YNiC seminar 20th May

Dear Users This week Gina Humphries will give a project proposal talk at 4 pm in YNiC open plan on "Semantic indeterminacy in the brain: linking production and comprehension processes". Abstract: "This study aims to examine which regions of the brain are recruited during sentence comprehension and sentence production. Gennari and MacDonald (2008, 2009) have recently argued that semantic ambiguity as to who-is-doing-what-to-whom in phrases is an important source of reading difficulty. For example, in reading “the movie that the director…,” a similar interpretation is entertained 90% of the time (that the director wrote the movie), whereas in reading “the director that the movie….,” many interpretations are possible. The authors showed that the proportion of alternative relationships entertained between the nouns, as indexed by a sentence completion study, predicts reading difficulty. Here, we aim to investigate the brain mechanisms underlying the comprehension and production of these structures. Specifically, we ask whether left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and other regions of the language processing network such as posterior middle temporal gyrus (PMTG) are sensitive to the degree of who-is-doing-what-to-whom ambiguity in comprehension and production." Everyone is welcome to attend. Best wishes Rebecca -- ************************************************************************ Dr. Rebecca E. Millman Science Liaison Officer York Neuroimaging Centre The Biocentre York Science Park Heslington YO10 5DG Tel: +44 (0) 1904 567614 Fax: +44 (0) 1904 435356