Here we discuss how MRI and other imaging modalities may play a part in truly understanding the brain and what it even means to understand the brain. We discuss his past work with Greg Hickok on language pathways and his work in the auditory cortex. We also discuss the potential impact of his work clinically as well as the need to start with and progressively add to models of the brain.

Guest:

David Poeppel, Ph.D. David Poeppel is a Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University (NYU). Since 2014, he has also been the Director of the Department of Neuroscience at Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA). In 2019, he co-founded the Center for Language, Music and Emotion, an international joint research center, co-sponsored by the Max Planck Society and New York University. Since 2021, he has now also become the Managing Director of the Ernst Strüngmann Institute in Germany.

David grew up in Munich, Germany, Cambridge MA, USA and Caracas, Venezuela. He obtained his bachelor's degree (1990) and doctorate (1995) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT. He received training in functional brain imaging as a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Medicine of the University of California, San Francisco. From 2000 to 2008, he directed the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Laboratory at the University of Maryland College Park, where he was a professor of linguistics and biology. He joined New York University in 2009.

He was a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advance Study and has been a guest professor at several institutions. He has received the DaimlerChrysler Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[8] and other honors.

David Poeppel is a researcher who employs behavioral and cognitive neuroscience approaches to study the brain basis of auditory processing, speech perception and language comprehension. The research in Poeppel's laboratory addresses questions such as: What are the cognitive and neuronal “parts lists” that form the basis for language processing, the fundamental constituents used in speech and language? How is sensory information transformed into abstract representations that underlie language processing? What are the neural circuits that enable language processing?

Well-known contributions of the Poeppel laboratory include: the functional anatomic model of language developed with Greg Hickok; research on lateralization in auditory processing; and experimental work on the role of neuronal oscillations in audition and speech perception. He also writes and lectures about methodological questions at the interdisciplinary boundary between cognitive science research and brain research.