Brain and Language Lab
News
2024
April 2024
Michael Ullman gave a talk on "The neurocognition of developmental language disorder" (recording here) for the C-STAR lecture series.
Abstract: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder with adverse impacts that continue into adulthood. In this talk I will give an overview of the neurocognition of DLD, including a summary of the language and cognitive abilities that are generally impacted in the disorder, and findings from a recently published neuroanatomical meta-analysis of DLD. I will discuss explanatory accounts of DLD, with a focus on a neuroanatomical account—the Procedural circuit Deficit Hypothesis (PDH)—which posits that DLD can be largely explained by abnormalities of the basal ganglia. As we will see, converging language, cognitive, and neurobiological evidence lends support to this perspective, which appears to have greater explanatory power than linguistic, cognitive, or genetic accounts of DLD. I will discuss future directions, including both diagnostic and therapeutic implications. Finally, I will briefly discuss the PDH as a potential explanatory account for other neurodevelopmental disorders, some of which are often comorbid with DLD.
March 2024
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on a paper that was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The paper uses a new neuroanatomical meta-analytic technique to synthesize both the structural neuroanatomical and functional imaging literatures of DLD. The analyses reveal that only the basal ganglia, in particular the anterior neostriatum (anterior caudate nucleus and anterior putamen) show highly consistent structural abnormalities across studies (100% of participant groups in which this structure was examined, weighted by group sample sizes; 99.8% permutation-based likelihood this anomaly clustering was not due to chance). We hope that the findings may lead to improvements in the identification and remediation of children with DLD, and that revealing a clear anatomical basis for DLD helps increase awareness of the disorder.
Read the press release: Abnormal Brain Structure Identified in Children with Developmental Language Problems
Read about it in one of the 18 news stories published on the paper: Azo Network News, Biotechniques, EurekAlert!, European Medical Journal, Gigazine, Hans India, India New England News, List23, Medical Xpress, Mirage News, Neuroscience News, Oman News Agency, Science Daily, SciTechDaily, Social News XYZ, Study Finds, Times of Oman, Tribune India
Monica Bertagnolli, Director of the National Institutes of Health, tweeted about the study:
Read the article: Ullman, M.T., Clark, G.M., Pullman, M.Y., Lovelett, J.T., Pierpont, E.I., Jiang, X., & Turkeltaub, P.E. (2024, online). The neuroanatomy of developmental language disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Nature Human Behaviour. (Supplementary Information)
March 2024
Michael Ullman was interviewed by Serena Marshall, White House Correspondent for Scripps News, on the aging brain in relation to politicians and their ability to do their job.
2023
December 2023
Michael Ullman and João Veríssimo were interviewed by BBC Munda for an article on aging and cognition.
November 2023
Michael Ullman was interviewed about the impact of bilingualism on the brain.
October 2023
Hansy Jueyao Lin was awarded a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government Scholarship Fund – Reaching Out Award, for her visit to the Brain and Language Lab in 2023, where she worked with Jana Reifegerste and Michael Ullman.
May 2023
Sparsha Muralidhara, a master's student in the lab in the Integrative Neuroscience Program, won the prize for the best poster at the end-of-year poster presentation for the program. A huge congratulations to her, as well as to Jana Reifegerste, who co-mentored her with Michael Ullman (and in fact was her primary mentor!).
2022
August 2022
Michael Ullman was interviewed by Spurti Vemuri in the inaugural session of The Brainwaves Podcast.
July 2022
Michael Ullman was interviewed by the Washington Times on cognition in aging politicians.
May 2022
Mackenzie Brown, a master's student in the lab in the Integrative Neuroscience Program, won the prize for the best poster (along with two other students with the same score) at the end-of-year poster presentation for the program. A big big congratulations to her, as well as to Jana Reifegerste and Lauren Russell, who co-mentored her with Michael Ullman (and in fact were her primary mentors!).
April 2022
We gave a brief talk (see Powerpoint) summarizing our new paper Subcortical Cognition: The Fruit Below the Rind at the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco. The talk was delivered by Michael Ullman, as Karolina Janascek was unable to attend the conference. The talk is a useful summary and overview of the paper.
