A team of Taiwan neuroscientists led by Academia Sinica Academician Ovid J. L. Tzeng spoke at the 17th annual meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP) in San Sebastian, Spain on October 1. The six researchers gave a joint presentation which detailed the brain processes involved in reading Chinese characters. The lecture, entitled “Orthographic Variation and Brain Processes: A non-alphabetic perspective” was expected to be attended by leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience.

The members of the Laboratories for Cognitive Neuroscience (LCN), which was established by Academician Tzeng, have published several prominent studies on issues relating to cross-language comparison of dyslexia and the reading process of Chinese characters. Their work has attracted much attention internationally, and has provided valuable contributions to the theories of reading mechanisms in the brain, which were previously mainly based on empirical findings from alphabetic languages. Because of significant distinctions between Chinese and other alphabetic writing systems, exploring the reading process of Chinese and comparing the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of different languages is important to help scientists uncover the diversity of human cognition and build comprehensive theoretical frameworks.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to show the dedication and achievements of the Taiwanese team on studying the reading process of Chinese to European researchers in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience”, said Academician Tzeng.

The ESCoP was founded in 1985 by scientists from the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium to represent a balanced perspective on psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, whose directions were dominated by researchers in the United States. The ESCoP promotes interaction among cognitive neuroscientists in European countries and the development of related research fields. The ESCoP has more than 500 members in more than 20 countries in Europe, including the leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience. This year’s ESCoP annual meeting was hosted by the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL).

Academician Ovid Tzeng specializes in cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and neurolinguistics and has been dedicated to the development and advance of empirical research on mind and brain sciences in Taiwan for many years. He founded the first research center of cognitive science in National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan (1990), created the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the National Yang Ming University, and promoted the establishment of the first graduate institute of cognitive neuroscience in National Central University (2003). He built the Magnetoencephalography Laboratory at Academia Sinica, and has facilitated the integration of different neuroimaging tools. He has also initiated the research platform extending across universities and international collaborations linking researchers in different countries.

In addition to Academician Ovid Tzeng, the presenters at the symposium were, in the order of presentation, Associate Professor Jun Ren Lee (Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University), Associate Investigator Chia-Ying Lee (Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica), Associate Professor Nissen W. J. Kuo (Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University), Associate Professor Denise H. Wu (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University), and Assistant Professor Jie-Li Tsai (Institute of Psychology, National Chengchi University). Other members of this team, including Professor Chi-Hung Juan, Associate Professor Shih-kune Cheng, Assistant Professor Erik C. Chang, Assistant Professor I-Hui Hsieh (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Central University), and Associate Professor Angela K. Tzeng (Department of Psychology, Chung Yuan Christian University), also present their research.
    Related Websites:
    http://www.bcbl.eu/events/escop2011/conference/verdetalle/1301993720
    http://www.bcbl.eu/events/escop2011/
    http://www.escop.eu/