Short bio:

Rosario studied linguistics at the University of Catania (Italy) and Freie Universität Berlin. From 2014 to 2016, Rosario held a research assistant position in Neurocomputational Modelling of Language Learning for the interdisciplinary BABEL project between Plymouth, Manchester and Berlin universities; 2016-2019, Rosario pursued his PhD in Linguistics at the Brain Language Laboratory (Freie Universität Berlin), which was founded by the Berlin School of Mind and Brain (M&B, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), where he also completed the doctoral M&B program.

For the summer term 2024, Rosario served as a replacement (associate) W2-Professor for "Cognitive Modeling“ at the Institute Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück. Since 2020, he has held a 50% position as a substitute for a (full) W3-Professorship in "Linguistics" with a focus on Neuroscience of language and pragmatics at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has been a research fellow at the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity (DFG EXC 2025/1) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin since 2019, and co-project leader of the subproject Cutting since 2023. Additionally, he is also part of editorial board at the Cognitive Processing (Springer Nature) and Contrastive Pragmatics (Brill) journals.

Teaching:

Rosario has given seminars and lectures on Introduction to Linguistics, Neuropragmatics, Neurosemantics, Language Evolution, Language Acquisition, Computational modeling, and Language and Brain Research with a particular focus on linguistic, neuroscientific and digital humanities methods, i.e., computer-based simulations of the cortex, EEG, fMRI, TMS, Dialogue Transcriptions, Rating Study etc.

He has taught in both German and English for BA German Philology, BA Educational Science and, MA Linguistics at the Freie Universität Berlin, the MA/Ph.D. programs of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and BA/MA Linguistics at the University of Vienna. He was also teaching seminars on language evolution and pragmatics as well as on current trends in language and brain research at Osnabrück University for the BA/MA Cognitive Science program. 

Supervision of > 35 BA/MA theses, some of which led to publications

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Research interests

Rosario’s main research interests lie at the intersection of linguistics, neuroscience, and cognitive science, driven by the overarching goal of understanding how language functions in the brain. His work explores how linguistic theories—particularly in semantics and pragmatics—can inform neuroscientific investigations of language processing, and how, in turn, neuroscience can contribute to refining those theoretical frameworks.

His main research areas include:

(i) the neural basis of semantic knowledge—how different word categories (e.g., animals, tools, actions) are represented, processed, and acquired in both typical and atypical (e.g., sensory-deprived) brains; and

(ii) the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying communicative functions such as requests, questions, and statements, especially how these are conveyed and interpreted through speech, prosody, and gesture in interactional contexts shaped by social coordination and shared knowledge.

To this end, Rosario coordinates neuroscience experiments (behavioral and electroencephalography EEG) to advance our understanding of the architecture of the language system and its functions in social interactions. He is also responsible for developing precise mathematical brain models of active neural matter capable of processing different aspects of cognition (language, symbols, thought and communication).

Publications

• Villani C., Boux, I.P., Pulvermüller, F., Tomasello, R., (accepted). The time course of speech act recognition conveyed by speech prosody: A gating study. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
• Tomasello, R. (accepted with minor revision). From neural matter to rapid symbolic learning in brains and artificial neural networks: A brief review and perspective, Linguistics Vanguard
• *Tomasello, R., *Boux, I.P., Pulvermüller, F., (accepted). Theory of Mind and the brain substrates of direct and indirect communicative action understanding. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B *Both authors contributed equally to this work
• Tomasello, R., Carriere, M., & Pulvermüller, F. 2024. The impact of early and late blindness on language and verbal working memory: A brain-constrained neural model. Neuropsychologia, 108816.

