Semantic and Contextual Composition: Processing and Neurological Underpinnings

通过一系列的心理学和神经影像学研究，Pinango将研究大脑如何以及在哪里实时解码句子的信息，也就是说，随着句子的展开。将进行两条实验线：心理线和神经影像线。通过心理线，她将确定理解系统如何揭示句子中包含的不同类型的信息的处理：句法，语义和概念。Pinango的研究模型预测，关于句子结构（句法）的信息是立即完成的，没有成本，而关于意义信息（语义）的信息需要时间来开发，需要更多的计算。最后，Pinango的模型预测，将句子的内容（概念信息）放入说话者对世界的了解的更大背景中的过程是一个代价更高的过程，因为它需要理解系统离开语言系统，并将句子的含义放入更大和更丰富的概念系统中。通过神经成像（功能性磁共振成像）线，将确定在大脑中如何以及在何处进行句法，语义和概念信息的并行解码。 这项研究与语言学、人工智能、认知神经学和神经科学中的重要问题有关。在医学方面，这项研究对大脑病理学的研究有影响，因为它试图回答这样一个问题：为什么一方面，特殊人群，如阿尔茨海默氏症患者，精神分裂症患者似乎有完整的语言能力，但却不能完全理解句子，为什么另一方面，脑血管病患者，如布罗卡失语症患者，有真正的语言障碍，但能够表现出正常的句子理解。该项目为本科生提供了一个独特的机会，从大脑组织的角度研究语言组织模型的高要求任务接受强化培训。在这样做的过程中，它支持耶鲁大学语言学和神经科学研究人员之间的重要合作。

Through a series of psychological and neuroimaging studies Dr. Maria M. Pinango will investigate how and where the brain decodes the information of a sentence in real-time, that is, as the sentence unfolds. Two experimental lines will be carried out: a psychological line and a neuroimaging line. Through the psychological line she will determine how the comprehension system reveals the processing of the different kinds of information contained in a sentence: syntactic, semantic and conceptual. Pinango's research model predicts that information about sentence structure (syntactic) is done immediately and with no cost, whereas information about the meaning information (semantic) takes time to develop and demands more computation. Finally, Pinango's model predicts that the process of placing the content of a sentence (conceptual information) into the larger context of what speakers know about the world is yet a costlier process as it requires the comprehension system to leave the language system and place the meaning of the sentence into the larger and richer conceptual system. Through the neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) line it will be determined how and where in the brain this parallel decoding of syntactic, semantic and conceptual information takes place. This research connects to important questions in linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive neurology and neuroscience. On the medical side, the research has implications for the study of brain pathologies as it seeks to answer the question of why on the one hand, special populations such as Alzheimer's patients, Schizophrenia patients have what appear to be intact linguistic ability yet are unable to fully comprehend sentences and, why on the other, cerebro-vascular patients such as Broca's aphasic patients have true linguistic impairments yet are able to show normal-like sentence comprehension. The project provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to receive intensive training in the demanding task of investigating a model of linguistic organization from the perspective of brain organization. In doing so it supports the crucial collaboration between researchers in linguistics and neuroscience at Yale University.