PSY 530 - Neural Basis of Language

This graduate seminar provides an in-depth exploration of research on brain and language. In the first half of the semester, students will survey foundational and contemporary debates on how the mind and brain support the perception and production of written (reading) and spoken (speech) language, lexical and sentence-level meaning, morphological and syntactic structure, discourse and conversation, and multilingualism. The second half of the course focuses on how language interacts with other cognitive and affective systems, such as memory, emotion, executive control, learning and education, and aging. Implications from recent developments in large-scale language models will be discussed. Students are expected to complete weekly readings - consisting of book chapters and/or journal articles - and actively engage in class discussions. Assignments are designed to develop key research skills, including identifying relevant literature, critically evaluating existing findings, and designing original experiments aligned with course themes and individual interests. The final project may be empirical or theoretical, co-determined by each student and the course instructor.