Welcome to the Wicha Lab!
Our Mission
The Wicha lab focuses on understanding how the human brain processes language in real time using both behavioral and brain imaging techniques. In particular event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which is a non-invasive direct measure of electrical brain activity with excellent precision in the time domain are used to investigate the neural time course of language.
Overview of Our Research
The Wicha lab focuses on three primary areas:
- Neural time course of language comprehension
- Cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism
- Interface between language, especially bilingualism, and other cognitive processes, such as math
Methods
The primary methodologies used in the Wicha Lab are real time measures of brain activity, primarily electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERP), along with behavioral performance measures and other brain imaging techniques. The Wicha Lab has studied a range of populations from elementary school children to older adults. Through collaborations with other faculty, the Wicha Lab studies individuals with both neurotypical and neurodivergent processing.
Recent News
Vanessa Cerda successfully defended her dissertation titled "Two Times Four = Dos Por Cuatro: Simple Arithmetic Processing in the Bilingual Brain" on June 3, 2022
Amandine Grenier successfully defended her dissertation titled "The Meaning of Multiplication: Electrophysiological Evidence of Semantic Memory Access and Organization in Children" on April 29, 2022
Matthew Wood successfully defended his dissertation titled "Challenging the Gold Standard in Lifespan Cognitive Neuroscience: Electrophysiological Studies of How We Do Arithmetic as We Grow and Comprehend Sentences as We Age" on April 5, 2022
