People

Lab Director

Jonathan Brennan

Associate Professor of Linguistics and Psychology

Website

jobrenn@umich.edu

Post-doctoral Fellows

David Abugaber

website

My project with the CNL involves recording EEGs from both interlocutors in a naturalistic  conversation and comparing the observed brain activity against predictions from different models of grammar, with an emphasis on collecting neurolinguistic data that is as ecologically valid as possible (see NSF award #220372) . Before coming to Michigan I completed my PhD in Dr. Kara Morgan-Short's lab at the University of Illinois - Chicago, where my dissertation used decoding methods to pull apart neural indices of implicit vs. explicit grammar processing in the context of an artificial language experiment

Graduate Students

Tzu-Yun Tung

website

Justin Craft

Website

I research phonology, speech perception, and their neurological correlates. Particularly, I am interested in the extent to which phonological knowledge interacts with or is influenced by social cognition, general audition, or visual processing during the perception of phonetic and phonological variation and how these interactive processes affect phonological learning, production and sound change.

Jeonghwa Cho

website

Lauretta Cheng

website

Csilla Tatar

website

I’m interested in pragmatic and prosodic information processing in neurodiverse populations; more specifically, my current research examines the contribution of prosody to making the pragmatic inference from ‘literal meaning’ to ‘ironic meaning’ during sarcasm perception.

Junyuan Zhao

My research centers around language representation and language comprehension in neural systems (human brain and artificial neural networks). Specifically, I investigate the computations and principles that underlie our ability of combining simplex concepts (as syntactic units) in a symbolic, hierarchical, and infinite manner into complex utterances (or, if this is actually real in the first place). I am also interested in how this fascinating mental capacity relates to other domains of cognition. To approach these questions, I use M/EEG, behavioral experiments and/or computational modelling.

Honors Students

Haoyu Du

Website

Shuchen Wen

Jacky He

Undergraduate Researchers

Anna Machak

Navya Gullapuram

Sohum Pavaskar

Chinmay Savanur

Maria Figueiredo

Kennedy Lloyd

Andrew Hayes

Graduate Alums

• Tamarae Hildebrandt (PhD 2023)
• Emily Sabo (PhD 2021) – Research Scientist, Mango Languages
• Chia-wen Lo (PhD 2021) – Post-doctoral researcher, Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences
• Rachel Weissler (PhD 2021) – Post-doctoral researcher, University of Oregon Department of Linguistics

Undergraduate Lab Alums

• Areti Majumdar (2022)
• Jalen Green (2022)
• Matthew Button (2021)
• Reegan Katzenberger (2021)
• Ibrahim Lubis (2021)
• Meredith Belloni (Lab Manager, 2020)
• Salim Huerta (2020)
• Mara Roberts (2020)
• David Kamper (Honors Thesis, 2020)
• Samia Elahi (Lab Manager, 2019)
• Rachael Eby (2017)
• Tyree Cowell (Honors Thesis, 2017)
• Claudia Kassouf (2016)
• Max Cantor (Lab Manager, 2015)
• Emma Saraff (Honors Thesis, 2015)
• Kyle Montgomery (2015)
• Jake Freund (2014)
• Stefanie Younce (2014)
• Maggie Ugolini (2014)
• Maryam Seifeldin (Honors Thesis, 2014)
• Sara Swierczynski (2013)
• Patrick Kelley (Honors Thesis, 2013)

• 
  Paper: Neural decoding + Transformer + minimal pairs = new syntactic probing approach for LLMsMarch 31, 2024
  MA student Linyang He leads a team that advances probing methods for large language models by combining a linear decoder with the BLiMP large-scale benchmark of linguistic minimal pairs. The result… Continue reading Paper: Neural decoding + Transformer + minimal pairs = new syntactic probing approach for LLMs
• 
  Dr. Tzu-yun Tung defends dissertation, on to Chicago!December 13, 2023
  Many congratulations to Tzu-yun who has successfully defended her dissertation Prediction and Memory Retrieval during Dependency Resolution. The work combines electroencephalography, syntax, cognitive psychology and computational modeling to characterize how predictive… Continue reading Dr. Tzu-yun Tung defends dissertation, on to Chicago!
• Reproducing the Alice analysesNovember 19, 2023
  One of our projects last summer was to go back into the archives and dig out the code used for data analyses in all our papers published that use the Alice… Continue reading Reproducing the Alice analyses
• 
  Paper: Tung on prediction and memory retrievalSeptember 24, 2023
  Tzu-Yun Tung publishes the first paper from her dissertation! Combining ERPs with an experimental design using NP-ellipsis in Mandarin, this work tests how interference effects in memory retrieval can be ameliorated… Continue reading Paper: Tung on prediction and memory retrieval
• Lab presentations at SNL2023: See you in MarseilleSeptember 24, 2023
  Lab members will be presenting on decoding verb phrase construction, memory retreival during naturalistic comprehension, and morphological decomposition. We hope to see you there! Tung, Tzu-Yun Modeling memory retrieval during naturalistic… Continue reading Lab presentations at SNL2023: See you in Marseille