Advances in Neurolinguistic Research and Methods

对人类句子处理的研究旨在了解使语言的合格使用者能够理解和产生句子的即时计算。 在这一领域取得进展需要采取跨学科的办法，利用在若干领域发展的专门知识和工具。 这些工具包括心理学和神经科学中发展起来的实验和观察方法;理论语言学和哲学中发展起来的描述、比较和演绎技术;以及用于创建和分析语言语料库以获取语言使用信息的计算技术。该提案的重点是在语言理解过程中跟踪大脑活动的技术的最新进展。这些资金将支持在2010年纽约市立大学人类句子处理会议（2010年3月18日至20日）期间举行的关于句子处理的认知神经科学的特别会议，以及为期两天的会前辅导研讨会（2010年3月16日至17日）。特别会议旨在展示使用不同技术的尖端神经语言学研究。该研讨会旨在提供标准和新兴的神经成像和大脑监测技术的详细介绍，如脑电图（EEG），功能磁共振成像（fMRI），脑磁图（MEG），经颅磁刺激（TMS）和近红外光谱（NIRS）。特别会议和讲习班将帮助新老研究人员应对调查语言理解等复杂系统的主要挑战之一。 毫无疑问，当各种各样的实验技术被用来研究理解系统的不同方面时，进展是最好的。在最好的情况下，扩展研究人员的技能组合是具有挑战性的，但当涉及到认知神经科学技术时尤其如此，这些技术正在以极快的速度发展。特别会议和辅导研讨会将为语言研究人员创造重要而独特的机会，与使用神经方法解决句子处理核心问题的高度成功的科学家进行互动。最低限度，这种接触应该使研究人员成为使用这些新方法的相关研究的“知情消费者”。对于这些方法可以卓有成效地应用于研究人员的专业领域的核心问题的情况下，这种曝光可能会促使研究人员寻求进一步的培训或合作，利用这些方法之一与目前使用的方法相结合的优势。尽管特别会议对所有与会者都很有价值，但它将为研究生和博士后学生提供一个独特的机会，让他们了解使用不属于其培训制度一部分的方法进行的尖端研究，并与使用这些方法的顶尖科学家进行互动。

Research on human sentence processing seeks to understand the moment-to-moment computations that enable competent speakers of a language to understand and produce sentences. Progress in this domain requires an interdisciplinary approach, one that draws upon the expertise and tools developed in several fields. Those tools include experimental and observational methods developed in psychology and neuroscience; descriptive, comparative and deductive techniques developed in theoretical linguistics and philosophy; and computational techniques for creating and analyzing language corpora to acquire information about language use. This proposal focuses on recent advancements in technologies for tracking brain activity during language comprehension. The funds support a special session on the cognitive neuroscience of sentence processing to be held in conjunction with the 2010 meeting of the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (March 18-20, 2010), as well as a 2-day pre-conference tutorial workshop (March 16-17, 2010). The special session is designed to showcase cutting edge neurolinguistic research using different technologies. The workshop is designed to provide a detailed presentation of standard and emerging neuroimaging and brain monitoring technologies, such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The special session and the workshop will help both new and established researchers meet one of the major challenges to investigating a complex system such as language comprehension. Unquestionably, progress is best made when a variety of experimental techniques are used to investigate different aspects of the comprehension system. Expanding a researcher's skill set is challenging in the best of circumstances, but particularly so when it involves cognitive neuroscience techniques, which are developing at an extremely rapid rate. The special session and the tutorial workshop will create important and unique opportunities for language researchers to interact with highly successful scientists who use neural methods to address core questions in sentence processing. Minimally, this exposure should enable a researcher to become an "informed consumer" of relevant research using these new methodologies. For cases where these approaches could be fruitfully applied to core questions in a researcher's area of expertise, this exposure may induce the researcher to seek out further training or collaborations to capitalize on the advantages of combining one of these approaches with those currently used. Although valuable to all in attendance, the special session will provide a unique opportunity for graduate and postdoctoral students to learn about cutting-edge research using methods that were not part of their training regime, as well as to interact with leading scientists using those methods.