In brief, the talk and paper argue that subcortical contributions to cognition have been greatly under-estimated, especially for higher cognitive domains such as language, reading, music, and math. Indeed, substantial subcortical contributions to cognition are expected, for both anatomical and evolutionary reasons. We present a comprehensive review of subcortical cognition, which reveals that multiple subcortical structures throughout the brain, from the lower brainstem to the telencephalon, make substantial contributions to multiple lower and higher cognitive domains. We argue that overall, these contributions are both real and important. We then examine the nature of subcortical cognition, and propose a new theoretical framework to explain it: the many-to-many (or MaMa) dynamic model of (sub)cortical contributions to cognition (the talk presents some figures describing the model that may be useful, and are not found in the paper). Finally, we propose how new subcortical cognitive roles can be identified by leveraging anatomical and evolutionary principles, and we describe specific methods that can be used to reveal subcortical cognition. Altogether, the paper (and talk) aims to advance cognitive neuroscience by highlighting subcortical cognition and facilitating its future investigation.
2021
August 2021
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on a paper that was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The study found that certain aspects of attention and executive function actually improve during aging – in particular orienting and executive inhibitory abilities – even while others decline (alerting and working memory). The results came from a large sample of participants, and were highly robust. The study indicates that, despite the widely-held view that attention and executive function decline in aging, in fact some aspects actually improve.
Read the press release: Key Mental Abilities Can Actually Improve During Aging
Read about it in one of the 135 news stories published on the paper: NIH Research Matters, National Institute on Aging, Science Daily, Washington Times, Psychology Today, Medical Xpress, EurekAlert!, Neuroscience News, MedicineNet, U.S. News, Ladders, NewsBreak, HealthDay, Neurology Advisor, DoctorsLounge, Well+Good, Being Patient, StudyFinds, GMNewsHub, Earth.com, Florida News Times, Andy Hab at Medium.com, Science-things.com, NBC2 (Florida), HolaDoctor, Drugs.com (U.S., New Zealand), BioNews Central (Canada), The Times (UK), Evening Standard (UK), Medical News Today (UK), Yahoo! News (UK), GB News (UK), Daily Mail (UK), Daily Express (UK), Aol. (UK), Express & Star (UK), Shropshire Star (UK), Brinkwire (UK), The Courier (UK), Technology Networks (UK), The York Press (UK), Southern Daily Echo (UK), The Northern Echo (UK), This is Local London (UK), Bromsgrove Advertiser (UK), Bracknell News (UK), Braintree and Witham Times (UK), Kent Online (UK), Wandsworth Times (UK), News Medical (UK, Australia), News & Star (UK), Express (UK), Review: St Albans & Harpenden (UK), Review: St Albans & Harpenden (UK), Chard and Ilminster News (UK), The Argus (UK), St Helens Star (UK), Witney Gazette (UK), Wimbledon Guardian (UK), Northwich Guardian (UK), Dudley News (UK), Greenock Telegraph (UK), Leigh Journal (UK), Gazette & Herald (UK), Basildon, Canvey, Southend Echo (UK), Craven Herald & Pioneer (UK), Ledbury Reporter (UK), Ilkley Gazette (UK), London Evening Standard (UK), Western Telegraph (UK), South Wales Guardian (UK), Maldon Standard (UK), Stroud News & Journal (UK), Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald (UK), Wirral Globe (UK), Stourbridge News (UK), Clacton Gazette (UK), Dorset Echo (UK), Halstead Gazette (UK), The Evening Telegraph (UK), Warrington Guardian (UK), Belfast Telegraph (UK), Lancashire Telegraph (UK), Slough & South Bucks Observer (UK), Evening Express (UK), Surrey Comet (UK), Yeovil Express (UK), Richmond & Twickenham Times (UK), Chelmsford Weekly News (UK), Jersey Evening Post (Jersey), Guernsey Press (Guernsey), Medisite (France), Daily Geek Show (France), Fitbook (Germany), Saber Vivir (Spain), Independent.ie (Ireland), The Irish News (Ireland), Expresso (Portugal), Agência Lusa (Portugal), Público (Portugal), SIC Notícias (Portugal), Jornal de Notícias (Portugal), Observador (Newspaper, Portugal), Observador (Radio, Portugal), Rádio Renascença (Portugal), Notícias de Coimbra (Portugal), Jornal Médico (Portugal), newsfounded.com (Portugal), HEALTHNEWS (Portugal), ZAP.aeiou (Portugal), Revista Líder (Portugal), Record TV Europa (Portugal), TVI (Portugal), Diário de Notícias (Portugal), Diário de Saúde (Portugal), Sábado (Portugal), Canal Saúde Mais (Portugal), Notícias ao Minuto (Portugal), Sapo 24 (Portugal), Dinheiro Vivo (Portugal), Fatos Desconhecidos (Brazil), Artek (Brazil), Critical Care (Brazil), Gazeta.Ru (Russia), True Viral News (Russia), Popular Mechanics (Russia), Lenta.ru (Russia), 36Kr (China), Medindia (India), News Azi (India), Render Zac (Mexico), Science Alert (Australia), Pittwater Online News (Australia), MSN Lifestyle (A, New Zealand), MSN Lifestyle (B, New Zealand), MSN Lifestyle (C, New Zealand), Clarín (Argentina), Infobae (Argentina)
Altmetric: As of September 14, 2021 (about one month after online publication), this article is in the 99.8th percentile (ranked 571st) of the 262,253 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals and the 94.6th percentile (ranked 2nd) of the 37 articles of a similar age in Nature Human Behaviour. More broadly, as of this date the article is in the 99.9th percentile (ranked 14,649st) of all 18,976,159 tracked outputs, and the 96.2nd percentile (ranked 42nd) of all 1,112 outputs from Nature Human Behaviour. According to Altmetrics, by this date there have been (at least) 89 news stories from 85 outlets (may not match with the more comprehensive number above), 9 blog posts from 8 blogs, and 139 tweets from 129 users, with an upper bound of 2,841,804 followers. The 129 Twitter users were from 28 countries in six continents (Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Ireland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Poland, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, South Africa, India, China, Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji).
Read the article: Veríssimo, J., Verhaeghen, P., Goldman, N., Weinstein, M., & Ullman, M. T. (2022). Evidence that ageing yields improvements as well as declines across attention and executive functions. Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 97–110. (Supplementary Information).
May 2021
Alexa MacKinnon, a rising senior at Georgetown, was awarded a Davis Undergraduate Research Fellowship for the summer to work on our language and aging project funded by the National Science Foundation (see below for that grant).
Natalya Vladyko was awarded both a Fulbright Graduate Student Scholarship and an Edmund S. Muskie Internship. Under these she will also be working on our language and aging project this summer.
2020
December 2020
Michael Ullman was interviewed on the podcast Scientific Sense. The host, Gill Eapen, interviewed him on various topics related to learning and memory in the brain, language in the brain, developmental disorders, and aspects of computer science, including deep learning and its relation to human learning systems.
September 2020
We were awarded a grant from the Developmental Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation for the project “The nature and emergence of lexical difficulties in aging adults". This grant, with total costs of $500,000, funds a joint behavioral and brain imaging project that comprehensively examines word learning and processing declines throughout the adult lifespan, and tests a new explanatory account for these declines. This new hypothesis is called DAD: the Declarative Aging Hypothesis. According to DAD, lexical declines in aging are largely explained by concomitant declines of hippocampal-based declarative memory. The grant was jointly written by Michael Ullman (PI) and Jana Reifegerste (University of Potsdam and Georgetown University; co-investigator). The collaborators on the grant are Peter Turkeltaub (Georgetown; co-investigator), George Luta (Georgetown; statistician), Mick Rugg (University of Dallas; consultant), and David Balota (Washington University; consultant).
