Dr Vitoria Piai Seminar
Topic: Language and speech functioning through an electrophysiological lens
Date: Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 11am - 12noon
Venue: The Australian Hearing Hub, Level 3, Room 3.610, Macquarie University
Speaker: Dr Vitória Piai, Radboud University
Host: Carmen Kung
Brain activity can be measured directly using electrophysiology. I will present two lines of research focusing on language and speech functioning using this technique. Firstly, I will present a number of studies examining context-driven word production. When speaking, the conceptual content of the message to be expressed (i.e., the semantic context) constrains possible word candidates, thereby modulating the ease of lexical retrieval. In particular, I will discuss alpha-beta oscillations in relation to memory retrieval and word production and what this neuronal signature can reveal about neuroplasticity following left-hemisphere stroke. Secondly, I will present an event-related potential study examining auditory discrimination in a unique sample of prelingually deaf, cochlear-implant young adults, who were implanted before 6 years of age and have been using their CIs for at least one decade.
Bio
Vitória Piai is an Associate Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour of Radboud University and Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on language function in healthy populations as well as in populations with speech or language impairment. She works with a range of behavioural and neuroimaging methods, and in particular electrophysiology, and pays special attention to the intersection between language and other functions, such as executive control, (semantic) memory, and motor control in the case of speaking.