Malathi Thothathiri
Malathi Thothathiri
Associate Professor
Full-time
Contact:
2115 G Street NW
Washington DC 20052
Malathi Thothathiri is an Associate Professor in the Speech and Hearing Science department at GWU. Her research focuses on the neural basis of language and other higher level cognitive functions. Studies in the lab examine three different populations (healthy adults, patients with brain lesions, typically developing children) and employ neuroimaging (fMRI), eye-tracking, and other behavioral methods. Important research questions include the role of language experience in shaping language use, the neural basis of sentence production and language processing, and the interaction between language and cognitive control (or executive function).
Fellow, Psychonomic Society
Member, Cognitive Neuroscience Society
Member, Society for the Neurobiology of Language
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Language Sciences: Neurobiology of Language
Neural bases of language
Interaction between language and other cognitive processes
Aphasia
Language Acquisition
The Neuroscience of Language lab investigates how we understand and produce sentences. Important questions include:
- What role do different brain regions play in syntactic processing? Are these roles specific to language or more general?
- How are different components of language comprehension and production impacted with brain damage?
- How and when do children learn the syntax of their native language?
- SLHS 3116 / PSYC 3116: Brain and Language
- SLHS 3131 / PSYC 2541: Language Acquisition and Development
- SLHS 1071: The Foundations of Human Communication
- Krason, A., Middleton, E. L., Ambrogi, M. E., & Thothathiri, M. (2024). Conflict Adaptation in Aphasia: Upregulating Cognitive Control for Improved Sentence Comprehension. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 67(11), 4411-4430.
- Thothathiri, M., Basnakova, J., Lewis, A. G., & Briand, J. M.* (2024). Fractionating difficulty during sentence comprehension using functional neuroimaging. Cerebral Cortex, 34(2), bhae032. PMCID: PMC10847905.
- Thothathiri, M., Kirkwood, J., Patra, A., Krason, A., & Middleton, E. L. (2023). Multimodal measures of sentence comprehension in agrammatism. Cortex, 169, 309-325. PMCID: PMC10872620.
- Thothathiri, M., & Levshina, N. (2023). Updating constructions: additive effects of prior and current experience during sentence production. Cognitive Linguistics, 34(3-4), 479-502. PMCID: PMC10630066
- Patra, A., Kirkwood, J., Middleton, E. L., & Thothathiri, M. (2023). Variation in how cognitive control modulates sentence processing. Royal Society Open Science, 10(4), 211969. PMCID: PMC10113808.
- Thothathiri, M., & Braiuca, M. C. (2020). Distributional learning in English: The effect of verb-specific biases and verb-general semantic mappings on sentence production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000814
- Thothathiri, M. (2018). Statistical experience and individual cognitive differences modulate neural activity during sentence production. Brain and Language, 183, 47-53.
- Thothathiri, M., Asaro, C.T., Hsu, N.S., & Novick, J.M. (2018). Who did what? A causal role for cognitive control in thematic role assignment during sentence comprehension. Cognition, 178, 162-177.
- Thothathiri, M., & Mauro, K.L. (2017). The relationship between short-term memory, conflict resolution, and sentence comprehension impairments in aphasia. Aphasiology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2017.1350630
- Thothathiri, M., & Rattinger, M. (2015). Ventral and dorsal streams for choosing word order during sentence production. PNAS. 112 (50), 15456-15461. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1514711112.
- Ph.D. in Psychology, 2008, Harvard University