Beatty Memorial Lecture by Dr. Manuel Carreiras

A prestigious talk open to the general public on October 24th

The School of Communication Sciences and Disorders is very pleased to announce an exciting public presentation focusing on two themes that have high priority in our research agenda, namely bilingualism and the cognitive neuroscience of language.  This lecture will be given by Dr. Manuel Carreiras, the founding director of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, and one of the most accomplished researchers in these fields.  His presentation will be open to McGill's community as well as the general public and has been approved by the Beatty Memorial Lectures Committee as one of the prestigious Beatty Memorial Lecture in 2013.  It has been scheduled for 6:30 pm in Room 151 at the Bronfman Building.

Dr. Manuel Carreiras

(Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian, Spain)

"How to handle two languages in one brain: some mysteries about bilingualism"

Most people, including some scientists, believe that our human brains developed to acquire and use one language. However, more than half of the human population nowadays either learn more than one language from birth or invest quite a lot of time and effort learning a second language. Bilingualism is a growing phenomenon in the world as well as an interesting case for investigating cognitive and brain plasticity. How do babies born in multilingual environments manage to acquire more than one language? What are the cognitive and neuronal implications of learning more than one language? How does the brain negotiate between two languages? In this talk I will discuss the consequences of early bilingualism and second language learning on linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive processes, on brain activation, and on brain connectivity from birth to adulthood.

Biography/Research: Manuel Carreiras is the scientific director of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language and IKERBASQUE research professor. He is the editor in chief of Frontiers in Language Sciences, and associated editor of Language and Cognitive Processes. He has published more than 100 papers in high impact journals in the field. His research has been funded by different research agencies. He is the coordinator of the consolider-ingenio2010 grant entitled COEDUCA and recipient of the ERC advanced grant Bi-Literacy among others.

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