussions

Max Coltheart vs Mark Seidenberg

The role of semantic information in reading aloud

Thursday, November 7, 5:45 – 7:15 pm, Crystal Ballroom

Max Coltheart is a member of the Centre for Cognition and its Disorders at Macquarie University, and is a former director of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science. Coltheart is well known for his work on the cognitive neuropsychology and computational modeling of reading from a dual-route perspective.

Mark Seidenberg is the Hilldale and Donald O. Hebb Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories. He is well known for his work on the cognitive and neurological bases of language and reading, with a particular emphasis on connectionist modeling.

Miriam Faust vs Alexander M. Rapp

The role of the right hemisphere in figurative language processing

Friday, November 8, 2:45 – 4:15 pm, Crystal Ballroom

Miriam Faust is Professor of Psychology, Director of the Brain and Language Laboratory at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center and Vice-Rector at Bar-Ilan University (Israel). Faust is well known for her work on the neurobiological mechanisms that distinguish left and right hemispheric function, particularly in the domain of semantic processing.

Alexander Rapp is at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Tuebingen. Rapp is well known for his work on the neurobiological foundations of nonliteral language and its disruption in neuropsychiatric disorders.