Linguistics Special Lecture Series (LSLS) 2025 No. 6
10 September | Wednesday | 2:30 PM
CSSP Health and Wellness Center

The Linguistics Special Lecture Series (LSLS) features talks by invited experts on various topics under the fields of theoretical and applied linguistics. For this sixth installment, visiting research fellow Aaron Santa Maria, PhD Fellow at Ghent University, will give a talk on the brain as a language organ.

ABSTRACT
How does the brain make language possible? This talk will explore the fascinating ways our brains allow us to speak, understand, read, and write. For a long time, linguists thought that language lived mainly in two specific brain areas. Today, research paints a much more complex picture: language depends on a wide network of regions that work together, from the frontal and temporal lobes to deeper brain structures. We’ll look at how these areas connect to form pathways for understanding meaning and producing speech, and how both sides of the brain play important but different roles—for example, one side helping with grammar, the other with tone and emotion. Along the way, we’ll revisit key discoveries, highlight new brain imaging insights, and show how the brain truly functions as an organ of language and a system designed for human communication.