In collaboration with Prof. Jonathan R. Brennan, we employed multivariate pattern analysis methods to study how the cognitive representation of grammatical categories evolved over time during compositional language processing. Specifically, we use a temporally resolved machine-learning classfier to probe if the brain assigns phrasal labels to a phrase. Preliminary results suggest increased activation of a grammatical head when a phrase is built, lending support for a compositional neural architecture of language involving hierarchical representation. [Poster]

In collaboration with Drs. Cas W. Coopmans and Andrea E. Martin, we used the frequency-domain representation of EEG recordings to show that both syntactic and structural regularities contributed to rhythmic brain activity during language comprehension. This study highlights the roles of cognitive representations at different levels and moreover, that higher-level representation (such as syntax) shapes how the brain utilizes low-level information (such as sequential regularity). [Poster]

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