August 2020
The University of Reading in the United Kingdom distributed a press release on a paper that was published in the journal Brain Structure & Function. The paper investigated whether and how brain structures might differ between bilinguals and monolinguals over the course of childhood and adolescence. The study examined the developmental patterns of both grey and white matter brain structures in a cross-sectional study of a large sample (n = 711 for grey matter, n = 637 for white matter) of bilingual and monolingual participants, aged 3–21 years. As compared to monolinguals, bilinguals showed: (a) more grey matter (less developmental loss) starting during late childhood and adolescence, mainly in frontal and parietal regions (particularly in the inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis, superior frontal cortex, inferior and superior parietal cortex, and precuneus); and (b) higher white matter integrity (greater developmental increase) starting during mid-late adolescence, specifically in striatal–inferior frontal fibers. The data suggest that there may be a developmental basis to the well-documented structural differences in the brain between bilingual and monolingual adults.
Read the press release: Bilingual children may lose less brain matter as they grow up
Read about it in: Science Daily, Medicalxpress, Neuroscience News, NewsWise, Infowars, Technology Networks (UK), MedIndia (India), News Medical (Australia)
June 2020
Michael Ullman gave a talk on YouTube for a joint project organized by the Brazilian Linguistics Association together with the Permanent International Committee of Linguists, the Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina, the Sociedad Argentina de Estudios Lingüísticos, the Linguistic Society of America, and the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. The project is called Abralin ao Vivo – Abralin Live. It includes a range of speakers on language-related topics, including Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Bill Labov, Ray Jackendoff, Dan Everett, David Crystal, Shana Poplack, Barbara Partee, Martin Hilpert, Mark Liberman, John Esling, Bernard Comrie, Peter Hagoort, David Poeppel, Ev Federenko, Eve Clark, and others, including a number of Brazilian linguists. Enjoy, and feel free to pass on this information. Abralin is looking for a wide audience, and hopes this will increase cooperation between language-oriented researchers in different countries, including Brazil.
June 2020
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on a paper that was published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition. The study found that though aging leads to declines in declarative memory, these declines are countered by early-life education, especially in women. That is, the more years of education one receives during childhood or early adulthood, the better one's memory abilities are in old age. And this educational benefit is particularly striking for women. For example, the declarative memory abilities of an 80-year-old woman with a bachelor’s degree would be as good as those of a 60-year-old woman with a high school education. So, four extra years of education make up for the memory losses from 20 years of aging. The findings have broad research, educational, and clinical implications.
Read the press release: Early-life Education Improves Memory in Old Age — Especially for Women
Read about it in: Wall Street Journal (pdf of article), ScienceDaily, Science Magazine, Yahoo! News, The Science Times, PsychCentral, Science Codex, Neuroscience News Online, Ladders, Advisory Board, Mental Daily, Laboratory Equipment, Mindzilla, Parallel State, Medical Xpress, 15 Minute News, EurekAlert!, Targeted News Service, NewsGram, Cooking with Kathy Man, A Closer Look, Home Health Choices, Ground Rush Air Sports, The World News, WorldPRONews (Canada), News Medical (UK, Australia), AFP RELAXNEWS (UK), Traptown (UK), Cerveau & Psycho (France), MSN Actualité (France), LaDepeche (France), La Provence (France), Metro (France), News Medical (France), Citizen Side (France), Clinique Chirurgie Esthétique Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France), Heilpraxis (Germany), Gesichtspflege-Tuch (Germany), Medical Text Online (Germany), Pressetext (Austria), El Confidencial (Spain), CIENCIASMEDICASNEWS (Portugal), RTBF Tendance (Belgium), Outlook (India), Daiji World (India), Daily Hunt (India), India New England News (India), Yahoo! News (India),Tech Explorist (India), Daily World (India), Ani News (India), New York Indian (India), Newsroom Post (India), India4u (India), Times of India Online (India), NewsDog (India), Social News XYZ (India), IANS (India), Prokerala (India), Orissa Post (India), DNA India (India), Vishva Times (India), New Kerala (India), Press Bolt News (India), Sify (India), DTNext (India), AustinIndian (India), Punjab Tribune (India), Doordarshan (India), WebIndia123 (India), Kalinga TV (India), Devdiscourse (India), The Shillong Times (India), Trend In India (India), KentuckyIndian (India), Newsd (India), GOOGLE NEWZ LIVE (India), Hindustan Times (India), Window to News (India), Greater Kashmir (India), Development Channel (India, UK, Australia, Singapore), Yahoo! News (Singapore), Malay Mail (Malaysia), Free Malaysia Today News (Malaysia), Malaysia News (Malaysia), Head Topics (Malaysia), Bisnis (Indonesia), Tempo (Indonesia), Your Life Choices (Australia), Yahoo! News (Mexico), Pleni Lunia (Mexico), Duna Press (Brazil), Sound Health and Lasting Wealth (Nigeria), INQUIRER.net (Philippines), Iran Daily (Iran) . The research was also discussed on 41 radio stations (mainly affiliated with CBS), including in Boston, Massachusetts; Medford, Massachusetts; Raleigh, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Fargo, North Dakota; Los Angeles, California; Bellingham, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Southfield, Michigan; Wilmington, Delaware; Farmington, Connecticut; Chevy Chase, Maryland; Las Vegas, Nevada; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Milford, Delaware; and Dayton, Ohio.
