Natural reading in controlled semantic cognition

This work aims at expanding our understanding of semantic cognition with a methodology still not implemented in the study of controlled semantic cognition. Oculomotor behaviour might be particularly important for aiming at more ecologically valid experiments as well as potentially supporting Semantic Dementia diagnosis with a relatively fast and economic procedure. The broad goal of my PhD is to contribute to understanding how reading works with an online investigation, bringing together behavioural (i.e., eye movements), neurostimulation (e.g., TMS) and physiological (i.e., EEG/MEG) methods to understand more deeply semantic cognition. The questions which I want to try to answer can be summarised as follows: Are the same networks proposed in the CSC framework still crucial when moving at the sentence level? How does semantic control and representations interact in the integration of meaning at the sentence level? Possible clinical applications: most studies investigating oculomotor behaviour in neurodegenerative diseases have focused on visual search, which might not be the most appropriate paradigm to investigate oculomotor behaviour in SD patients. An rTMS study in natural reading targeting the ATL, therefore paralleling the symptoms of these patients, might guide future research aiming to an early diagnosis.