Expecting the Unexpected: Novel, Paradoxical and Surprising Findings in Neurobiology of Language

Dear Colleagues,

Language is arguably the most important cognitive skill we possess as human beings. It makes us who we are, allows us to communicate with others, enables our thinking abilities, and, as such, provides a backbone for the entire human society, enabling its function at personal, cultural and economic levels. Any deficits affecting the language function, be that a brain damage or a developmental disorder, have tragic consequences for the affected individuals and are very costly for the society. Nevertheless, and despite its importance, language as a neurocognitive function remains very poorly understood. We have only just begun to uncover the brain bases of how we process speech sounds, words, their meaning, word order in sentences as well as larger linguistic contexts, how our brain goes about learning this skill and acquiring novel linguistic information, and what goes wrong in language deficits.

This Special Issue is dedicated to the dynamic functioning of neurolinguistic circuits in the brain. Our aim is to provide a cross-section of contemporary cutting-edge research in this multidisciplinary field, which combines behavioral research, neurobiological instrumentation and psychological and linguistic theory. We welcome neurobiological, neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies dedicated to language comprehension, production and learning, using different tools and approaches.

As language scientists, we know all too well how often in this particular area of research we encounter paradoxical results – for instance, those that contradict the initial hypotheses, those that either fail to find in the brain the phenomena predicted by linguistic accounts, or find neurophysiological differences where linguistic theories predict none. We particularly welcome such unexpected, paradoxical and surprising findings (including null results), in this special issue – as long as the methods used to obtain them are sound and rigorous.

We look forward to your submissions!

Prof. Dr. Yury Shtyrov
Guest Editor

Dr. Andreas Højlund
Dr. Olga Shcherbakova
Co-Guest Editors

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