April 2020
An article in Medical Xpress was published on our study that comprehensively examines the brain structures of bilinguals and monolinguals in a large sample (about 700 individuals) of children to young adults, aged 3 to 21. Analyses suggest that bilinguals show different developmental trajectories than monolinguals. In particular, as compared to monolinguals, bilinguals showed: a) more gray matter (less developmental loss) starting during late childhood and adolescence, mainly in frontal and parietal regions; and b) higher white matter integrity (greater developmental increase) starting during mid-late adolescence, specifically in striatal-inferior frontal fibers. The data suggest that there may be a developmental basis to the well-documented structural differences in the brain between bilingual and monolingual adults. The study is currently under review and is deposited in PsyArXiv.
Read about it in Medical Xpress: Study explores the effects of bilingualism on the developing brain
January 2020
We were awarded a grant for a combined behavioral/neuroimaging project in Hong Kong in which we will comprehensively test the Procedural circuit Deficit Hypothesis (PDH) of Developmental Language Disorder. This pilot grant from Hong Kong Polytechnic University (grant for "Project of Strategic Importance", $2,000,000 Hong Kong dollars) is the first step of a larger project in which we will be testing the PDH (and competing hypotheses) in Hong Kong, in Cantonese speaking children, as well as in developmental dyslexia and stuttering. A big congratulations to Caicai Zhang, the PI of the project, and the rest of the Hong Kong team!
2019
December 2019
Dutch television (NOS Dutch Public Broadcasting) interviewed Michael Ullman and postdoctoral fellow Jana Reifegerste on aging, cognition and language, in the context of the current presidential candidates. See https://www.npostart.nl/nos-journaal/22-12-2019/POW_04059703. The relevant segment begins at timestamp 6:21.
June 2019
Michael Ullman gave a lecture to high school students at the National Student Leadership Conference at American University. See here for the post-lecture interview and clips from his lecture.
2018
August 2018
We were awarded a Partners in Research grant from the Dean of Research at Georgetown University Medical Center: "How does aging affect our ability to remember words?". We live in a rapidly aging society, so the impact of age-related problems is increasing dramatically. Word finding and word learning (e.g., the names of medications to be taken) appear to be the greatest language problems in older adults. This study is designed to reveal just what specific aspects of word use and word learning decline during aging and why such declines take place. The highly interdisciplinary project uses a rigorous behavioral and brain experimental approach, and tests the innovative novel hypothesis that the word problems experienced by older people can be at least partly explained by underlying declines in declarative memory, a general-purpose learning and memory system rooted in the hippocampus. The findings should advance our understanding of word difficulties in aging, and may lead to therapeutic approaches for these problems in healthy aging as well as in age-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. The Principal Investigator is Michael Ullman, and the co-investigators are Jana Reifegerste (who co-wrote the proposal with the PI), Peter Turkeltaub, and Gheorghe Luta. Collaborators David Balota, Marcus Meinzer, Loraine Obler, and Michael Rugg will also contribute to the project.
January 2018
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on a paper that was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research combines results from multiple studies involving a total of 665 participants. It shows that children learn their native language and adults learn additional languages in evolutionarily ancient brain circuits that also are used for tasks as diverse as remembering a shopping list and learning to drive - the same brain circuits that allow birds to remember where they hid their acorns and allow rats to perform grooming sequences. The findings have broad research, educational, and clinical implications.
