People
Group Leader
Prof. Dr. Alexis Hervais-Adelman
Alexis Hervais-Adelman is head of the Neurolinguistics Team at the Psychology Department of the University of Zurich where he worked full-time from 2018 to 2023. He is now Assistant Professor and head of the Dynamics of Brain and Language Lab at the University of Geneva and continues to work at the University of Zurich. His research uses several approaches to elucidate the brain networks of language, and interventions that might serve to train and improve them. His team deploys multiple neuroimaging and behavioural methods methods to investigate the brain networks of extreme language - be it the perception of acoustically challenging speech, or the challenges posed by multilingualism.
He began his academic career at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his doctoral degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2008, for his thesis entitled “The perceptual learning of degraded speech”. Subsequently he worked at the Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing, Cambridge University Department of Physiology, investigating the representation of speech sounds in human auditory cortex. In 2009 he moved to the University of Geneva where he held positions in the Fundamental Neuroscience Department and the Department of Interpreting. There, he worked extensively on the neuroscience of simultaneous interpreting in order to reveal the brain networks that allow interpreters to carry out their highly challenging multilingual work and has examined the consequences of expertise in simultaneous interpretation for the brain. Subsequently, he became a member of research staff at the Neurobiology of Language group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. There he became involved in several projects investigating diverse aspects of the human language faculty.
Post-Doctoral Researchers
Dr. Alejandra M. Hüsser
Alejandra M. Hüsser is a postdoctoral researcher in the Neurolinguistics group at the University of Zurich. Her research interests are neurodevelopment, functional brain networks, neuropathologies, and brain plasticity in children and adolescents.
She holds a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Université de Montréal, Canada, for her where she investigated cerebral language networks in paediatric patients with epilepsy. Her work involved functional neuroimaging using electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to assess language processing. She also has experience in neuropsychological assessments of children and adults both in clinical and scientific settings.As a post-doctoral fellow, Alejandra focuses on the early development of cerebral networks involved in speech production, with a particular interest in prenatal and neonatal brain dynamics of key brain regions related to early vocalisations.
Her work aims to increase understanding of the developmental trajectory of cerebral speech processing, to shed light on how characteristics of the foetal and infant brain relate to early vocalisations and language development.
Dr. Natalia Bekemeier
Natalia Bekemeier is a postdoctoral researcher at the Zurich Center for Linguistics (LiZZ) of the University of Zurich. Her research interests lie within the area of semantic and morphosyntactic processes underlying language comprehension.
Natalia received her PhD in Linguistics in 2016 at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Her doctoral thesis “On the Representation and Processing of Phonological Stem Variants of Complex Words” employed electroencephalography (EEG) in a series of cross-linguistic studies ranging from single-word to sentence level presentation. Upon receiving her PhD, Natalia joined the CRC 991 at the Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf to investigate the structure of representations in language, cognition, and science, where she conducted several EEG, behavioral and eye-tracking studies focused on conceptual knowledge, mass-count distinction, and determiner/quantifier processing.
In 2023, Natalia moved to the Zurich Center for Linguistics (LiZZ) of the University of Zurich to work on the SNF-funded project “Prototypes and Parts-of-Speech (ProPoS): A cross-linguistic, multi-methods approach to categorization with a focus on Adjectives”. In this project, she uses magnetoencephalography (MEG) to elucidate neurobiological correlates of the core parts of speech, such as noun, verb and adjective, and to investigate the contribution of part-of-speech information to the phrase structure building in three typologically different languages: English, Basque and Mandarin Chinese.
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Dr. Zirui Huang
Zirui Huang is a postdoctoral researcher at the Linguistic Research Infrastructure at the University of Zurich. Her current research focuses on the cross-linguistic neural basis of prototype adjectives, combining neurolinguistic methods such as MEG with computational modelling. Through this work, she aims to identify distinct mental representations of adjectives and to investigate whether part-of-speech information can serve as a predictive variable in modelling brain responses during language processing.
Prior to her current position, Zirui obtained both her M.Phil and D.Phil from the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral research examined phrase-level language comprehension, with a particular focus on classifier phrases, as well as sentence-level comprehension, especially long-distance dependency formation. Her work draws on behavioural methods such as self-paced reading and eye-tracking, alongside neurophysiological techniques including M/EEG and MRI.
Dr. Christopher Ritter
Christopher Ritter is a postdoctoral researcher in the Neurolinguistics lab at the University of Zürich (UZH). In his current project he is investigating how language contour of infant cries affects caretakers and non-caretakers perceive said cries and how a familiar language contour may mitigate the cry roughness.
