David Poeppel

Writing out a conversation I’ve been having a lot at this conference: Things in US science are far, far worse than people know. Far worse than even other scientists know. 1/

Phonological processing=left dorsal stream? Not in Mexican Spanish-speaking children at reading onset. Here, bilateral ventral pathways predict phonological awareness. Neuroscience must broaden the populations it studies to build generalizable brain models.doi.org/10.1162/NOL.a.…

Great opportunity for important work and training! I hope to collaborate closely with Nina and Pierre on this innovative cog sci/ cog neuro project.

Postdoc opportunity with any of my Oxford colleagues funded by the British Academy. Expressions of interest due next week! humanities.ox.ac.uk/british-academ…

Interpreting EEG requires understanding how the skull smears electrical fields as they propagate from the cortex. I made a browser-based simulator for my EEG class to visualize how dipole depth/orientation change the topomap dbrang.github.io/EEG-Dipole-Dem… Github: github.com/dbrang/EEG-Dip…

The anticipation of imminent events is time-scale invariant pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.10… Argue @Grabenhorst_M @davidpoeppel @Michalareas_G For aficionados of timing, prediction, psychophysics -and anyone who wants to look at something other than the horrible news to be distracted

Very happy to see this project with my compadres @MatthiasGrabenh and @davidpoeppel out in PNAS today: “The anticipation of imminent events is time-scale invariant” pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

We are excited to announce that the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience meeting (CCN 2026) will be held at New York University from August 3–6, 2026. 2026.ccneuro.org

@loopyluppi and @_fernando_rosas have written a reply. I recommend reading this as it clarifies their stance and advances the discussion: nature.com/articles/s4158… I think this was a fruitful exchange. It was also a great experience to write this up w/ David in Amsterdam @ CCN2025

Our first point: this distinction collides with other accounts in the literature. We catalogue some of the diverse meanings and practices associated with "bottom-up" and "top-down" neuroscience.

The critiqued paper outlines two research cultures: A bottom-up, precision-first, approach that emphasizes control and iterative steps. And a top-down, accuracy-first approach that values coarse-grained analysis & tackling big questions head-on. nature.com/articles/s4158…

A friendly little back and forth with Rosas and colleagues to clarify some concepts about research strategies in neuroscience. Check out Rosas1 - then van Bree - then Rosas2. Maybe useful. Maybe. Hope springs eternal.

On language and thought: evidence from aphasia. My latest essay for @PsychToday from my new book, Wired for Words, published @mitpress. a.co/d/itQY0QZ psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wired-…

Greg's new book. CONGRATS! Finally! A *must-read* for everyone interested in brain and language. Full of important (old/classical & new) stuff, exceptionally clear, integrative, provocative, carefully argued. This will stimulate lots of new experiments, models, ideas.

Reposting my summary figure of the neural architecture of language. We've come a long way since Wernicke-Geschwind!

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2025 Early Career awards & Promotion of Women in Neuroscience awards! These researchers are advancing neuroscience through groundbreaking discoveries, mentorship, & scientific excellence Hear their remarks: vist.ly/4e2x9 #SfN25

Truer words were never said (other than “my to-do list exceeds my life expectancy“)

I'm incredibly honored to receive the Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring. This makes me very sentimental! I'm so proud of the wonderful, super sharp students and postdocs that I have had the privilege and pleasure to work with. ❤️ Thank you!!!