Read the press release: Language is Learned in Brain Circuits that Predate Humans
Read about it in: Newsweek, Psychology Today, Voice of America (Radio), Science Daily, Sci News, Sci Casts, IFL Science, Neuroscience News, Language Magazine, Medical Xpress, Medicalresearch.com, Reliawire, Eureka Alert, Alphr, Newswise, A Word A Day, Daily Mail (UK), Yahoo News (UK), Die Presse (Germany), Le Scienze (Italy), Rai Radio (Italy), ZAP (Portugal), Radio France (Radio; France), Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland), Kopalnia Wiedzy (Poland), Science and Life (Russia), Debate (Mexico), Bohemia (Cuba), Infosalus (in Spanish), Nmas (in Spanish), PC Authority (Australia), Xinhua (China), People's Daily (China; in Spanish), International Business Times (India), Iran Daily (Iran), or Kazinform (Kazahkstan). This article was in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric.
2017
October 2017
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on a paper that was published in the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. The study reports an experiment that found that early bilinguals (who had learned both English and Mandarin at an early age) showed brain advantages over (English speaking) monolinguals at learning an additional language in adulthood. Specifically, the bilinguals showed more native-like brain processing of the additional language than the monolinguals, both at early and later stages of learning the language.
Read the press release: If your child is bilingual, learning additional languages later might be easier
Read about it in US News and World Report, The New Nation, Quartz, Herald and Review, Philly.com (website for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News), Wordsmith (A.Word.A.Day), NSF, The Blue & Gray, Science Daily, Neuroscience News, Health Day, Medical News Today, Education Week, Billings Gazette, Doctors Lounge, Drugs.com, EHE&ME, EurekAlert!, Long Room, Medical News Today, MedicalXpress,Medicinenet, Northwest Indiana Times, Rocket News, Science Newsline, Yahoo! News, CanIndia (Canada),Liverpool Echo (U.K.), The Daily Mail (U.K.), Aprendemas (Spanish), El Independiente (Spain), Sanihelp (Italy),Spektrum (Germany), Top Santé (France), The Post (South Africa), Health 24 (South Africa), Republika (Indonesia), Business Standard (India), Daijiworld (India), Deccan Chronicle (India), Hindustan Times (India),IANS Live (India), Millennium Post (India), Outlook India (India), The Asian Age (India), The Hans India (India), The Hindu (India), The Indian Express (India), The South Asian Times (India), The Times of India (India), and others. The research was also discussed on about 60 local US TV news reports, on NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, and cable, in 29 states. This article was in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric (highest-scoring research output from Bilingualism: Language and Cognition: #1 of 226).
July 2017
We were awarded a grant from the Tourette Association of America: "Is procedural memory enhanced in Tourette syndrome?". The project, which follows up on our recent papers suggesting that procedural memory and grammar may be enhanced in children with Tourette syndrome, comprehensively investigates procedural memory, language (in grammar, across syntax, morphology, and phonology, and in lexical processing, as well as in grammar and word learning), declarative memory, working memory, and inhibitory control, in children with TS and typically developing control children. The Principal Investigator is Michael Ullman, with subcontracts to Phillip Hamrick (Kent State), Stewart Mostofsky (Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins), and Donald Gilbert (Cincinnati Children's Hospital).
January 2017
Harvard University, Grand Challenges Canada, and other institutions distributed a press release on a paper that we published in Lancet Global Health. The paper reports that if women (in Lombok, Indonesia) took multiple micrountrients while pregnant, their children had better cognition (as compared to women who did not take these micronutrients) when they were about 10 years old. In fact, the children's procedural memory advantages were equivalent to the increase in score typical after an additional half-year of schooling. Additionally, we found that socio-economic factors such as a strong nurturing environment also significantly positively affected the children's cognition.
