The dynamic interactive neurocognitive systems underpinning language and semantic cognition, and their disorders.

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Language is a fundamental ability that is core to almost every aspect of our personal, social and professional lives. Consequently, when language is compromised, people can have severe disabilities. Language impairments are common across multiple types of acute and chronic brain damage including stroke, multiple types and subtypes of dementia, acute neurological diseases, etc. The core goals of our long-term neuroscience research programme, therefore, are to (i) understand the processes, computations and brain mechanisms that support healthy language function; (ii) investigate the nature of language disorders across different types of brain disease; and (iii) explore how these process partially recovery after brain damage, why this recovery varies across people and the bases of language rehabilitation. Our research programme will use a variety of methods and techniques to explore function in healthy people and in patients. These methods include brain imaging, brain stimulation, computer based models and advanced mathematical analysis techniques. Our target in some of the new work is to understand how the mind can be flexible and efficient in normal operation, how it responds to brain damage and, in turn, how to maximise patients’ recovery.