Language, Music and Dementia (2023-2024)
The question of how language and music are represented in the human brain is one of the more challenging problems of contemporary cognitive neuroscience and neurolinguistics. This project brings together behavioral and neuroimaging research on language and music in both healthy subjects and patients with dementia.
Using data collection techniques from neuroimaging (fMRI, DTI, rsfMRI, EEG) to interviews, recordings and language proficiency testing, team members examined mono- and multilingualism; musicianship and creative expression; and the interactions between multilingualism and musicianship.
Additional avenues of discovery included a meta-analysis of music interventions for dementia patients, conducting narrative interviews with residents in post-acute long-term care and exploring the intersections between neuroscience, linguistics and machine-learning. The team is also developing a project on embodied cognition and resting-state functional-connectivity.
Timing
Summer 2023 – Spring 2024
Team Outputs
Imaging data elucidating how languages and musicianship are processed in the human brain
Behavioral data establishing relationship between extensive musical training and possible advantageous effects on dementia symptoms
Language, Music and Dementia (Interactive display presented at Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, April 17, 2024)
This Team in the News
Meet the Winners of the 2024 Bass Connections Student Research Awards
See related teams, Language, Music and Dementia (2024-2025) and Language, Music and Dementia (2022-2023).