Read the press release: Maternal Micronutrients, Nurturing Environment Boost Child Development
Read about it in The Telegraph, Science Daily, or Eureka Alert
2016
November 2016
A grant from the Swedish Research Council was awarded to Mikael Heimann (PI; Linköping University, Sweden), Rachel Barr (co-PI; Georgetown University), and Michael Ullman (co-PI). The project, entitled "Which neurocognitive learning and memory systems are associated with language development in 9- to 22-month-old children?", examines the relationship between declarative and procedural memory on the one hand, and lexical and grammatical language abilities on the other, in a longitudinal study of infants.
October 2016
Tanya Evans and Michael Ullman were interviewed by Dyslexic Advantage on dyslexia, math disability, and procedural memory.
See the post and listen to the interview: Interview with Tanya Evans and Michael Ullman on dyslexia, math disability, and procedural memory.
October 2016
Tanya Evans and Michael Ullman were interviewed on the role of procedural memory in math disability, on The Takeaway (a morning radio news program produced by Public Radio International (PRI) and WNYC-New York Public Radio, with editorial partners The New York Times and WGBH Radio Boston).
Listen to the interview: Interview with Tanya Evans and Michael Ullman on the role of procedural memory in math disability.
October 2016
Newcastle University in the UK distributed a press release on a paper that we published in the journal Brain and Language. First author Cristina Dye is at Newcastle. The paper reports that children with Tourette syndrome are faster at repeating made-up words than typically developing children. This is interpreted as reflecting speeded rule-governed combination of phonological segments, since non-word repetition depends importantly on (de)composition of these segments. The results are consistent with our previous findings suggesting speeded rule-governed combination in morphology (Walenski et al., 2007). We suggest that, more generally, rule-governed grammatical combination may be speeded in Tourette syndrome, perhaps due to its dependence on frontal/basal-ganglia circuits that also underlie tics, which share the characteristic of being fast and semi-voluntary.
Read the press release: Do children with Tourette syndrome have an advantage at language?
Read about it in United Press International, Headline News, Medical News Today, Science Daily, Medical Xpress, Neuroscience News, Breaking News Magazine, The Daily Mail (UK), Med India, Iran News, Sahafaha Arabiah, or Look Magazine (UK).
September 2016
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on a paper that was published in a special issue on reading and math in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. The paper proposes that developmental math disability can be explained in part by abnormalities of brain structures subserving the procedural memory system, which underlies our learning of automatized skills like driving or grammar. That is, the paper extends the procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH) from language-related disorders (developmental language disorder, dyslexia) to math disability. This brain-based account of math disability is motivated in part by the presence of math problems in children with dyslexia or developmental language disorder, suggesting that the deficits may share causal mechanisms. The account is also motivated by the fact that learning automatized math skills, which are impaired in math disability, likely depend on procedural memory. Although the paper does not claim that the PDH is likely to fully explain math disability, it suggests that the hypothesis could have substantial explanatory power, and may provide a useful theoretical framework to advance our understanding of the disorder.
Read the press release: Math difficulties may reflect problems in a crucial learning system in the brain
Read about it in Science Daily, Medical Daily, MSN.com, The Sun (UK), Science News, Medical Xpress, The Parent Herald, News World India, South Asian Times, or La Vanguardia (Catalonia).
September 2016
Michael Ullman was interviewed on the role of declarative memory in autism in an article for Spectrum magazine, which focuses on the disorder.
July 2016
An NIH R21 grant, HD087088 (2016-2018), “The neurocognition of procedural and declarative memory in dyslexia and S-RCD”, was awarded to Laurie Cutting from Vanderbilt University (Principal Investigator) and Michael Ullman (Subcontractual Principal Investigator). Using fMRI and behavioral approaches, the project examines the hypotheses that two neurodevelopmental reading disorders, dyslexia and specific-reading comprehension disorder (S-RCD), may be at least partly explained by impairments of procedural memory and declarative memory, respectively.
March 2016
Michael Ullman was interviewed about bilingualism and learning languages in immersion contexts on the radio show Central Standard, on public radio station KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri.
