Dr. Marjorie Lorch

Dr. Marjorie Lorch, Senior Lecturer in Neurolinguistics at Birkbeck College, University of London, visited Emory during the Spring Semester, 2007, as a visiting Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Professor in Science & Society. During her time at Emory she conducted several faculty and student meetings and presented a seminar open to the Emory community. The main focus of her presentations was her work at the border of the neuroscience, history, and culture.

Dr. Lorch's lecture, "The Multilingual Brain: How Language is Organized in the Brain" was held on February 8, 2007 in the Jones Room of the Woodruff Library. Her talk explored how the ability to speak more than one language has provided researchers over the centuries with evidence about memory and thought on the one hand and the plasticity and maturation of brain physiology on the other. How language is organized in the brain has been an issue of fascination for the past 150 years.  New brain imaging techniques are currently being employed to address questions about the neurological correlates of second language acquisition.  Consideration of the bilingual brain affords the opportunity to examine ideas about the genetic determination of human behavior and the role of cultural learning in cognitive organization.

Dr. Lorch received her Ph.D. in Language Behavior (Neurolinguistics) from the Interdisciplinary Program in Linguistics, Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston University. She has authored over 130 scientific papers. Her research spans linguistics, neurology, speech therapy, psychology, and history of ideas with the specific focus being the understanding of how language in organized in the brain.

Lorch's web site at Birkbeck College is: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/llc/subjects/applied_linguistics/appli_staff/mpl