ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory & Practice

Name:

Professor Guillaume Thierry

Position:

Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience

Email:

Location:

Brigantia Building – Room 129

Phone:

+44 (0)1248 388348

Biography

At the end of his studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Professor Thierry gained his PhD in Toulouse under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Francois Demonet in 2000. Shortly after he graduated he was offered a Lectureship in the School of Psychology at Bangor University where he is now a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of School for Teaching and Learning.

Research interests

Using experimental psychology (e.g., reaction times, error patterns), functional brain imaging (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fMRI, and Positron Emission Tomography, PET) and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) Dr Thierry has studied language comprehension in the auditory and visual modalities, and, in particular, semantic access. In the past seven years, Dr Thierry has investigated a range of themes, such as verbal/non-verbal dissociations, visual object recognition, functional cerebral asymmetry, language-emotion interactions, language development, developmental dyslexia and bilingualism. Dr Thierry’s current main interests are (a) the levels of integration of the two languages of bilingual infants and adults at lexical, syntactic and semantic levels, studied using behavioural measurements, ERPs, fMRI and eye-tracking; (b) the mechanisms of semantic priming in both the verbal and nonverbal domains in the infant and the adult using ERPs and fMRI, i.e. the fundamental aspects of neurosemantics.

Selected Publications

Bilingualism

  • Thierry, G. , Athanasopoulos, P., Wiggett, A., Dering, B., Kuipers, J-R. (in press) Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on pre-attentive color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA.
  • Thierry G. and Vihman M. M. (2008). The onset of word form recognition: A behavioural and neurophysiological study. In. A. D. Friederici and G. Thierry (Eds).
  • Early Language Development: Bridging Brain and Behaviour. Series "Trends in Language Acquisition Research" (TiLAR), Volume 5. Amsterdam/The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
  • Thierry, G. & Wu, Y. J. (2007) Brain potentials reveal unconscious translation during foreign language comprehension, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 104:12530-5.
  • Vihman, M. M., Thierry, G. Lum, J., Keren-Portnoy, T. & Martin. P. (2007) Onset of word form recognition in English, Welsh and English-Welsh bilingual infants, Applied Psycholinguistics. 28:475-93.
  • Vihman M., Lum J., Thierry G., Nakai S. & Keren-Portnoi T. (2006) Cross-linguistic experiments in infant word form recognition. In Childhood Bilingualism. P. McCardle & E. Hoff (Eds.) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
  • Thierry G. & Wu, Y. J (2004). Electrophysiological Evidence for Language Interference in Late Bilinguals. Neuroreport. 15: 1555-1558.

Language Comprehension

  • Martin, C, D. & Thierry, G. (2008) . Interplay of orthography and semantics in reading: An ERP study. Neuroreport.
  • Thierry, G. & Kotz, S. A. (2008). The right hemisphere fails to orient to the negative valence of visually presented words. Neuroreport.
  • Thierry G. and Friederici A. D. (2008). Introduction to Early Language Development: Bridging Brain and Behaviour. In. A. D. Friederici and G. Thierry (Eds).
  • Early Language Development: Bridging Brain and Behaviour. Series "Trends in Language Acquisition Research" (TiLAR), Volume 5. Amsterdam/The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
  • Thierry G., Martin C., Gonzalez-Diaz V., Rezzaie R., Roberts N., Davis P.M. (2008). Event-related potential characterisation of the Shakespearean functional shift in narrative sentence structure. Neuroimage 40:923-31.
  • Miles, T. R., Thierry, G., Roberts, J. & Schiffeldrin, J. (2006) Verbatim and gist recall of sentences by dyslexic and non-dyslexic adults. Dyslexia. 12: 177-194.
  • Martin C., Nazir, T., Thierry G., Paulignan, Y. & Démonet, J-F. (2006). Perceptual and lexical effects in letter identification: An Event-Related Potential study of the word superiority effect. Cognitive Brain Research. 1098: 153-60.
  • Thierry G. & Price C. (2006) Dissociating verbal and nonverbal conceptual processing in the human brain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 18: 1018-28.
  • Price C., Thierry G. & Griffiths T. (2005) Auditory Processing Specific to Speech: Where is it? Trends in Cognitive Science. 9: 271-6.
  • Fosker T. & Thierry G. (2005) Phonological oddballs in the focus of attention elicit a normal P3b in dyslexic adults. Brain Research Cognitive Brain Research. 24: 467-75.
  • Tainturier M.J., Tamminen, J. & Thierry G. (2005) Age of acquisition modulates the amplitude of the P300 component in spoken word recognition. Neuroscience Letters. 379: 17-22.
  • Thierry, G. (2005). Review of Dyslexia: Different Brain, Different Behaviour (Edited by Valéria Csépe. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers). Journal of Child Language.
  • Thierry G. (2005). The use of event-related potentials in the study of early cognitive development. Infant Child Development. 14: 85-94.
  • Démonet J.F., Thierry G. & Cardebat D (2005). The renewal of the neurophysiology of language: Functional neuroimaging. Physiological Reviews. 85: 49-95.
  • Fosker T. & Thierry G. (2004). P300 investigation of phoneme change detection in dyslexic adults. Neuroscience letters. 357:171–174.
  • Thierry G., Vihman M. & Roberts M. (2003). Familiar words capture the attention of 11-month-olds in less than 250 ms. Neuroreport. 14:2307-2310.
  • Thierry G., Cardebat D. & Démonet J-F. (2003) Electrophysiological comparison of grammatical processing and semantic processing of single spoken nouns. Brain Research Cognitive Brain Research 17:535-547.
  • Thierry G., Giraud A-L. & Price C. (2003) Hemispheric dissociation in access to the human semantic system. Neuron, 38: 499-506.
  • Thierry G., Ibarrola D., Cardebat D. & Démonet J. F. (2003) Working memory involvement delays haemodynamic responses in the inferior prefrontal cortex. Human Brain Mapping 19: 37-46.
  • Démonet J. F., Thierry G. and J. L. Nespoulous (2001). Towards imaging the neural correlates of language functions. In Phonetics, Phonology, and Cognition. J. Durand and B. Lacks, Eds. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.
  • Démonet J. F. and Thierry G. (2001). Language and brain: What is up? What is coming up? In Functional Neuroimaging and Neuropsychology, D. Silbersweig and E.Stern, Eds. Swets & Zeitlinger: The Netherlands.
  • Démonet J. F. & Thierry G. (2001). Language and brain: What is up? What is coming up? Journal of Clinical Experimental Neuropsychology. 23: 49-73.
  • Thierry G., Boulanouar K., Kherif F., Ranjeva J. P. & Démonet J. F. (1999) Sequential involvement of neural components in phonological processing. Neuroreport. 10:2599-2603.
  • Thierry G., Doyon B. & Démonet J.F. (1998) ERP mapping in phonological and lexical semantic monitoring tasks: a study complementing previous PET results. NeuroImage. 8:391-408.


