Question: how are you carrying out these studies? how are they going? any success?

Jen Todd Jones answered on 15 Mar 2013:

Hi Will!

My main study of the brain involves languages and understanding first how the brain processes language that we read and speak, how this changes for someone who has more than one language (a bilingual), and finally what happens as we age or have accidents that means we lose the language abilities.

I try to understand how reading words is affected when it’s possible to read more than one word at once. For example, if I asked you if the word ‘proof’ was related to ‘house’ you’d probably say no, and you’d be right to! BUT if you look at the word ‘proof’ you’ll notice that inside it it the word ‘roof’ which definitely is related to the word ‘house’. It turns out that our brain is so clever that when we read we not only read the whole word, but all the words that might be buried inside it too!

I’ve also done some interesting experiments measuring how peoples eyes get distracted by pictures with a similar meaning, for example showing them pictures of a tree, a dog, a cat and a house, and watching their eyes try to decide between the dog and cat. The brain is actually very good at reading words and naming pictures extremely quickly, but sometimes makes mistakes when two things are ‘related’ by meaning in our minds, we almost get a little confused by it!

I measure the way people respond using electroencephalography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography) and eye-tracking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_tracking) and I have had some good success so far! My PhD will take four year, I’m in the third year now and have several of these experiments finished. I’ve found some great results and exactly what I’m looking for, which is kind of rare so I’m pleased.

Do you think you’d like to perform some studies about the brain? It’s a great opportunity to ask questions nobody has ever asked before!

Jen