Hello, my name is Li-Chuan (Matt) Ku (he/him/his).
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL). I received my Ph.D. in Psychology (Cognition and Neural Systems Program), with a minor in Cognitive Science, from the University of Arizona.
Prior to that, I completed an M.A. in English Linguistics, and a B. Eng. in Computer Science and Information Engineering, with a minor in English, at National Taiwan Normal University.
My research interests lie in the cognitive neuroscience of language and emotion. With training in both cognitive neuroscience and linguistics, I specialize in using an individual differences approach to investigate the neurocognitive representation of emotions in written and spoken language. My long-term goal is to develop a comprehensive neurocognitive model of emotional language processing—one that integrates linguistic (e.g., semantics), paralinguistic (e.g., affective prosody), and extra-linguistic factors (e.g., individual differences).
I am currently a member of Brain Rhythms and Cognition, led by Dr. Nicola Molinaro at the BCBL. My postdoctoral project focuses on:
Investigating how musical expertise influences emotional processing in speech and music in noisy environments
Applying neural encoding/decoding methods to reconstruct speech from neuroimaging data, including magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
During my Ph.D. training, I worked under the supervision of Dr. Vicky Lai at the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language lab at the University of Arizona. My dissertation used behavioral and electroencephalogram (EEG) methods to examine how language-emotion interactions change with age. Specifically, I investigated:
Whether emotional features of words are retrieved and represented differently in younger versus older adults
Whether emotional meaning is updated differently across age groups when words are embedded in context
How the age-related positivity bias affects prediction of emotional content in upcoming words
Before my doctoral studies, I worked as a full-time research assistant at the Humor and Creativity Electroencephalograph Laboratory, led by Dr. Hsueh-Chih Chen at National Taiwan Normal University. There, I used EEG and fMRI to study joke comprehension and imagined emotional event generation in native Chinese speakers.
During my M.A. studies, I worked as a part-time research assistant in the Neurolinguistics Lab, led by Dr. Shiao-hui Chan at National Taiwan Normal University. I contributed to a project on Chinese classifier processing, where I was involved in EEG and MEG data collection and preprocessing. This experience sparked my interest in combining linguistics and brain imaging methods.
My CV can be found below:
1. CV_updated_Li Chuan.pdf