Research Interests

My main interests in science are in the neurobiology of language. I have developed a model of language processing in the human brain, formulated at the level of nerve cell circuits which cut across perception and action systems of the brain. The model specifies neural circuits processing speech sounds, words, their meaning and the syntactic rules that influence their order in time. Words are envisaged to be represented in the brain by distributed cell assemblies whose cortical topographies reflect aspects of word meaning. The rules of syntax are proposed to be a product of the interplay between specialized neuronal units, called sequence detectors, and general principles of neuronal dynamics designed to control and regulate activity levels in cortical areas. Advances in the neuroscience of language are applied in the development of new language therapy techniques. A new surprisingly successful method for intensive aphasia therapy is described here: Aphasia Now

CV (Effective September 2018)

Research areas:

1. Theory and brain-grounded neurocomputational modelling

2. Neurophonology

3. Neurocombinatorial investigations

4. Neurosemantics

5. Neuropragmatics

6. Neurorehabilitation of language

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Key publications:

• Pulvermüller, F. 2018. Neural reuse of action perception circuits for language, concepts and communication. Progress in Neurobiology, 160, 1-44.
• Pulvermüller, F. 2018.  The case of CAUSE: neurobiological mechanisms for grounding an abstract concept. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B: Biological Sciences, 373 (1752).
• Pulvermüller, F. 2018. Neurobiological mechanisms for semantic feature extraction and conceptual flexibility. Topics in Cognitive Science, 10(3), 590-620.

HERE you can find a list of all publications of Friedemann Pulvermüller and collaborators.