Faculty member

Research Interests

The research-team focusses on language and plasticity of the corresponding neuronal network. There is a strong interest in aphasia including lesion based neurolinguistics research. Moreover intervention-studies are part of the scope, potentially as the basis to develop novel strategies for therapeutic strategies. The work in infants (using Near Infrared Spectroscopy and EEG) is continued largely in co-operations. One of the exceptional resources stems from direct access to patients who are treated at our Clinic for Cognitive Neurology closely affiliated to the MPI.

Available PhD projects

1. Phonology: We have done a number of studies investigating how phonotactic regularities shape language processing. Beyond data in infants and studies with different training scanarios we used a similar paradigm in patients to delineate areas relevant for the processing of the 'phonological grammar'. This will be extended to training studies in which we focus on production.
2. Semantics: We have started some studies on lexico-semantics. This work rests on a co-operation with the Group of Jörg Jescheniak at the University of Leipzig and Rasha Abdel-Rahman at the HU Berlin. More specifically we work on 'semantic interference' and its relevance for word retrieval in healthy participants but also people with aphasia.
3. Syntax: In close cooperation with the Department of Angela Friederici we investigate how syntactic processing is influenced by acquired focal brain lesion. Work in this field will profit from an established cooperation with the Neuropsychology department at MPI.
4. Other (extra)linguistic domains: we have looked into emotional prosody, gesture integration and some other aspects of communication devices which go beyond the 'classical' linguistic levels. Currently the interface between auditory perception and speech comprehension is a project together with Marc Schönwiesner at the University of Leipzig. The Clinic has a large data-bank of patients usually including differential neuropsychological data and a high resolution MRI.