When? Friday, April 17, 2026, 11:30 AM (CET)
Where? Kolingasse 14-16, 1090 Vienna, PC Room 3 (if you want to take part on site, please register here: https://www.termino.gv.at/meet/b/c8f4d9bcea88e79d3715c73f96c7c964-570851
Participation via Zoom (https://univienna.zoom.us/j/69191106976?pwd=MPozjrwQNoqKslz7J5cfpz67yiAM1Z.1) is possible.

Topic: "Computational insights into the brain and language"

Abstract
This talk explores how computational modeling and machine learning can help us understand speech and language processing in the brain. I will introduce the basic architecture of brain-language systems and show how different kinds of models can be used to relate neural activity to multiple levels of linguistic structure, from acoustics to prosody, syntax, and meaning. Drawing on recent examples, I will discuss how brain signals can be used to decode speech features, reveal interactions between prosody and syntax in naturalistic speech, and recover semantic information. I will conclude with a brief look at decoding of eye movements and of imagined speech, within the broader potential of computational approaches for linking neuroscience, language, and AI for clinical or comparative (i.e. cross-species) applications and research.

Speaker
Narly Golestani heads the Brain and Language Lab at the Cognitive Science Hub of the University of Vienna, Austria, and at the Department of Psychology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She obtained her PhD in Clinical Psychology from McGill University (Montreal, Canada), and then did post-docs at INSERM (Orsay, France), and at the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL (London, UK). Her research makes use of a wide range of methods, including functional and structural imaging, computational modelling of brain function, computational morphometry, machine learning, advanced statistical procedures and neuropsychology, along with more conventional experimental psycholinguistics and psychophysics approaches. These approaches are used to advance our understanding of the brain and language processing at low (i.e. auditory, phonetic) to high (e.g. multilingualism, language control) levels of processing, in the context of healthy individual differences, language and auditory expertise, and language disorder.

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