Recently in the headlines

• SD: Songbirds learn their songs during sleep
• BBC: Singing 'rewires' damaged brain
• SD: Growing brain is particularly flexible: how the brain changes during growth
• NS: The ups and downs of speech that we all understand
• SD: Brain stimulation technique boosts language ability in Alzheimer's patients
• Rationally Speaking podcast: When smart people endorse pseudoscience (discussion of Fodor & Piatelli-Palmarini)

Conference: Graduate Workshop on Biolinguistics

Conference: Graduate Workshop on Biolinguistics at ConSOLE XIX

University of Groningen

January 5, 2011

Associated with ConSOLE XIX, a workshop on biolinguistics will be held at the University of Groningen on January 5th, 2011. The biolinguistics research area focuses on the biology and evolution of language and aims to understand the unique ability and origin of human language.

Call For Papers (due September 13) here.
Graduate students not having defended a Ph.D. in Linguistics by September 13th are invited to submit abstracts relating to the topic of biolinguistics. The call is open to any subfield relevant to this matter, from theoretical linguistics to more applied research areas such as language acquisition and neurolinguistics.

Conference: Donostia Workshop on Neurobilingualism

Conference: Donostia Workshop on Neurobilingualism

Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, & Language - San Sebastián

September 30 - October 2, 2010

Invited Speakers
* Laura-Ann Petitto. University of Toronto, Canada
* Agnes Kovacs. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary.
* Michael Dorman. Arizona State University, USA.
* Jonathan Grainger. CNRS and University of Provence, France.
* Douglas Davidson. BCBL, Spain.
* Nuria Sebastian. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain.

Discussants
* Guillaume Thierry. Bangor University. UK.
* Nuria Sebastian. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Call for papers (due June 15) here.

Recently in the headlines

• NYT: Exploring music's hold on the mind - a conversation with Aniruddh Patel
• SD: Differences in language circuits in the brain linked to dyslexia
• NY Review of Books: Not so natural selection (Lewontin review of Piattelli-Palmarini & Fodor)
• BBC: Bonobos shake heads to say 'no'
• Physorg: New analysis reveals clearer picture of brain's language areas

The Language Design

Hi from Montréal, reporting to you (almost-)live from the Language Design conference. The Biolinguistics team was well-represented at this exciting event, with both editors, three advisory board members, and about a half dozen editorial board members in attendance. Thank you to the organizers at UQAM, especially fearless leader Anna Maria Di Sciullo, for bringing together a very interesting group of linguists, biologists, and others to address a wide variety of topics. For me personally, notable highlights included Richard Palmer's talk on morphological asymmetries in animals & plants as well as Partha Mitra's on zebra finch song.

It looks like next year's Biolinguistics Network conference will be in Milan, with the theme of "language and the brain." Start thinking of abstracts now; you won't want to miss this one!

Seyfarth videos

Here are a couple of videos of Robert Seyfarth talking about vervet monkey calls and theory of mind:

Chomsky in Stuttgart

A video of Noam Chomsky's lecture "Restricting stipulations: consequences and challenges" at Universität Stuttgart on March 24 is now available online. (The website is in German; a direct link to download the video is here.)