The Spanish Society of Experimental Psychology (SEPEX) has awarded the Best Scientific Publication of the Year 2022 Award in the Young category to Pablo Solana and his thesis supervisor Julio Santiago, researchers at the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC) of the University of Granada, for a study published in the prestigious journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. In this work, the researchers evaluated the reliability of the findings of the studies on the involvement of the motor system in language comprehension. SEPEX proceeded to a review of the three finalist papers by two female researchers and an external researcher, experts in the topic. The experts carried out quantitative and qualitative evaluations of each of the candidate publications.
The jury's evaluation of the work concludes that the award goes to the researchers from Granada "for being an excellent work in which a meta-analysis of 43 articles with 47 total experiments performed with neurostimulation techniques (TMS and tDCS) on a topic of great relevance and interest in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience of Language, such as the hypothesis of embodiment in language comprehension is carried out. The methodology used in this work is remarkable, since it shows an excellent level of care and precision in the recovery of data from each of the studies included in the meta-analysis, being extremely transparent in the exposition of the steps carried out. In addition, the data are analyzed using a new statistical tool (i.e. p-curve analysis), which gives the results a high level of quality and reliability. The article also proposes a series of interesting methodological recommendations to improve the reliability of the results of possible future studies".
In the award-winning publication, the researchers concluded that the results of brain stimulation studies supporting the role of the motor system in language comprehension are not sufficiently reliable. The authors recommend caution in drawing conclusions from them, as well as implementing methodological improvements in future studies, such as the use of larger sample sizes and pre-registration, and avoiding the bias of considering that only studies with significant results are interesting.
References:
Solana, P. & Santiago, J. (2022). Does the involvement of motor cortex in embodied language comprehension stand on solid ground? A p-curve analysis and test for excess significance of the TMS and tDCS evidence. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 141, 104834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104834
Solana, P. & Santiago, J. (2023). Worse than expected: A z-curve reanalysis of motor cortex stimulation studies of embodied language comprehension. Psicológica, 44(2): e15661. https://doi.org/10.20350/digitalCSIC/15661
Contact:
Pablo Solana
Mind Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC)
@email
Julio Santiago
Mind Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC)
@email