![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/luthra-cropped-240x300.jpg\")
The Society for the Neurobiology of Language is pleased to announce the 2021 Dissertation Award recipient: Sahil Luthra<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Dissertation Award is generously sponsored by Brain and Language<\/em><\/a>. Tuesday, May 26, 2026, 12:55 - 12:55 am PDT Log In to set Timezone<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n Speaker: Sahil Luthra<\/strong>, University of Connecticut<\/em><\/p>\n Brain and Language Dissertation Article<\/a><\/i><\/em><\/p>\n The role of the right hemisphere in phonetic processing is thought to be relatively minimal, at least in comparison to the role of the left hemisphere. However, the right hemisphere is known to play a critical role in vocal identity processing, a fact that is striking given that the acoustic-phonetic details of the speech signal can differ substantially between talkers. In this talk, I will describe evidence from fMRI that the right hemisphere \u2013 and more specifically, the right posterior temporal cortex \u2013 plays a role in helping listeners adapt to the idiosyncratic ways that different talkers produce their speech sounds. Specifically, I will describe evidence that (1) talker information and phonetic detail are simultaneously represented in the functional activation patterns of the right superior temporal sulcus and that (2) the process of conditioning phonetic identity on talker information is supported by the coordinated activity of a left-lateralized phonetic processing system and a right-lateralized talker processing system. Overall, these data clarify the neurobiological mechanisms through which listeners accommodate talker-specific phonetic variation and may point to potential subclinical impairments in patients with right hemisphere damage.<\/p>\n Sahil Luthra completed his Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut in August 2021. He will move to Carnegie Mellon University as a postdoctoral researcher in September, where he will study the neural basis of auditory selective attention.<\/p>\n The goal of Dr. Luthra’s research program is uncovering how our prior knowledge guides our in-the-moment perception of language. He uses a combination of neuroimaging, behavioral, and computational approaches to address this challenge.<\/p>\n Dr. Luthra has published several articles related to this theme. These include a recent behavioral study that resolves a decades-old debate about lexical feedback in spoken word recognition (Luthra et al., 2021, Cognitive Science), a study of the neural basis for lexically-guided perceptual learning (Luthra et al., 2020, J. Cognitive Neuroscience), and computational investigations of predictive processing and predictive coding (Luthra et al., 2021, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review). Recently, Dr. Luthra published a single-author theoretical review of the role of the right hemisphere in accommodating the phonetic variability that exists between talkers in Neurobiology of Language (Luthra, 2021), and he further explored this issue in his dissertation work.<\/p>\n Dr. Luthra is also an active practitioner and advocate of open science as well as clear science communication across disciplinary boundaries. He is strongly committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.<\/p>\n Kiefer Forseth,<\/strong> UT Health Science Center at Houston<\/em> Dissertation AwardSahil Luthra The Society for the Neurobiology of Language is pleased to announce the 2021 Dissertation Award recipient: Sahil Luthra The Dissertation Award is generously sponsored by Brain and Language. A right hemisphere role in talker-specific phonetic processing Tuesday, May 26, 2026, 12:55 - 12:55 am PDT Log In to set Timezone<\/a><\/i><\/p> Speaker: Sahil Luthra, University of Connecticut Brain and Language Dissertation Article The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2020\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Brain-and-Language.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nA right hemisphere role in talker-specific phonetic processing<\/h3>\n
About Sahil Luthra<\/h4>\n
Honorable Mentions<\/h3>\n
Mariya\u00a0 Toneva,<\/strong> Carnegie Mellon University<\/em><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_search _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_search][et_pb_sidebar _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_sidebar][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keynote: Dorothy Bishop<\/h1>\r\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2019\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Dorothy-Bishop-1-240x300.jpg\")
Individual differences in language laterality: are they meaningful?<\/h2>\r\nSpeaker: Dorothy Bishop<\/strong>, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford<\/em>\r\nhttps:\/\/www.psy.ox.ac.uk\/team\/dorothy-bishop<\/a><\/h4>\r\n
Chair: Mair\u00e9ad MacSweeney<\/h4>\r\nWednesday, August 21, 2019, 4:00 \u2013 5:00 pm, Finlandia Hall\r\n<\/i>\r\n\r\n150 years after Broca's seminal statement \"Nous parlons avec l'h\u00e9misph\u00e8re gauche\" we still do not know how or why we have this bias. It seems reasonable to suppose that lateralisation evolved because it is adaptive, perhaps enabling complementary specialisation of different functions.\u00a0 However, if this were so, then we might expect to find evidence of language deficits in people who have bilateral or right-hemisphere language. Although such an association has been proposed, the evidence is not compelling.\r\n\r\nMy research group has been investigating the possibility that we need to look at the pattern of lateralization for different components of language.\u00a0 Although language dominance is typically regarded as a unitary dimension, discrepant laterality across different language tasks is often reported in studies. We have shown that this cannot be dismissed as simple measurement error, and task differences in laterality may represent meaningful individual variability that originates from true differences in the hemispheric organisation of different language networks.\u00a0 In a series of studies using functional transcranial Doppler sonography, we have investigated the functional correlates of inconsistent language laterality across tasks, to test a network efficiency hypothesis which maintains that optimal development depends on organisation of language functions within the same cerebral hemisphere.\r\n
About Dorothy Bishop<\/h4>\r\nDorothy Bishop is a psychologist who holds a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford, where she heads an ERC-funded programme of research into cerebral lateralisation for language. \u00a0She is a supernumerary fellow of St John\u2019s College Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Her main research interests are in the nature and causes of developmental language difficulties, with a particular focus on psycholinguistics, neurobiology and genetics. Her book Uncommon Understanding won the British Psychological Society's annual award in 1999, and she has published widely on children's language disorders. In 2015 Dorothy chaired a symposium on Reproducibility in Biomedical Science organised by the Academy of Medical Sciences, Wellcome Trust, MRC, and BBSRC, and she is chairing the advisory board of the recently-formed UK Reproducibility Network.\u00a0 She has a popular blog, Bishopblog, which features posts on a wide range of topics, including those relevant to reproducibility.\u00a0 She is also on Twitter as @deevybee.","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9208","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9208"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10099,"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9208\/revisions\/10099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neurolang.org\/2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}