People
Dr. Lars Meyer
Group Leader
I am a cognitive neuroscientist trained as a linguist at the universities of Hanover, DE, Groningen, NL, Joensuu, FI, and Potsdam DE. I am interested in the electrophysiology of language. Specifically, I investigate the role of periodic activity—so-called neural oscillations—in sentence comprehension. I employ neuroimaging (e.g., electro– and magnetoencephalography, functional and structural MRI) on a range of populations (e.g., developmental, healthy, aging, and clinical).
Sabrina Stehwien
Posdoctoral Researcher
I obtained my PhD (Dr. phil) in the area of speech processing and computational linguistics from the University of Stuttgart. I am interested in how the fields of applied language processing and neuroscience intersect and benefit each other. Within the Language Cycles project, I am working towards this interdisciplinary exchange in two different ways: First, by building a multilingual corpus of annotated text and synthesized speech to aid neurolinguistic research. Second, by using data-driven computational approaches to look for patterns that reflect neurophysiological processes in human language.
Yulia Lamekina
PhD Student
My educational background is in linguistics (Moscow State University, B.Sc) and cognitive neuroscience (National University HSE, M.Sc). My current research project is related to delta-oscillations and their possible role in chunking and syntactic analysis of a sentence. We investigate the possibility of neural entrainment to a particular frequency by utilising prosodic cues, which would further influence the comprehension of a syntactic ambiguity. My other research interests include lexical and semantic perception, language localisation and functioning in bilinguals, modelling the language function via computational neuroscience.
Katharina Menn
PhD Student
I am interested in first language acquisition. In my project, I investigate how the neural response to natural language develops as children gain knowledge about their native language. For this, I combine electrophysiological recordings with measures from computational linguistics.
Katie McCann
Student Assistant
I am a student at the University of Leipzig, currently enrolled in the program African studies. I acquired my bachelor’s degree in Linguistics at the University of Leipzig, focusing mainly on phonological and typological aspects of linguistic theory.
Lena Henke
Lab Manager
Before coming to Leipzig, I was trained in cognitive science and clinical linguistics and initially joined the Language Cycles team for my Master’s thesis. In my research, I investigate how low-frequent intrinsic activity of the brain temporally constraints perception and thereby influences language comprehension. Specifically, I am interested in the upper limit of this constraint taking into account inter- and intraindividual variability.