Date: Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Time: 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm 
Location: Seminar Room 3189
Pizza will be provided

Title: Reading and language development: A cross-linguistic perspective

Bio: Professor Li-Hai Tan received his Ph.D. in psycholinguistics from the University of Hong Kong in 1995. Following post-doctoral research training in Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh where he worked with Chuck Perfetti, he worked in University of Hong Kong during 1999-2014, where he was tenured professor on 2007. Prof. Tan has performed research in the field of psycholinguistics and neuroscience at the University of Hong Kong, the Research Imaging Center of the University of Texas Health Science Center, University of Pittsburgh, Intramural Research Programs of the National Institute of Mental Health of NIH, and Chinese Academy of Sciences. He founded the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Hong Kong in 2005 and served as its director until 2014. He is a member of the national panel of China's brain initiative (2016-2019; 2020-present) and has been playing a leading role in planning, executing, and monitoring the national projects of China. In addition, he is an associate editor of Science Advances, a journal in the Science family of journals, and an editorial board member of Human Brain Mapping, Brain and Language, Culture and Brain, and Contemporary Linguistics. Professor Tan has been working in the Guangdong-Hongkong-Macau Institute of CNS Regeneration at Jinan University (Shenzhen).His main research interest is to use neuroimaging, intracranial neurophysiological recording, and cognitive techniques to investigate neuroanatomical and cognitive mechanisms underlying language processing, language learning, reading disorders, memory, and attention. His work has been supported by China's stratigic basic research program ('973' program), China's brain initiative, and Hong Kong research grants council. The studies conducted by Prof. Tan and his collaborators have shown that the left middle frontal gyrus responsible for verbal working memory critically mediates Chinese character recognition, whereas the left posterior temporoparietal regions critical for English reading are less involved in Chinese reading. He also demonstrated that the neural systems for Chinese and English reading are shaped by learning experience of the two written languages and that activity levels of the left middle frontal cortex serve as a neurobiological marker of Chinese dyslexia. His current work is focused on the study of the neural and genetic basis for reading and translating the basic research findings into clinical practice.