Understanding language appears effortless, but this remarkable ability owes to the finely tuned interactions between a range of complex cognitive systems. The mind rapidly identifies what words are being said and the concepts those words refer to, fits those words together into a grammatical sentence, and computes the complex meanings and implications expressed by that sentence.
We try to understand these mental systems and their interaction by combining computationally explicit models of each cognitive operation with data drawn from a wide range of neuroscience tools, including electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
We are part of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA.