We are about a month away from the publication release date for my @mitpress book, Wired for Words - The Neural Architecture of Language. Here's a synopsis of each chapter. Chapter 1: What is Language? This chapter introduces the biological perspective on language, distinguishing between language phenotypes (the surface forms like English, Spanish) and the underlying biological machinery that enables language. The author recounts his personal journey from disliking language study to discovering its scientific depth. Key evidence for language as a biological system includes: its uniqueness to humans, universality across all human societies, critical period effects, genetic influences, and evolutionary continuity. The chapter establishes that language comprises multiple components (vocal motor control, speech perception, syntax) that likely evolved along different trajectories for different purposes, coming together to form the collective language trait we know today. Chapter 2: The Dual Stream Brain This chapter introduces the dual stream architecture found across multiple sensory systems. The ventral stream processes "what" information for perception and understanding, while the dorsal stream processes "how" information for guiding action. Evidence comes from neurological cases like visual form agnosia (patient DF) who couldn't consciously recognize objects but could accurately grasp them, and phenomena like echolalia and echopraxia. The chapter explains why dual streams are computationally necessary: the "what" system allows organisms to make category-based predictions and decisions about whether to act, while the "how" system enables rapid, reflexive sensorimotor transformations. This architecture applies to vision, touch, audition, and importantly, language processing. The chapter clarifies that dual streams make sense from a sensory/perceptual perspective, but when considering volitional action from thought, both streams are engaged. Chapter 3: The Hidden Symmetry of Speech Perception This chapter challenges the traditional view that speech perception is strongly left-lateralized. The author presents the case of Mr. L and others, who had word deafness (inability to comprehend speech), which is most commonly associated with bilateral damage. Data from split-brain patients, Wada procedures (temporary hemisphere deactivation), and stroke patients consistently show that both hemispheres can process speech sounds reasonably well. The chapter argues that the field has been biased by "dichotomy glasses" inherited from split-brain research, focusing on hemispheric differences rather than similarities. The conclusion: speech perception at the acoustic-phonological level is largely bilateral, with unilateral word deafness cases being rare exceptions in people with atypically strong left dominance. Chapter 4: Left Brain, Right Brain: Wrong-Minded This chapter traces the evolution of ideas about hemispheric asymmetry more generally. Before the 1860s, the "law of symmetry" held that identical hemispheres must have identical functions. Broca proposed "symmetry with modification" - hemispheres are fundamentally similar but the left develops earlier, making it dominant for complex functions like speech. The 1960s split-brain discoveries led to extreme dichotomous views (verbal vs. visuospatial, analytical vs. holistic). The chapter argues this pendulum swung too far. Evidence shows: (1) both hemispheres have sophisticated capabilities, (2) split-brain research revealed two well-functioning minds, not complementary halves, (3) bilateral lesions produce the most severe deficits, and (4) the isolated right hemisphere in split-brain patients shows substantial language comprehension. The author advocates returning to a more balanced "symmetry with modification" view, acknowledging both similarities and differences between hemispheres. Chapter 5: Toward a Neural Architecture of Speech Perception This chapter maps the neural pathway from acoustic input to phonological representation. Primary auditory cortex (A1) on Heschl's gyrus functions as a spectrotemporal filter bank, analyzing sounds across frequency and temporal dimensions. Processing proceeds hierarchically up the superior temporal gyrus (STG), with later stages on the lateral surface coding learned phonological sequences (syllables, words). The "auditory phonological area" in the mid-to-posterior STG/STS is critical for phonological processing and is largely bilateral. The chapter discusses various theories about anterior vs. posterior temporal processing and intelligibility effects. Evidence from lesion studies, functional imaging, and intracranial recordings converges on the STG as the core speech perception network. The system shows some left-hemisphere bias at higher levels but remains substantially bilateral, especially for basic acoustic-phonological processing. Chapter 6: Cracking the Speech Code This chapter addresses how the brain decodes the complex, multiplexed speech signal. Speech is not simply a sequence of discrete phonemes but contains overlapping information at multiple levels (phonemes, syllables, words, prosody) simultaneously. The acoustic signal has rhythmic properties, particularly in the amplitude envelope tracking syllable rate (3-5 Hz). Neural oscillations have been proposed as a mechanism for parsing speech, with low-frequency oscillations entraining to syllable rhythms and higher frequencies tracking phonemes. However, the chapter expresses skepticism about strong oscillation-based theories, noting that speech rhythm is quasi-periodic (not perfectly regular), that post-stimulus oscillations may reflect top-down attention rather than bottom-up entrainment, and that oscillations alone cannot explain the full complexity of speech processing, and indeed may provide little explanatory power. The chapter emphasizes that architecture - the arrangement and connectivity of the networks - is more fundamental than oscillatory dynamics. Chapter 7: Word Search This chapter tackles the "middle level" of language processing between phonology and semantics - variously called lemmas, abstract words, or morphosyntax. Defining "word" is notoriously difficult, but psycholinguistic models agree on a three-level architecture: phonology, a middle level, and semantics. The chapter reviews evidence localizing this middle level to the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG). This region shows up in meta-analyses as overlapping between