Advances in Neurolinguistic Research and Methods

对人类句子处理的研究旨在了解使一种语言的有能力的说话者能够理解和制造句子的即时计算。这一领域的进展需要一种跨学科的方法，一种利用在几个领域开发的专门知识和工具的方法。这些工具包括心理学和神经科学开发的实验和观察方法；在理论语言学和哲学中发展起来的描述、比较和演绎技巧；以及创建和分析语言语料库以获取语言使用信息的计算技术。本建议着重于语言理解过程中大脑活动追踪技术的最新进展。这些资金支持了一个关于句子处理的认知神经科学的特别会议，该会议将与2010年CUNY人类句子处理会议（2010年3月18-20日）一起举行，以及为期两天的会前辅导研讨会（2010年3月16-17日）。特别会议旨在展示使用不同技术的前沿神经语言学研究。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）。特别会议和研讨会将帮助新的和成熟的研究人员应对研究语言理解等复杂系统的主要挑战之一。毫无疑问，当使用各种实验技术来研究理解系统的不同方面时，进步是最好的。在最好的情况下，拓展研究人员的技能是一项挑战，尤其是涉及到认知神经科学技术时，这一技术正以极快的速度发展。特别会议和辅导研讨会将为语言研究人员创造重要和独特的机会，与使用神经方法解决句子处理核心问题的非常成功的科学家进行互动。至少，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”。对于这些方法可以有效地应用于研究人员专业领域的核心问题的情况，这种接触可能会促使研究人员寻求进一步的培训或合作，以利用将这些方法中的一种与当前使用的方法相结合的优势。虽然对所有与会者都很有价值，但特别会议将为研究生和博士后学生提供一个独特的机会，让他们使用未纳入培训制度的方法学习前沿研究，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.