ILABS Brain Seminar
October 29 - Jason Yeatman Hierarchical coding of letter strings in the ventral stream: dissecting the inner organization of the visual word-form system. Vinckier F1, Dehaene S, Jobert A, Dubus JP, Sigman M, Cohen L. Neuron. 2007 Jul 5;55(1):143-56.
Abstract Visual word recognition has been proposed to rely on a hierarchy of increasingly complex neuronal detectors, from individual letters to bigrams and morphemes. We used fMRI to test whether such a hierarchy is present in the left occipitotemporal cortex, at the site of the visual word-form area, and with an anterior-to-posterior progression. We exposed adult readers to (1) false-font strings; (2) strings of infrequent letters; (3) strings of frequent letters but rare bigrams; (4) strings with frequent bigrams but rare quadrigrams; (5) strings with frequent quadrigrams; (6) real words. A gradient of selectivity was observed through the entire span of the occipitotemporal cortex, with activation becoming more selective for higher-level stimuli toward the anterior fusiform region. A similar gradient was also seen in left inferior frontoinsular cortex. Those gradients were asymmetrical in favor of the left hemisphere. We conclude that the left occipitotemporal visual word-form area, far from being a homogeneous structure, presents a high degree of functional and spatial hierarchical organization which must result from a tuning process during reading acquisition.
A good related paper for background: Binder, Jeffrey R., et al. "Tuning of the human left fusiform gyrus to sublexical orthographic structure." Neuroimage 33.2 (2006): 739-748.
November 5 - No Brain Seminar
November 12 - Ross Maddox Tanner, Darren, Kara Morgan‐Short, and Steven J. Luck. "How inappropriate high‐pass filters can produce artifactual effects and incorrect conclusions in ERP studies of language and cognition." Psychophysiology (2015). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25903295 This will be an informal discussion of these issues so please read the paper and plan to participate
November 19 - Ariel Rokem & Jason Yeatman Data sharing. Scientific transparency and reproducibility has become a major worry among scientists across disciplines and has also seen a lot of recent media attention. In response to these concerns, funding agencies and journals have been revising their policies on making published data openly available. We will lead a discussion on (1) best practices in data sharing, (2) resources that support and facilitate data sharing, (3) what data sharing means for the careers of young scientists.
November 26 - Thanksgiving
December 3 - Mark Wronkiewicz Brain computer interface and single trial MEG analysis
December 10 - Alex White Divided attention and reading.
December 17 - Patrick Donnelly Dyslexia interventions targeting multiple components of reading. Annu Rev Psychol. 2012;63:427-52. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100431. Epub 2011 Aug 11.Paperpile Rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading fluency: implications for understandingand treatment of reading disabilities. Norton ES1, Wolf M. J Learn Disabil. 2012 Mar-Apr;45(2):99-127. doi: 10.1177/0022219409355472. Epub 2010 May 5.Paperpile Multiple-component remediation for developmental reading disabilities: IQ,socioeconomic status, and race as factors in remedial outcome. Morris RD1, Lovett MW2, Wolf M3, Sevcik RA1, Steinbach KA4, Frijters JC5, Shapiro MB1.
December 24 - No Brain Seminar
December 31 - No Brain Seminar
January 7 - No Brain Seminar
January 14 - No Brain Seminar
January 21 - Samu Taulu New MEG developments