• Carriere, M., Tomasello, R., & Pulvermüller, F. 2024. Can human brain connectivity explain verbal working memory?. Network: Computation in Neural Systems, 1-42.
• Fekonja, L. S., Schenk, R., Schröder, E., Tomasello, R., Tomšič, S., & Picht, T. 2024. The digital twin in neuroscience: from theory to tailored therapy. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 18, 1454856.
• Antoine, S., Grisoni, L., Tomasello, R., & Pulvermüller, F. 2024. The Prediction Potential indexes the meaning and communicative function of upcoming utterances. Cortex.
• *Barthel, M., *Tomasello, R., Liu, M., 2024. Conditionals in Context: Brain signatures of prediction in discourse processing, Cognition. *Both authors contributed equally to this work
• Tomasello, R. 2023. Linguistic signs in action: The neuropragmatics of speech acts. Brain & Language 236:105203.

• Constant, M., Pulvermüller, F. Tomasello, R. 2023. Brain-constrained neural modeling explains fast mapping of words to meaning. Cerebral Cortex, bhad00.
• Boux, I., Margiotoudi, K., Dreyer, F., Tomasello, R., & Pulvermüller, F. 2022. Cognitive features of indirect speech acts, Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1-25.
• Tomasello, R., Grisoni, L., Boux, I., et al. 2022. Instantaneous Neural Processing of Communicative Functions Conveyed by Speech Prosody. Cerebral Cortex. 
• Barthel M., Tomasello R., Mingya L. 2022. Online interpretation of conditionals in context: A self-paced reading study on wenn (if) and nur wenn (only if) in German. Linguistics Vanguard.
• Shebani, Z., Carota, F., Hauk, O., Rowe, J.B., Lawrence, W.B., Tomasello, R., & Pulvermüller, F. 2022. Brain correlates of action word memory revealed by fMRI. Sci Rep 12:16053.
• Picht, T., Le Calve, M., Tomasello, R., Fekonja, L., Gholami, F., Bruhn, M., Zwick, C., Rabe, J., Müller-Birn, C., Vajkoczy, P., Sauer, I., Zachow, D., Nyakatura, J., Ribault, P., & Pulvermüller, F. 2021. Letter: A note on neurosurgical resection and why we need to rethink cutting. Neurosurgery.
• Pulvermüller, F., Tomasello, R., Henningsen-Schomers, MR., Wennekers, T. 2021. Biological constraints on neural network models of cognitive function. Nature Review Neuroscience. 
• Boux, I.*, Tomasello, R.*, Grisoni, L., Pulvermüller, F. 2021. Brain signatures predict communicative function of speech production in interaction. Cortex 135, 127-145. *Both authors contributed equally to this work.
• Grisoni, L., Tomasello, R. Pulvermüller, F., 2020. Correlated Brain Indexes of Semantic Prediction and Prediction Error: Brain Localization and Category Specificity. Cerebral Cortex.
• Schilling, A., Tomasello, R., Henningsen-Schomers, M.R., Zankl, A., Surendra, K., Haller, M., Karl, V., Uhrig, P., Maier, A., Krauss, P., 2020. Analysis of continuous neuronal activity evoked by natural speech with computational corpus linguistics methods. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 1–20. 
• Tomasello, R., Kim, C., Dreyer, F. R., Grisoni, L., & Pulvermüller, F. 2019. Neurophysiological evidence for rapid processing of verbal and gestural information in understanding communicative actions. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 16285.
• Tomasello, R., Garagnani, M., Wennekers, T., Pulvermüller, F. 2019. Recruitment of visual cortex for language processing in blind individuals is explained by Hebbian learning. Scientific Reports 9(1):3579.
• Tomasello, R., Garagnani, M., Wennekers, T. & Pulvermüller, F. 2018. A neurobiologically constrained cortex model of semantic grounding with spiking neurons and brain-like connectivity. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 12, 88.
• Tomasello, R., Garagnani, M., Wennekers, T., & Pulvermüller, F. 2017. Brain connections of words, perceptions and actions: A neurobiological model of spatio-temporal semantic activation in the human cortex. Neuropsychologia, 98:111–29
• Garagnani M, Lucchese G, Tomasello R, Wennekers T, Pulvermüller F. 2017. A Spiking Neurocomputational Model of High-Frequency Oscillatory Brain Responses to Words and Pseudowords. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 10:1–19.

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