Welcome!
Our group investigates how human brains produce and understand language. Although many animals communicate, sometimes in sophisticated ways, no other species uses the structured system of communication we call language. The main aim of our research is to investigate what has changed in human brains that that allow us to chat, read, gossip, and browse the web when our primate cousins cannot. To do this, we use a set of non-invasive tools to measure brain anatomy and function in healthy, normal volunteers and compare our results with those from animal studies. These tools include transcranial magentic stimulation (TMS), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography.
Joseph T. Devlin, PhD
News and Upcoming events
- Congratulations to Dr. Jane Warren, who is the newest Lecturer in UCL’s Language and Communication Department!
- Human Brain Mapping, Seattle Washington, 16-20 June
- Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, San Diego, USA, 6-8 November
- ‘Miming’ brain helps humans to learn how to speak, article and associated video in the Telegraph
The One Show, BBC One
Dr. Michael Mosley visits to talk about how neuroscientists began working out which brain regions contribute to different behaviours. We discuss P. Paul Broca’s seminal insights into localization and then demonstrate Broca’s area involvement in speech production with Michael using TMS to disrupt Joe’s speech.