Anna Simmonds receives MRC Centenary Award

Congratulations to Anna Simmonds, who has won a MRC Centenary Early Career Award.

Congratulations to Anna Simmonds, who has won a MRC Centenary Early Career Award.

Anna says of her work:

‘My research investigates bilingualism as a motor learning skill, with success ultimately measured in terms of strength of a foreign accent, in contrast to the many studies of bilingualism in terms of linguistic competence.

‘I use functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) imaging to investigate feedforward (motor) and feedback (auditory and somatosensory) systems involved in the production of foreign speech.

‘I am interested in both retrospective proficiency in bilingual participants and in the manipulation of proficiency by training monolingual participants in the production of foreign speech sounds, with scanning pre- and post-training. Although my studies are on normal participants, my results have the potential to translate to studies on impaired speech production that can accompany vascular and neurodegenerative diseases.’