What is the neural basis of language acquisition and impairment ?

Professor Timothy Roberts is a radiologist who studies language processing in population with language impairments..

Some of the fundamental questions that Professor Roberts is interested in include:

• Can we describe the spectro-spatio-temporal brain activity that underlies language processing ?
• Can we find evidence for neural anomalies in language circuitry in disorders such as autism spectrum disorder ?
• Can we modify the auditory stream to facilitate brain processing activity and restore language abilities ?
• Are there neural sequelae in the auditory and language systems of specific genetic/genomic alterations in humans ?

Professor Roberts has primarily investigated these questions have been addressed through the neuroimaging technology of magnetoencephalography (MEG) at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (Lurie Family Foundations MEG Imaging Center). Fruitful collaborations with Prof. David Embick (chair, Linguistics) have focused on neural signatures of lexical access and priming (both repetition and semantic) and their behavioral sequelae in typical development and in ASD.

Prof. Roberts has published several hundred manuscripts and received multiple federal (NIH, DoD) research grants in these areas. He has been recognized as a Distinguished Investigator by the Academy of Radiology Research and holds the Oberkircher Family Chair in Pediatric Radiology at CHOP.