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Max Planck Institute
About MPI

 

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is an institute of the German Max Planck Society. Our mission is to undertake basic research into the psychological,social and biological foundations of language. The goal is to understand how our minds and brains process language, how language interacts with other aspects of mind, and how we can learn languages of quite different types.

The institute is situated on the campus of the Radboud University. We participate in the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, and have particularly close ties to that institute's Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging. We also participate in the Centre for Language Studies. A joint graduate school, the IMPRS in Language Sciences, links the Donders Institute, the CLS and the MPI.

 

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PhD Defence Laura Menenti on July 2

Laura Menenti, PhD student at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour and the MPI for Psycholinguistics, studied the role that regions in the right hemisphere play in language processing. She explored reading, listening, and speaking, using functional MRI to measure brain responses. On July 2, 2010, she will defend her thesis, called 'The Right Language', in the Aula of the Radboud University Nijmegen.

PhD Defence Laura Menenti on July 2

June 30, 2010

Language is processed in the brain’s left hemisphere, according to many language researchers. But how about the right hemisphere and its role in language processing? During her doctoral research, PhD Laura Menenti studied the role that regions in the right hemisphere play in language processing. She studied reading, listening, and speaking, using functional MRI to measure brain responses. In the process, she pioneered the study of the speaking brain, which had so far rarely been undertaken.

Context is crucial

In her dissertation, Menenti showed that converting the message a speaker wants to convey to a language involves both left- and right-hemispheric regions. She also showed that right-hemispheric regions play a role in relating new incoming information to its context. In experimental research, language has so far been investigated in as much isolation as possible. In our everyday lives, however, context plays a crucial role in language use. The contribution of right-hemispheric regions to language, then, isn’t some exotic extra: it is relevant whenever we actually speak about something.

Last checked 2010-09-08 by Myrna Tinbergen

Max Planck Institute
for Psycholinguistics


Street address
Wundtlaan 1
6525 XD Nijmegen
The Netherlands


Mailing address
P.O. Box 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
The Netherlands

Phone:   +31-24-3521911
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