Other Domains

  • Dering, B., Martin, C. D., and Thierry, G. (2009). Is the N170 peak of visual event-related brain potentials car-selective? Neuroreport.
  • Thierry G. (2008). Neurophysiologic Examination Methods: Electrophysiology and functional neuroimaging. In Cognitive Neurology: A clinical textbook. Oxford University Press.
  • Martin, C., Thierry G., Démonet, J.F., Roberts, M.V., Nazir, T. (2007) ERP evidence for the split fovea theory, Cognitive Brain Research. 1185:212-20.
  • Thierry, G., Martin, C., Downing, P. & Pegna, A. (2007b) Is the N170 sensitive to the human face or several intertwined perceptual and conceptual factors? Nature Neuroscience. 10: 802-3.
  • Thierry, G., Martin, C., Downing, P. & Pegna, A. (2007a) Controlling for interstimulus perceptual variance abolishes N170 face selectivity. Nature Neuroscience. 10: 505-11.
  • Thierry, G. & Roberts, M. V. (2007). Event-related potential study of attention capture by affective sounds. Neuroreport. 18: 245-8.
  • Leek E. C., Atherton C. J. & Thierry G. (2007). Functional mechanisms of two-dimensional visuo-spatial transformation revealed by event-related potentials. Journal of Vision. 47: 706-13.
  • Thierry G., Pegna A. J., Dodds C., Roberts M., Basan S., & Downing P. (2006). An event-related potential component sensitive to images of the human body. Neuroimage 32: 871-9.
  • Baghurst T., Thierry G. & Holder T. (2004). Evidence for a Relationship between Attentional Styles and Effective Cognitive Strategies during Performance. Athletic Insight, 6.
  • Thierry G. & Démonet J.F (2000) La mémoire: Apports de l'imagerie fonctionnelle. Therapy. 55: 467-476.

Other information

Invited Keynotes and Symposia at conferences
Thierry G. and Vihman, M. M. (2007) The onset of word recognition and comprehension in English and Welsh Infants. Invited Symposium at the BPS Developmental Branch conference, Plymouth, UK.


Thierry, G. (2002) Functional imaging of semantic memory. Invited presentation at the “Journées de neurologie de langue française”, Tours, France.


Thierry G., Boulanouar K., Kherif F., Ranjeva J. P. and Démonet J. F. (1999). Is Event-Related fMRI the Key to the Temporality of Linguistic Brain Activations? Symposium at the SPR conference, Granada, Spain.

Teaching Activities


• Psychology Oral Presentation Practice Scheme (Year 1-3) 2000 – 2001
• Brain and Behaviour (Year 1) 2001– present
• Practical Foundations (Year 2) 2000 – 2002
• Cognitive Neuroscience (Year 3) 2000 – 2004
• Cognitive Neuroscience of Language (Year 3 - Masters) 2002 – 2004
• Brain and Language (Year 3)2004 – present
• Conception and implementation of the Brain Illusion Teaser

 

Other Professional Activities and Awards

Deputy Head of School for Teaching, Learning and Professional Development, School of Psychology, Bangor University.

Chair of the Third Mission Group, Wales Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.


Visiting Scholar, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, USA (April 2007)


Visiting Fellow, Max Plank Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. (May 2004 & 2005).


Brain Awareness Week Award, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council for the public lecture ‘Braintrix: Perceiving the world through our neurofilter’ (March 2004)


Professeur agrégé de Sciences de la Vie et de la Terre (July 1994).

Languages spoken


French (Native), English (Fluent), German (Bases).

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