Prof. William S-Y. WANG, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies

A Journey into language: evolution, cognition, and neuroscience. Research Grants Council Public Lecture (Presented with Dr Manson Cheuk-Man Fong). Research Grants Council, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Science Museum, 12 November 2022

Abstract
Humans are but one of the numerous species on our Earth. Yet indisputably, we have become “Masters of the Planet”, having ventured into every part of the world and have started to systematically venture beyond. A primary reason for this remarkable success is due to the invention of language. In this talk, we survey the evolutionary history of human beings that has made language possible, the cognitive and neural bases of language, the brain changes in normal and pathological ageing, and how they impact our language functions. Along the way, we discuss our related ongoing research projects on brain age estimation, language comprehension, foreign language learning, etc.