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Dr. Harm Brouwer
Dr. Harm Brouwer

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Associate Professor in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence (tenured, ius promovendi) (2022 —)
— Research Unit Leader | Computational Models of Brain and Behavior (2024 —)
— Principal Investigator (PI) | Neurocomputation of Language lab (2022 —)
Department of Cognitive Science and Articifial Intelligence, Tilburg University

Scientific Staff (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) (2014 – 2022)
— Principal Investigator (PI) | CRC1102/IDeaL (2018 – 2022)
— Marie Curie "Experienced Researcher" Fellow (EU Marie Curie ITN LanPercept) (2014 – 2016)
Department of Language Science and Technology (Psycholinguistics), Saarland University

PhD, Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Groningen (2010 – 2014)
cum laude (highest possible distinction)
— Robert J. Glushko Prize for outstanding dissertation in cognitive science (2015)

MSc, Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences (research master), University of Groningen (2008 – 2010)
cum laude (highest possible distinction)

BA, Information Science ('Computational Linguistics'), University of Groningen (2005 – 2008)
cum laude (highest possible distinction)

Email: me-at-hbrouwer.eu

Work address: Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University
Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB Tilburg, Dante Building, Room D 133

latest updates

27.09.2024 | Job opening: PhD-Researcher and Lecturer, Neurocomputation of Language, Tilburg University (1.0 fte, six years) (open until filled)

10.07.2024 | 2024 Scholar Metrics: Event-related potentials index lexical retrieval (N400) and integration (P600) during language comprehension is the most cited paper in Brain and Cognition (2019-2024)

10.06.2024 | New paper: On the limits of LLM Surprisal as functional explanation of ERPs (CogSci 2024)

12.04.2024 | Podcast: Neurocomputation of Language - TAISIG Talks - Tilburg University (Recorded: 04.04.2024)

19.01.2024 | PhD defense: Christoph Aurnhammer defended his thesis Expectation-based Retrieval and Integration in Language Comprehension (summa cum laude—highest possible distinction)

11.10.2023 | Symposium: Decoding your Thoughts: Can AI read your Mind? - Studium Generale - Tilburg University (Recorded: 21.09.2023)

publications

submitted / under revision

  1. Delogu, F., Aurnhammer, C., Brouwer, H., and Crocker, M. W. (submitted). On the biphasic nature of the N400-P600 complex underlying language comprehension.

accepted / in press

  1. Venhuizen, N. J. and Brouwer, H. (in press). Referential Retrieval and Integration in Language Comprehension: An Electrophysiological Perspective. Psychological Review.

journal articles

  1. Aurnhammer, C., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2023). Single-trial Neurodynamics Reveal N400 and P600 Coupling in Language Comprehension. Cognitive Neurodynamics. doi: 10.1007/s11571-023-09983-7 [pdf] [code] [data]

  2. Aurnhammer, C., Delogu, F., Brouwer, H., and Crocker, M. W. (2023). The P600 as a Continuous Index of Integration Effort. Psychophysiology, 2023;60:e14302. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14302 [pdf] [code] [data]

  3. Venhuizen, N. J., Hendriks, P., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2022). Distributional Formal Semantics. Information and Computation, 287: 104763. doi: 10.1016/j.ic.2021.104763 [pdf]

  4. Aurnhammer, C., Delogu, F., Schulz, M., Brouwer, H., and Crocker, M. W. (2021). Retrieval (N400) and Integration (P600) in Expectation-based Comprehension. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0257430. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257430 [pdf] [code] [data]

  5. Calvillo, J., Brouwer, H., and Crocker, M. W. (2021). Semantic Systematicity in Connectionist Language Production. Information, 12(8), 329. doi: 10.3390/info12080329 [pdf] [code]

  6. Delogu, F., Brouwer, H., and Crocker, M. W. (2021). When components collide: Spatiotemporal overlap of the N400 and P600 in language comprehension. Brain Research, 1766. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2021.147514 [pdf] [code] [data]

  7. Brouwer, H., Delogu, F., Venhuizen, N. J., and Crocker, M. W. (2021). Neurobehavioral Correlates of Surprisal in Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model. Frontiers in Psychology 12:110. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.615538 [pdf] [data]

  8. Brouwer, H., Delogu, F., and Crocker, M. W. (2021). Splitting Event-Related Potentials: Modeling Latent Components using Regression-based Waveform Estimation. European Journal of Neuroscience, 53, pp. 974-995. doi: 10.1111/ejn.14961 [pdf] [code] [data]