Listen to the interview: Interview with Michael Ullman on bilingualism and immersion
2015
April 2015
Natasha Janfaza, an undergraduate in the lab, was awarded a Kalorama Fellowship for the summer of 2015, from Georgetown University. The Kalorama Fellowship offers select Georgetown undergraduates an intensive summer research experience in the sciences or humanities to pursue an independent research project under the guidance of a mentor. She will be working with Michael Ullman on a study examining the relation between music learning, language learning, and memory systems.
March 2015
Christos Pliatsikas was awarded a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society to visit the Brain and Language lab, arriving in September 2015.
March 2015
Michael Ullman and Mariel Pullman wrote a column in the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) newsletter, on the compensatory role of declarative memory in autism.
Read the column: Powerful memory system may compensate for autism's deficits
March 2015
Michael Ullman was interviewed about the compensatory role of declarative memory in autism, dyslexia, OCD, and other neurodevelopmental disorders, on the Georgetown University Forum radio show, which is distributed to National Public Radio and the Armed Forces Radio.
Listen to the interview: Interview with Michael Ullman on compensation by declarative memory
February 2015
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on the publication of a paper in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. The paper proposes that individuals with five neurodevelopmental disorders — autism spectrum disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, dyslexia, and specific language impairment (developmental language disorder) — compensate for a wide range of deficits by relying on a single powerful and nimble system in the brain known as declarative memory. This hypothesis, which may extend to other disorders (e.g., ADHD, aphasia, Parkinson's disease), has potentially important therapeutic, diagnostic, and basic research implications.
Read the press release: A brain system that appears to compensate for autism, OCD, and dyslexia
Read about it in Science Daily, Autism Daily Newscast, or PsychCentral.
February 2015
Michael Ullman was interviewed about second language and bilingualism on the Georgetown University Forum radio show, which is distributed to National Public Radio and the Armed Forces Radio.
Listen to the interview: Interview with Michael Ullman on second language and bilingualism
January 2015
Scott Miles, a Ph.D. student in the Brain and Language Lab, was selected as a 2015 Cosmos Scholars Award recipient, and also received a J.K. McLaughlin Award in Biomedical Science from the Cosmos Club Foundation, for his proposal "The neurocognition of learning a new musical system".
2014
December 2014
Michael Ullman was interviewed by Diane Rehm on The Diane Rehm Show, about bilingualism and the brain.
Listen to the interview: The Latest Research On Bilingualism And The Brain
September 2014
Georgetown University Medical Center distributed a press release on the publication of a study in the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. The study suggests that boys with autism are faster at processing grammar than typically developing boys.
Read the press release: Boys with Autism Demonstrate Surprising Strength in Grammar Processing
Read about it in Autism Daily Newscast.
September 2014
We were awarded a National Science Foundation grant: NSF BCS 1439290 (2014-2017), "Second language acquisition and long-term retention in a mini-language". The project examines how our brains change as we learn a second language. Adult participants learn a reduced version of the Basque language while both behavioral and neural (fMRI) measures are continuously acquired, from initial exposure to high proficiency, and then again weeks later to test retention. The project should reveal for the first time how the brain changes in real time as it learns a language.
June 2014
Newcastle University distributed a press release on the publication of a study in the journal PLoS ONE. The study suggests that girls and boys may rely on different neurocognitive mechanisms for aspects of grammar: specifically, whereas boys appear to compose rule-governed complex forms from their parts (e.g., walk + -ed), girls are more likely to store and retrieve them as chunks (e.g., "walked").
Read about it in Science Daily.
2013-2014
Led by Jarrad Lum, we published a series of meta-analyses on procedural memory in various disorders. These suggest that procedural memory is impaired in dyslexia, specific language impairment (developmental language disorder), and Parkinson's disease. The meta-analyses focused on the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task, the most widely used task to probe procedural memory. A press release was also distributed for one of these papers.
SRT meta-analysis in Parkinson's disease:
SRT meta-analysis in SLI (DLD):
Read the press release: Unconscious memories affect language learning
Read the article: Lum, J. A. G., Conti-Ramsden, G. M., Morgan, A. T., & Ullman, M. T. (2014). Procedural learning deficits in Specific Language Impairment (SLI): A meta-analysis of serial reaction time task performance. Cortex, 51, 1-10.
SRT meta-analysis in dyslexia: