DISCOURSE organises periodic learning events and consortium meetings. These are open to all registered members
DISCOURSE Inaugural Seminars started in 2021 as a series of webinars open to all registered members. These are virtual (Zoom) events, led by speaker and a moderator. These seminars provide the key discussion events that influence the developing agenda of DISCOURSE research. Please see below for the dates. Details of registration are available on the Members Resources page after logging in as a registered user on this site. These are free-to-register events with no capacity restriction but we encourage all attendees to register as members of DISCOURSE to be on the mailing list.
All recordings of previous talks are available at:
Upcoming Events
DISCOURSE in Psychosis Consortium - 2nd Satellite Meeting (April 8th, 2024)
Download the full event programme here.
2023-2024 TALKS
Speaker: Hugo Corona Hernández, Iris E Sommer and Lena Palaniyappan
Date: December 8th 2023
Time: 9:00-10:30 AM ET
Speaker: Claudio Palominos and Rui He
Date: November 17th 2023
Time: 9:00-10:30 AM ET
Speaker: Roberto Limongi Ph.D
Date: October 27th 2023
Time: 9:00-10:30am ET
Speakers: Dr Sunny Tang MD, Aarush Mehta, Dr Amir Nikzad MD, Dr. Yan Cong PhD, and Zak Singh
Date: September 27th 2023
Time: 9:00-10:30am ET
Speaker: Rohit Voleti
Date: May 5th 2023
Time: 9:00-10:30am ET
Speaker: Silvia Ciampelli & Janna de Boer
Date: April 14th 2023
Time: 9:00am-10:30am ET
Speaker: Caroline Nettekoven
Date: March 24th 2023
Time: 9:00am-10:30am ET
Speaker: Sebastian Walther
Speaker: Frederike Stein
Date: March 10th 2023
Time: 9:00am-10:30am ET
PAST EVENTS 2023
Program Committee:
Sunny Tang – USA
Natalia Mota – Brasil
Maria Alonso – Canada/Chile
Tuğçe Çabuk – Turkiye
Lena Palaniyappan – Canada
Eric Tan – Singapore
Date: May 11th 2023
Time: TBC
Location: The Westin Harbour Castle Toronto. Virtual attendance option available
This meeting is supported by Tanenbaum Open Science Initiative (TOSI) and Foundation Francois Bourgeois
Talks 2022
Speaker: Natália Mota – Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Speaker: Valentina Bambini – Scuola Universitaria Superiore Iuss Pavia, Italy
Date: June 3 rd 2022
Time: 9-11AM ET; 2-4PM BST; 11PM-1AM AEST
Speaker: Alban Voppel – University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands
Speaker: Eric Tan – Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Date: June 24 th 2022
Time: 8-10AM ET; 1-3PM BST; 10PM-12AM AEST
Speaker: Lena Palaniyappan – McGill University, Canada
Speaker: Philipp Homan – University of Zurich, Switzerland
Date: July 29 th 2022
Time: 8-10AM ET; 1-3PM BST; 10PM-12AM AEST
Speaker: Alberto Parola – Aarhus University, Denmark
Speaker: Visar Berisha – Arizona State University, USA
Date: August 26 th 2022
Time: 6-8PM ET; 11PM-1AM BST; (Aug 27 th ) 8-10AM AEST
Speaker: Wolfram Hinzen – Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Speaker: Claudio Palominos – Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Date: September 30 th 2022
Time: 8-10AM ET; 1-3PM BST; 10PM-12AM AEST
Speaker: Megan Boudewyn – University of California, USA
Speaker: Philip Sumner – Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Date: August 26 th 2022
Time: TBC
Talks 2021
Speaker: Gina Kuperberg – Dennett Stibel Professor in Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Psychiatrist, Massachusetts General Hospital
Discussant: Deb Titone – Canada Research Chair in Language & Multilingualism, Department of Psychology, McGill University
Date: December 17th, 2021
Time: 9-11AM ET
Speaker: Tilo Kircher – Professor of Psychiatry and Chair, Dept. Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
Discussant: Lena Palaniyappan – Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
Date: November 19th, 2021
Time: 9-11AM ET
Speaker: Brian MacWhinney, Department of Psychology Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University
Discussant: Iris Sommer, University Medical Center Groningen
Date: October 29th, 2021
Time: 9-11AM ET
Speakers:
Cheryl Corcoran, Cheryl Corcoran MD is Associate Professor and Program Leader in Psychosis Risk
Guillermo Cecchi, Principal Research Staff Member – Manager, Computational Psychiatry and Neuroimaging – Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY USA
Discussant: Natália Mota, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Date: September 24th, 2021
Time: 9-11AM ET
Speaker: Peter Liddle, Professor of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences University of Nottingham.
Title: ‘The nature of fragmentation in schizophrenia’
Discussant: Peter McKenna – Professor of Psychiatry, FIDMAG, Spain
On Friday 27th August 2021, we commenced the first talk of our DISCOURSE Seminar Series on the precursors, consequences and clinical correlates of fragmentation in schizophrenia, as well as a potential underlying mechanism. The recording of this talk by Prof Peter Liddle can be accessed through this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtqIpWc7t1k
Prof Peter McKenna, as discussant, raised a number of pertinent and outstanding issues which led to a lively and fruitful discussion among attendees. From Prof Liddle’s talk, Prof McKenna raised points around the relationships between disorganization and phenomena such as cognitive impairment, reality distortion and catatonia. In relation to formal thought disorder more broadly, the orthogonality between poverty of speech and poverty of content of speech was debated, alongside evidence for hyperpriming and points of difference between formal thought disorder, frontal lobe-related disorganisation and fluent dysphasia.
Other points raised by attendees included whether the mental representations among individuals with disorganised symptoms were intact, and if problems were just within the maintenance/predictive ability of otherwise functional representations. Furthermore, predictive mechanisms within speech may differ from that in other domains, with some discrepancies between the assumptions of psycholinguistics and predictive coding noted. It might be problematic to established a predictive coding mechanism for language production. The discussion also expanded on the role of different cognitive domains (executive function, semantic memory, theory of mind) in relation to disorganized symptoms. For theory of mind, it was also discussed in relation to discourse/speech markers.
You are highly encouraged to watch this recorded talk and formulate your own opinions on these issues.
We’ll see you at the next talk in this series on Computational Linguistics on Friday 24th September 2021, 9am ET/2pm BST/11pm AEST.