When nothing goes right, go left! Brain Lateralization of Language - SoSe 2025

Course Description

The seminar will focus on understanding how language and other systems of communication work in the brain, and how the two hemispheres are involved. Is language lateralized? Is handedness important for language? Are all right-handed people left-lateralized for language? Are all left-handed people right-lateralized for language?

We will dive into the example of whistled languages, but what is a whistled language? In what way are they different from other languages, and how have they been studied until now? Furthermore, the process of how some of the studies were created and why, and the importance of addressing these projects not just from a psycho-neurolinguistics perspective, but from a historical and sociological perspective will be presented as well. Who decided to do a neuroimaging study about such a minority language? Why are the following studies using behavioral methods? Insights about the process of preparing some of the studies and the process of publication will be provided.

All the info available in LSF: https://lsf.hhu.de/qisserver/rds?state=verpublish&status=init&vmfile=no&publishid=263876&moduleCall=webInfo&publishConfFile=webInfo&publishSubDir= Veranstaltung