Poster #1 by coincidence
This September I had the chance to present my latest research at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL 2025). It was held at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. My poster was assigned the very first ID. Yes, I was #1 during my session, which meant it was placed right at the entrance. That prime location brought a constant stream of visitors. By the end of the session, I had probably given my walk-through more than twenty times. I’ve never spoken with so many people during a single poster session before!
My poster content
The work I presented asked a deceptively simple question: what role does the brain’s language network play in computer programming? We know programming mostly recruits the brain’s reasoning networks, but our data suggest that the language system lends support, it’s almost like an “assistive technology.” In our study, students who had just finished their first semester of Python read either short programs or equivalent pseudocode while in the MRI scanner. Although the language regions were not strongly active overall, their responses were early and allowed us to reliably tell apart “for” loops from “if” conditionals in language-selective cortex, regardless of whether they were expressed in code or plain English.
Surprise connection
SNL was memorable not only for the science but also for the people. For some time, my lab colleague Miriam had told me that in her previous lab at NYU, there was another Taiwanese researcher who already knew me, even though I couldn’t think of anyone I knew at NYU. At this year’s meeting, I finally met the “mysterious Taiwanese”: Dr. Chia-Ho Lai, a former student of Dr. Chia-Lin Lee at National Taiwan University. Back when I was doing my master’s degree at NTU, I took Dr. Lee’s EEG neurolinguistics course and was known for lively class participation. Apparently Dr. Lee had shared some of those stories, so Dr. Lai knew about me long before we met. Mystery solved, and I’m glad to now know this wonderful colleague in person.
