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

語言與「生老病死」. 「實驗語言學+」雲上論壇. Prof. Shi Feng of Nankai University (online), 13 March 2023.

Abstract
The advancement of medicine has greatly extended the life span of human beings, but it has also greatly increased the risk of various diseases, the most common being Alzheimer's disease. Although medicine has so far been unable to cure these diseases, we have begun to understand the long process of a decade or two before the onset. The patient's speech rhythm gets slower, the ability to find words is reduced, with the target words being difficultly retrieved, and the ability to understand complex grammatical sentences also gets worse. Our team at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University uses different language behavior experiments and neuroimaging methods to study these key issues, hoping to deepen the understanding of language and the brain on the one hand, and help to deal with the severe challenge of human aging on the other hand.