Laboratory for Cognitive Brain Research
Department of Cognitive Sciences
University of California
Irvine, CA 92697

E-mail: s.m.wilson@uci.edu

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory for Cognitive Brain Research directed by Dr. Gregory Hickok, at the University of California, Irvine. I am interested in the cognitive neuroscience of language, especially speech perception. I am also interested in linguistics, where the languages I have worked on most are Turkish and Wagiman.

Education

Postdoctoral researcher, University of California, Irvine, 2006-

Ph.D. in Neuroscience, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006. Dissertation title: "Neuroimaging studies of the role of speech motor areas in speech perception".

M.A. in Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, 2002.

B.A. (Hons) in Linguistics, University of Sydney, 1997.

Papers, etc.

Wilson, S. M. & Iacoboni, M. (2006). Neural responses to non-native phonemes varying in producibility: evidence for the sensorimotor nature of speech perception. NeuroImage, 33, 316-325. [pdf]

Aziz-Zadeh, L., Wilson, S. M., Rizzolatti, G., & Iacoboni, M. (2006). Congruent embodied representations for visually presented actions and linguistic phrases describing actions. Current Biology, 16, 1818-1823. [pdf]

Iacoboni, M. & Wilson, S. (2006). Beyond a single area: motor control and language within a neural architecture for imitation encompassing Broca's area. Cortex, 43, 503-506.

Wilson, S. M., Saygin, A. P., Sereno, M. I., & Iacoboni, M. (2004). Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 701-702. [pdf | sup1 | sup2]

Wilson, S. M. & Saygin, A. P. (2004). Grammaticality judgment in aphasia: deficits are not specific to syntactic structures, aphasic syndromes or lesion sites. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 238-252. [pdf]

Aziz-Zadeh, L., Iacoboni, M., Zaidel, E., Wilson, S., & Mazziotta, J. (2004). Left hemisphere motor facilitation in response to manual action sounds. European Journal of Neuroscience, 19, 2609-2612.

Saygin, A. P., Wilson, S. M., Hagler, D., Bates, E., & Sereno, M. I. (2004). Point-light biological motion perception activates human premotor cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 6181-6188.

Saygin, A. P., Wilson, S. M., Dronkers, N. F., & Bates, E. (2004). Action comprehension in aphasia: Linguistic and non-linguistic deficits and their lesion correlates. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1788-1804.

Bates, E., Wilson, S. M., Saygin, A. P., Dick, F., Sereno, M. I., Knight, R. T. & Dronkers, N. F. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 448-450. [pdf]

Saygin, A. P., Dick, F., Wilson, S. M., Dronkers, N. F. & Bates, E. (2003). Neural resources for processing language and environmental sounds: Evidence from aphasia. Brain, 126, 928-945.

Wilson, S. M. (2003). A phonetic study of voiced, voiceless and alternating stops in Turkish. CRL Newsletter, 15(1), 1-13. [pdf]

Wilson, S. (2003). Lexically specific constructions in the acquisition of inflection in English. Journal of Child Language, 30, 75-115. [pdf]

Wilson, S. & Saygin, A. P. (2003). Adverbs and functional heads in Turkish: Linear order and scope. In Carmichael, L., Huang, C.-H., & Samiian, V. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2001 Western Conference in Linguistics (vol. 13). Fresno, CA: CSU Publications. [pdf]

Wilson, S. M., Saygin, A. P., Schleicher, E., Dick, F., & Bates, E. (2003). Grammaticality judgment under non-optimal processing conditions: Deficits induced in normal participants resemble those observed in aphasic patients. Brain and Language, 87, 67-68. [pdf]

Saygin, A. P. & Wilson, S. (2002). Paradigm reanalysis and the representation of morphologically complex words in Turkish. In M. Andronis, E. Debenport, A. Pycha, & K. Yoshimura (Eds.), CLS 38-2: The panels (pp. 285-298). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. [pdf]

Wilson, S. (2002). A computer program to assist in learning a morphologically complex language. Paper presented at the UC Language Consortium Conference on Language Learning and Teaching, University of California, Irvine, March 9, 2002. [abstract]

Wilson, S. (2002). A neural network with delay lines for modeling the time course of word recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Suppl: 157. [poster]

Wilson, S. (1999). Coverbs and Complex Predicates in Wagiman. Stanford: CSLI Publications. [abstract | buy]

Wilson, S., & Harvey, M. (1999). Wagiman dictionary. MS: University of Sydney and University of Newcastle. [online version]

Wilson, S. (1998). Wakgala mahan matjjin Wagiman: Stories in the Wagiman language of Australia's Northern Territory. Katherine: Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation.

Wagiman

Please visit the Wagiman online dictionary. Wagiman is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in Australia's Northern Territory, which I have worked on for several years. This web site contains an online dictionary of Wagiman, as well as general information about the language and some texts.

Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM)

This is a technique for analyzing the relationship between brain lesions and behavioral deficits in order to make inferences about the role of different brain regions in cognition. The VLSM web site provides information, links, and you can download the software. And here you can download some slides which provide an introduction to VLSM.