Cognition and Plasticity (CoPla) Lab

(PDF) Beyond dual hubs: Task and aging shape taxonomic and thematic semantic relationships in the human brain PDF | Semantic knowledge about concepts and their relationships is central to human cognition. Taxonomic relationships link concepts belonging to the... | Find, read and cite all the research you need...

🚨 I'm thrilled to share our new preprint on the representation of taxonomic and thematic semantic relationships in the human brain as a function of task demands and healthy aging: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

(PDF) Left inferior parietal lobe and auditory cortex jointly contribute to sound knowledge retrieval PDF | Background Conceptual knowledge is central to human cognition. Neuroimaging studies suggest that conceptual processing relies on the joint... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on R...

I’m extremely excited that this work of 3 years is finally published in @braistimjournal.bsky.social. Using condition-and-perturb TMS with e-field-based optimized targeting and dosing, we provide causal evidence for hybrid theories of semantic cognition: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

The ‘reading’ brain: Meta-analytic insight into functional activation during reading in adults Literacy provides the key to social contacts, education, and employment, and significantly influences well-being and mental health. Summarizing 163 st…

New meta-analysis on reading in the brain by @sabrinaturker.bsky.social, Beatrice Fumagalli, @gesahartwigsen.bsky.social and myself. We looked for consistent activations across multiple levels - from letters to words to sentences to and text reading. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New cool preprint by @drsandramartin.bsky.social and her colleagues using dual-site TMS over IFG and pre-SMA during semantic and executive control:

Causal Contributions of Left Inferior and Medial Frontal Cortex to Semantic and Executive Control Semantic control guides the targeted and context-based retrieval from semantic memory. The overlap with and dissociation from domain-general executive control in the frontal lobe remains contentious. ...

🧠 How do semantic and executive control dissociate in the frontal lobe? Applying TMS to IFG and pre-SMA, we find:
⚡ Specialization
▸ IFG = semantic (and executive) control
▸ pre-SMA = executive functions
🔄 Compensation between both regions during single-site disruption!
Read more: shorturl.at/UVtRk

Our eye-tracking experiment on cognitive effort modulation by valence and counterfactuality got accepted to #CogSci2025!

Preprint can be found here: arxiv.org/pdf/2502.01597

Co-authors:
@redhenlab.bsky.social @copla.bsky.social @tiagotorrent.com @viridiano.com @fredbelcavello.bsky.social

🔍 Key findings: ✅TMS produces a significant site-specific non-linear increase in HBC. ✅Non-linear interplay between stimulation intensity and pain-related side effects, as well as the repeatability of HBC measurements across sessions Check it out and let us know your thoughts! 🚀

Thrilled to share our latest research with PhD student @zijianfeng.bsky.social and Postdoc @drsandramartin.bsky.social! We investigated TMS-induced heart–brain coupling (HBC) as a potential biomarker for personalized stimulation targets in the left DLPFC: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Executive Resources Shape the Effects of Language Predictability Across the Adult Lifespan Humans predict upcoming language effortlessly, but the cognitive costs of these predictions remain debated. In this study, we demonstrate that limiting executive resources through a concurrent task re...

Co-authored with Merle Schuckart, @gesahartwigsen.bsky.social, and @jonasobleser.bsky.social. Find the preprint with all the really cool methods (n = 175 + replication!) and insights here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #PredictiveProcessing #Aging #LanguagePredictions

Postdoc @drsandramartin.bsky.social presented her research on aging effects on predictive processing in language at the Dallas Aging and Cognition Conference this week. Results show that as we age, we increasingly rely on our internal predictions, possibly as compensation for executive decline. 1/2

New insights into the mechanisms of language recovery after stroke A new study shows how the brain reorganises itself in the first few months after a stroke to improve the ability to speak again. The findings will help researchers understand how functional networks w...

New press release by @unileipzig.bsky.social about our BRAIN paper on connectivity changes during post-stroke aphasia recovery: www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

Excited to share our latest preprint on the retest reliability of measuring 'bilateral' hemispheric language dominance using functional neuroimaging! 🔎🧠🔍 Discover how our findings inform the challenging classification of 'small' asymmetries in brain activation: osf.io/ry4sf_v1

Co-authored with Susanne Triesch-Herrmann, @fredbelcavello.bsky.social, Helen de Andrade, @tiagotorrent.com , @gesahartwigsen.bsky.social & Daniela Sammler.

🚀 Preprint alert! New work by @nicohinrichs.bsky.social, a recent member of our lab, explores multimodal dialogue annotation for neurophysiological mapping of communication—plus insights on speech acts, implicatures & turn-taking: doi.org/10.31234/osf... #Neuropragmatics #CognitiveLinguistics

More from our postdocs! This week @drsandramartin.bsky.social gave a presentation at @mpicbs.bsky.social, charting a new way forward to understand language processing in the aging brain 🍁

New publication from our lab! @sabrinaturker.bsky.social, @philkuhnke.bsky.social, @vincentcheung.bsky.social, Konstantin Weise and @gesahartwigsen.bsky.social show that neurostimulation can improve reading skills in dyslexia, mediated via functional coupling changes within the reading network.

NYAS Publications The left temporo-parietal cortex is critical for phonological decoding during reading and appears hypoactive in dyslexia. Here, we combined facilitatory neurostimulation to this brain region with fun...

Finally published! 🥳 New TMS-fMRI study led by @sabrinaturker.bsky.social shows that temporoparietal stimulation can alleviate dyslexia. This was associated with changes in effective connectivity between left IFG and the visual word form area: doi.org/10.1111/nyas...

Lab meeting time! Last week, @robingerrits.bsky.social, who joined the lab at the end of last year, told us about his future projects, connecting his main research interest, brain laterality, to brain stimulation - fascinating combination! 🧩

New preprint from our lab!! 🥳🍾 With a novel dual-site TMS design, @philkuhnke.bsky.social and his colleagues show that the multimodal left inferior parietal cortex and auditory cortex jointly contribute to sound knowledge retrieval:

🚨 New preprint!! Using condition-and-perturb TMS, we show that functional interaction between multimodal and modality-specific cortices is causally relevant for conceptual knowledge retrieval: ssrn.com/abstract=510...

The "fun" picture:

Hello world! We are the Cognition and Plasticity (CoPla) lab @mpicbs.bsky.social in Leipzig, Germany. Our lab combines neuroimaging methods (like fMRI) with non-invasive brain stimulation (like TMS) to investigate plasticity in cognitive brain networks.

Neuroscience of Language by Gesa Hartwigsen: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.9793d1ae