Semantic cognition: behavioural, computational, and EEG/ERP based analyses of semantic content, structure, and processing

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The broad aim of this research program is to advance our fundamental understanding of how knowledge is stored and used in the brain. The research is designed to answer three questions that are central to this area: (1) What knowledge is represented in the mind/brain?; (2) How is that knowledge stored and organized?; and (3) How is that knowledge accessed and used when needed? My research combines a number of techniques in addressing these questions, including experiments conducted with human participants, the development of computer simulations of how the mind/brain stores and processes knowledge, and the use of electroencephalography (EEG) to measure electrical potentials at the scalp, which allow us to draw inferences about the time course of brain regions involved in processing knowledge. The research is designed to take place as three interrelated projects. First, I will be studying the content of people's conceptual representations by asking a very large number of participants to describe the information they think is important in representations of concepts. This information will be used to design stimuli for behavioral experiments that are designed to test among contemporary theories of semantic memory organization and processing, and for designing computer simulations intended to help us understand the behavioral patterns we observe in the human data. Finally, EEG will be used to help us understand the time course over which different types of semantic and word-based variables become active in the processing of words for meaning. This research extends what we already know in important ways: it will provide a deep understanding of how abstract knowledge is represented, it will provide a computer model of semantic cognition that can be used to derive predictions for future experiments and to understand patient behaviour, and it will significantly extend our understanding of when different aspects of semantic knowledge are computed, building on the rich knowledge fMRI has provided about where semantic knowledge is stored in the brain.