ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Half of “late talkers”, infants who are not yet speaking by 2 years of age, will go on to develop language impairments. Currently, we have no reliable means of identifying these infants. Here we combine our developmental approach to phonology (psycholinguistic grain size theory), to the neural mechanisms underlying speech encoding (temporal sampling [TS] theory) and our work on the developmental importance of the speech amplitude envelope (AE) to open a new research front in the foundations of language acquisition. Recent adult research confirms our decade-long focus on the importance of sensitivity to AE ‘rise time’ in children’s language development, showing that rise times (‘auditory edges’) re-set the endogenous cortical oscillations that encode speech. Accordingly, we now apply our in-house state-of-the-art methods for measuring oscillatory rhythmic entrainment in children along with our recent theoretical and behavioural advances concerning AE processing to infant studies. Our core aim is to use the TS theoretical perspective and analysis methods to generate robust early neural and behavioural markers of phonological and morphological development: TS for infants. We have published the first-ever studies of oscillatory entrainment to speech rhythm by children and we have developed methods for technically-challenging EEG speech envelope reconstruction. We now apply these innovative methods to infant language learning and infant-directed speech. Using our cutting-edge EEG methods, we will deliver a novel and innovative road map for charting early language acquisition from a rhythmic entrainment perspective. Our recent 5-year study of rise time sensitivity in infants confirms the feasibility of a TS approach. As our focus is on prosody, syllable stress and syllable processing, our methods will apply across European languages.

2 614 275 €

Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31

The aim of the BEEHIVE project is to generate novel insight into HIV biology, evolution and epidemiology, leveraging next-generation high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics to produce and analyse whole-genomes of viruses from approximately 3,000 European HIV-1 infected patients. These patients have known dates of infection spread over the last 25 years, good clinical follow up, and a wide range of clinical prognostic indicators and outcomes. The primary objective is to discover the viral genetic determinants of severity of infection and set-point viral load. This primary objective is high-risk & blue-skies: there is ample indirect evidence of polymorphisms that alter virulence, but they have never been identified, and it is not known how easy they are to discover. However, the project is also high-reward: it could lead to a substantial shift in the understanding of HIV disease. Technologically, the BEEHIVE project will deliver new approaches for undertaking whole genome association studies on RNA viruses, including delivering an innovative high-throughput bioinformatics pipeline for handling genetically diverse viral quasi-species data (with viral diversity both within and between infected patients). The project also includes secondary and tertiary objectives that address critical open questions in HIV epidemiology and evolution. The secondary objective is to use viral genetic sequences allied to mathematical epidemic models to better understand the resurgent European epidemic amongst high-risk groups, especially men who have sex with men. The aim will not just be to establish who is at risk of infection, which is known from conventional epidemiological approaches, but also to characterise the risk factors for onwards transmission of the virus. Tertiary objectives involve understanding the relationship between the genetic diversity within viral samples, indicative of on-going evolution or dual infections, to clinical outcomes.

2 499 739 €

Start date: 2014-04-01, End date: 2019-03-31

" Why do people convert to Islam? The contemporary relevance of this question is immediately apparent.""Becoming Muslim"" will transform our knowledge about Islamisation processes and contexts through archaeological research in Harar, Eastern Ethiopia, and examine this in comparison to other regions in sub-Saharan Africa via publication and a major conference. Assessing genuine belief is difficult, but the impact of trade, Saints, Sufis and Holy men, proselytisation, benefits gained from Arabic literacy and administration systems, enhanced power, prestige, warfare, and belonging to the larger Muslim community have all been suggested. Equally significant is the context of conversion. Why were certain sub-Saharan African cities key points for conversion to Islam, e.g. Gao and Timbuktu in the Western Sahel, and Harar in Ethiopia? Archaeological engagement with Islamisation processes and contexts of conversion in Africa is variable, and in parts of the continent research is static. This exciting 4-year project explores, for the first time, Islamic conversion and Islamisation through focusing on Harar, the most important living Islamic centre in the Horn of Africa, and its surrounding region. Islamic archaeology has been neglected in Ethiopia, and is wholly non-existent in Harar. Excavation at 5 key sites: 2 shrines, 2 abandoned settlements, 1 urban site, will permit evaluation of urban Islam, the veneration of saints, pilgrimage and shrine based practices, rural Islam, architecture and jihad, changes in lifeways, and early and comparative evidence for Islam and long-distance trade, through analysis of, e.g. architecture, epigraphy, burial orientation, imported artifacts, and faunal and botanical remains. Although it is fully acknowledged that conversion to Islam and Islamisation processes are not universal, my project is groundbreaking in developing and applying a transferable methodology for the archaeological explanation of ""Becoming Muslim"" in sub-Saharan Africa."

1 031 105 €

Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31

"150 years after Broca's seminal statement "Nous parlons avec l'hémisphère gauche" we still do not know how or why we have this bias. I propose that by studying cases of impaired language development and combining genetic and neuropsychological approaches we will be able to make a leap forward in our understanding of the quintessentially human characteristic of functional cerebral asymmetry. I argue that contradictory findings in the literature may be reconciled if we adopt a novel approach to cerebral asymmetry. In particular, I propose a network efficiency hypothesis which maintains that optimal development depends on organisation of key language functions within the same cerebral hemisphere. In project A, I will combine behavioural measures with functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD) measures of blood flow and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify individual differences in patterns of dissociation between language functions in lateralisation. In project B I will test the prediction that risk for language and literacy impairment is increased if different language functions are represented in opposite hemispheres. For project C, simulations of predictions from genetic models will be tested using data on twin-cotwin similarity in language lateralisation. Project D will test a 'double hit' genetic model that predicts that neurodevelopmental abnormalities, including language deficits and inconsistent asymmetry, arise when there is more than one hit on a functional brain circuit. For this study we will use an existing sample of individuals already known to have one 'hit' on the neuroligin-neurexin circuit, viz people with an additional dose of neuroligin caused by an extra sex chromosome. Project E will focus on individuals with inconsistent patterns of language laterality and will look for rare genetic mutations and structural rearrangements associated with a departure from consistent left hemisphere language."

2 497 907 €

Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30