In the following sub-pages, you can find introductions to the research projects I have worked on and published. Please click the pictures to visit the respective sub-pages of these projects.
Code Comprehension
Computer programming is the building block of our information society, but it is an ability our brain has not evolved to support. What’s going on in programmers’ brains that allows them to understand programming code? In this MRI experiment, I invited expert programmers to read some Python code and solve some linguistic and logical puzzles. I then compared the neural activation pattern during these activities, and I found……
Braille reading
Blind readers use a tactile reading systems consisting of raised dot arrays: braille. How does the human brain implement reading by touch? In this MRI experiment, I explored the neural mechanism engaged during the processing of braille spelling. I found such a region close to the tactile perception region in the brain. What’s more, in this region, the response to braille spelling is dissociable from the response to tactile complexity (the number of raised dots in a braille word). This regions is……
Shared experience
When a group of people watch the same movie or listen to the same story, the activity in some parts of their brains go in sync. Such synchronized activity tells us something about their shared experience. In this project, I combed through a big dataset containing the neural response of many people listening to many different stories, and constructed a “shared response model” to help identify which segment of neural activity corresponds to which part of a story. The performance of this model is……
Natural reading
When we read, we intuitively know the gists of some articles are easier to digest, and we’re also aware that writers use different tones for different genres. A narrative feels very different from a piece of news. A machine-translated article – especially pre-neural network technology – is just awkward compared to professional human translation. In this MRI experiment, I seek the neural responses to these high-level properties of reading materials; namely, “genre” and “readability”. Interestingly……