phonological and semantic processing, is implicated in lemma retrieval in speech production models, and is damaged in transcortical sensory aphasia (impaired comprehension with preserved repetition). The pMTG appears to process abstract word forms and morphosyntactic information, serving as an interface between sound and meaning. While the evidence is less definitive than for phonological or semantic levels, multiple lines of research converge on the pMTG as a critical node for word-level processing. Chapter 8: Where Do You Know What You Know? This chapter explores the neural basis of semantic knowledge, starting with semantic dementia - a progressive loss of conceptual knowledge about things and events in the world. Research shows semantic knowledge is distinct from language per se, as evidenced by dissociations between semantic deficits and language abilities. The "hub and spoke" model proposes that sensory and motor features are processed in distributed cortical regions (spokes) and integrated in hub regions in the anterior temporal lobes (ATL). Entity knowledge involves the ATL and fusiform gyrus, organized partly by taxonomic categories. Event knowledge involves the angular gyrus and temporal-parietal cortex, organized by thematic relations. The chapter discusses the modal vs. amodal debate, suggesting both perspectives capture important aspects. Importantly, semantic deficits correlate with general intelligence measures, supporting the view that semantic networks are distinct from core language systems, though language interfaces extensively with semantics for communication. Chapter 9: Telegrams and Sentence Monsters This chapter traces the history of syntactic disorder research from early observations of agrammatism (telegraphic speech) and paragrammatism (confused “sentence monsters”) through the 1980s focus on Broca's area as the syntax center. The "overarching agrammatism hypothesis" claimed that Broca's area damage causes both expressive and receptive syntactic deficits. However, this view faced multiple challenges: comprehension deficits in Broca's aphasia are mild and task-dependent, functional imaging shows Broca's area activation for many non-syntactic tasks, and lesion studies implicate posterior temporal regions more than Broca's area in comprehension deficits. The chapter proposes the "HiLine" (Hierarchical Linearization) model of morphosyntax: the posterior middle temporal gyrus builds hierarchical syntactic structures (important for both comprehension and production), while Broca's area (pars triangularis) linearizes these structures into sequences (primarily for production). This explains the expressive-receptive asymmetry and integrates classical observations with modern linguistic theory. Chapter 10: The Sensory Theory of Speech Production This chapter develops a model of speech production integrating psycholinguistic and motor control perspectives. The "hierarchical state feedback control" model proposes that each linguistic level (phonological, morphosyntactic) has a sensorimotor architecture with three components: motor planning (frontal), sensory targets (temporal/parietal), and translation between them. At the phonological level: motor planning occurs in posterior inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area), auditory targets in posterior STG, and translation in area Spt (Sylvian parietal-temporal). Evidence includes: altered auditory feedback experiments showing speech adjusts to match auditory targets, lesion studies showing different effects of frontal vs. temporal damage, and functional imaging showing coordinated activity across these regions. The model explains speech errors, self-monitoring, and integrates with broader motor control principles. Importantly, it proposes that linguistic representations (phonology, morphosyntax) are organized according to sensorimotor control architectures, representing an evolutionary tinkering with existing motor systems. Chapter 11: Beyond Broca This chapter elaborates the dorsal stream for speech production, partitioning it into its own ventral and dorsal hierarchies. The ventral hierarchy (familiar from earlier chapters) includes Broca's area for morphosyntactic and phonological planning, ventral precentral gyrus for syllable-level planning, and ventral motor cortex for orofacial articulation. The dorsal hierarchy, less studied, involves dorsal precentral areas for prosodic planning and dorsolateral motor cortex for laryngeal control of pitch. Evidence comes from lesion studies, electrical stimulation mapping, and functional imaging. The chapter also discusses the supplementary motor area (SMA) complex's role in sequencing and timing coordination across effectors. A key insight is that speech production involves parallel hierarchies for different aspects of speech (phonetic/syllabic vs. prosodic), each with its own sensorimotor architecture. The chapter emphasizes that this organization reflects evolutionary adaptation of existing motor control systems for the specific demands of speech. Chapter 12: The Neural Architecture of Language This final chapter synthesizes the book's findings into an integrated model (LSM - Linguistic Sensorimotor Model). Key principles: (1) sensory and motor processes are hierarchically organized, (2) all linguistic levels have sensorimotor-like architecture (planning, targets, translation), (3) different portions engage in task-dependent fashion (dual streams), and (4) network components vary in laterality. The model traces language comprehension from acoustic input through spectrotemporal analysis (A1), phonological coding (STG/STS), lemma/morphosyntax (pMTG/vSTS), to semantics (ATL, AG). Production engages the entire network, with motor planning hierarchies in frontal regions. The chapter compares the LSM to other models (dual stream, psycholinguistic), discusses white matter connections, and addresses dynamics (serial vs. parallel processing). An important addition is an auditory-emotional stream in anterior temporal regions for processing emotional prosody and music. The LSM provides a comprehensive framework integrating classical neurology, modern neuroimaging, linguistic theory, and motor control principles.

The majority of the No Kings protests have dispersed at this time and all traffic closures have been lifted.  We had more than 100,000 people across all five boroughs peacefully exercising their first amendment rights and the NYPD made zero protest-related arrests.