Past events: Arturo Hernandez. Sensorimotor plasticity and cognitive flexiblity: A Neuoremergentist approach

What: Sensorimotor plasticity and cognitive flexiblity: A Neuoremergentist approach

Where:  Zoom room 2

Who: Prof. Arturo Hernández, Director of Laboratory for the Neural Bases of Bilingualism Developmental, Cognitive, & Behavioral Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Texas, US.

When:  Thursday, September 16th at 2:30 PM.

Neuroemergentism, (NM) is a novel framework which has sought to consider language development as involving the organization and reorganization of cognition and its underlying neural substrate. Work to support this framework comes from studies of language and cognitive development.  In this talk, I will focus on two separate levels, the sensorimotor plasticity needed to adjust to new input and the cognitive flexibility needed to select between these competing sources of information.  This talk will discuss both these levels with regard to the neurocognitive adaptations seen in bilinguals.  This will include structural brain differences in monolinguals and bilinguals that vary in the age of second language acquisition.  In the second part, of the talk work that has focused on the cognitive flexibility will be presented.  This will focus on the adaptations of the basal ganglia and frontostriatal tracts as a gating mechanism crucial for selecting the correct motor response.  This includes newer work which links genes associated with dopamine to cognitive and language flexibility in bilinguals.  The ways in which sensorimotor plasticity and cognitive flexibility represent accurate but incomplete conceptualizations of the competitive processes involved in language and cognitive processing will be discussed.  The talk will conclude with potential future directions using an NM framework.