Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics Lab
The Laboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEPLab), founded in March 2023, addresses the study of human language and its neurocognitive correlates, with a special focus on pragmatic processes. We investigate the brain signatures of language, as well as its development in children and decay in the lifespan and clinical groups, mainly combining neurolinguistics and experimental pragmatics methods.
Metaphor is the queen of the Lab: we see metaphor as the pinnacle of human interpretative capacity, and we are strongly committed to investigating how it is learned, how it is lost, and how the brain derives its meaning. We also look at metaphors in the world, for instance how they can be used to communicate climate change or to describe the most personal nuances of human experiences. We are devoting great attention to language impairment, assessing pragmatic profiles across a range of conditions, from schizophrenia to neurological diseases. In addition to developing novel assessment tools (APACS is the main one), we have also designed tools to improve pragmatic skills, to encourage the clinical translation of our findings.
The NEPLab crew is also interested in other phenomena, such as humor and the interface between language and syntax, and how to incorporate computational tools into clinical and neurophysiological investigations. Theoretically, we are (post)Gricean and Chomskyan at the same time, and we strive to advance theoretical accounts with experimental findings.
Social #NEPLab
Thanks @hamadtwitr for hosting me at @LawrenceTechU and for the great opportunity to present my work on #metaphors and #GPT models#NepLab @IussPavia https://t.co/1piTqzX7xR
— Veronica Mangiaterra (@V_Mangiaterra) November 15, 2024
Looking forward to meeting great minds in Aarhus next week! I will talk about recent findings from the #PROMENADE ERCCog grant on metaphor processing (below old picture but same energy🙂) #NEPLab https://t.co/orxJuKawJq
— Valentina Bambini (@VBambini) November 8, 2024
New MEG study led by @giorgioarcara https://t.co/J2gPLrsnn5 In a (literal & metaphorical) sentence comprehension task, we found that prestimulus alpha in TPJ modulates poststimulus activations in core linguistic areas. Key finding for predictive processing in language! #NEPLab pic.twitter.com/ZAraBwzhWs
— Valentina Bambini (@VBambini) October 11, 2024
I'm so happy to share our new paper published on #JML, which is the product of an amazing collaboration with @PennyPexman and @ejmuraki (with @VBambini and @lucabischetti #NEPLab) 🎊🎉
— Federico Frau (@federico_frau) October 10, 2024
Here is the link to read the full paper: https://t.co/h7TwvJvjnE
1/3 pic.twitter.com/vWjzXCMsfa