After completing his doctorate on the neurobiological basis of major depressive disorder at the University of Zürich in 2022, he went on to research structural and functional networks in prematurely born children who either received erythropoietin or placebo as a postdoctoral researcher at the Children’s Hospital Zürich.
Over the course of his career, he was able to accumulate experience with a broad array of MRI techniques including magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), arterial spin labelling (ASL), functional MRI (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI).
Dr. Sophie Slaats
Sophie Slaats is a postdoctoral researcher in the Dynamics of Brain and Language lab. Her research focuses on neural readouts of linguistic representations during spoken language comprehension, with a focus on syntactic structure building and lexical probability. She uses encoding models of neural timeseries data such as magnetoencephalography and intracranial EEG, as well as reaction time experiments, and computational modeling.
Before arriving in Geneva, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics as a predoctoral researcher in the research group Language and Computation in Neural Systems and the Psychology of Language department. She obtained her PhD from Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) in 2024, with a thesis entitled “On the interplay between lexical probability and syntactic structure in language comprehension”. She holds master’s degrees in Cognitive Neuroscience of Language from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (San Sebastián, Spain) and in Linguistics from Utrecht University (Utrecht, the Netherlands).
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Dr. Maël Mauchand
Maël Mauchand is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Geneva. He completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Marc D. Pell in 2023. His thesis focused on the neural basis of empathy in vocal interactions and investigated how emotive voices elicit empathic responses in various social and cultural contexts, using EEG and fMRI.
In 2023, Maël moved to the University of Geneva as a postdoctoral researcher, first at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA) where he investigated vocal emotions expression and perception using developmental, comparative, and neuroimaging techniques. In 2026, he then joined the Dynamics of Brain and Language lab as part of the NCCR Evolving language, to study how neural representations of vocal identity emerge in complex conversational settings, using MEG. His research combines neuroscience, acoustics, affective psychology, and pragmatics to explore the various interpersonal roles of the voice in social contexts.
Doctoral Researchers
Idil Gemici-Demircan
Idil Gemici-Demircan is a doctoral candidate in the Dynamics of Brain and Language Lab and in the Lemanic Neuroscience Doctoral School (LNDS) at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses on the neuroscience of sign language processing in the multilingual brain. Using fMRI, her doctoral research investigates the neural mechanisms of cross-modal interpreting in early bimodal bilinguals, and explores brain networks of multilingualism including sign languages.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Idil obtained her MA in Cognitive Science and Language at the University of Barcelona, Spain. Her thesis investigated the development of motor control networks in rhesus macaques and its relation to vocal control, under the supervision of Prof. Cedric Boeckx. She also worked as a doctoral researcher and lab manager for the Ergin Language Lab at Boğaziçi University, Turkey, where she investigated the emergence and development of sign languages in the absence of conventional linguistic input, together with Dr. Rabia Ergin.
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Martina Đorđijević
Martina Đorđijević is a PhD candidate in the Dynamics of Brain and Language Lab, at the University of Geneva, and a member of the Lemanic Neuroscience Doctoral School PhD Program. She is currently working in the SNF-funded project Prototypes and Parts-of-Speech (ProPoS): A Cross-Linguistic, Multi-Methods Approach to Categorization with a Focus on Adjectives. Her research investigates the neural mechanisms underlying syntactic structure building during language comprehension. Using EEG, she examines how grammatical structure influences word recognition and how structural information is computed under rapid parallel visual presentation regime. More broadly, her work explores the interaction between syntax, semantics, and task demands in shaping real-time language processing.
Previously, Martina completed her MA in Cognitive Sciences at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where her thesis examined the impact of gesture types on memory recall in everyday storytelling under the guidance of Dr. Louis de Saussure. Additionally, Martina’s research background includes contributing to a project optimizing rehabilitation strategies for individuals with single-sided deafness, and conducting an observational study on curiosity and cue inhibition.
Assistants and Interns
Master’s Students
Maya Thille
Maya Thille is a Masters student in the lab completing her degree in Neuroscience at the University of Geneva. She is currently working on a project Trilingual Language Interactions During Production. This project investigates intrusions, or errors produced, during a trilingual picture naming task to tease apart inhibitory language control as a function of the language’s age of acquisition and proficiency.
Previously, Maya graduated with her BS in Neuroscience from the University of South Carolina Honors College, USA, where she completed her thesis on the effect of test anxiety on measures of heart rate variability under the supervision of Dr. Scott Decker. Additionally, Maya has contributed to projects looking at rehabilitation in patients with aphasia as well as neurodevelopmental trajectories in children with Fragile X syndrome.