  9. Venhuizen, N. J., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2019). Semantic Entropy in Language Comprehension. Entropy, 21(12), 1159. doi: 10.3390/e21121159 [pdf]

  10. Delogu, F., Brouwer, H., and Crocker, M. W. (2019). Event-related potentials index lexical retrieval (N400) and integration (P600) during language comprehension. Brain and Cognition, 135. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2019.05.007 [pdf] [data]

  11. Venhuizen, N. J., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2019). Expectation-based Comprehension: Modeling the interaction of world knowledge and linguistic experience. Discourse Processes, 56:3, pp. 229-255. doi: 10.1080/0163853X.2018.1448677 [pdf]

  12. Venhuizen, N. J., Bos, J., Hendriks, P., and Brouwer, H. (2018). Discourse Semantics with Information Structure. Journal of Semantics, 35(1), pp. 127-169. doi: 10.1093/jos/ffx017 [pdf]

  13. Khachatryan, E., Brouwer, H., Staljanssens, W., Carrette, E., Meurs, A., Boon, P., Van Roost, D., and Van Hulle, M. (2018). A New Insight into Sentence Comprehension: the Impact of Word Associations in Sentence Processing as Shown by Invasive EEG Recording. Neuropsychologia, 108, pp. 103-116. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.12.002 [pdf]

  14. Brouwer, H. and Crocker, M. W. (2017). On the proper treatment of the N400 and P600 in language comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology 8:1327. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01327 [pdf]

  15. Brouwer, H., Crocker M. W., Venhuizen, N. J., and Hoeks, J. C. J. (2017). A Neurocomputational Model of the N400 and the P600 in Language Processing. Cognitive Science, 41(S6), pp. 1318-1352. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12461 [pdf] [supporting information]

  16. Brouwer, H. and Crocker, M. W. (2016). On the Organization of the Perisylvian Cortex: Insights from the Electrophysiology of Language. Comment on "Towards a Computational Comparative Neuroprimatology: Framing the language-ready brain" by M.A. Arbib. Physics of Life Reviews, 16, pp. 58-60. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2015.12.006 [pdf]

  17. Brouwer, H. and Hoeks J. C. J. (2013). A Time and Place for Language Comprehension: Mapping the N400 and the P600 to a Minimal Cortical Network. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7:758. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00758 [pdf]

  18. Hoeks, J. C. J., Stowe, L. A., Hendriks, P., and Brouwer, H. (2013). Questions left unanswered: How the brain responds to missing information. PLoS ONE, 8(10): e73594. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073594 [pdf] [materials]

  19. Brouwer, H., Fitz, H., and Hoeks, J. C. J. (2012). Getting real about Semantic Illusions: Rethinking the functional role of the P600 in language comprehension. Brain Research, 1446, pp. 127-143. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2012.01.055 [pdf]

book chapters

  1. Crocker, M. W. and Brouwer, H. (2023). Computational Psycholinguistics. In: Sun, R. (Ed.)., Cambridge Handbook of Computational Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. [pdf]

  2. Brouwer, H., Crocker, M. W., and Venhuizen, N. J. (2017). Neural Semantics. In: Wieling, M., Kroon, M., Van Noord, G., and Bouma, G. (Eds.), From Semantics to Dialectometry: Festschrift for John Nerbonne, pp. 75-83. College Publications.

  3. Hoeks, J. C. J. and Brouwer, H. (2014). Electrophysiological Research on Conversation and Discourse Processing. In: Holtgraves, T. (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Language and Social Psychology, pp. 365-386. New York: Oxford University Press. [pdf]

conference papers

  1. Krieger, B., Brouwer, H., Aurnhammer, C., and Crocker, M. W. (2024). On the limits of LLM surprisal as functional Explanation of ERPs. In: Samuelson, L. K., Frank, S. L., Toneva, M., Mackey, A., and Hazeltine, E. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 488-495, July 24-27, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

  2. Macher, N., Abdullah, B. M., Brouwer, H., and Klakow, D. (2021). Do we read what we hear? Modeling orthographic influences on spoken word recognition. In: Sorodoc, I-T., Sushil, M., Takmaz, E., Agirre, E. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Student Research Workshop, pp. 16-22.

  3. Venhuizen, N. J., Hendriks, P., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2019). A Framework for Distributional Formal Semantics. In: Iemhoff, R., Moortgat, M., and de Queiroz, R. (Eds.), Logic, Language, Information, and Computation, Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop WoLLIC 2019, LNCS 11541, pp. 633-646. doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-59533-6_39

  4. Calvillo, J., Brouwer, H., and Crocker, M. W. (2016). Connectionist Semantic Systematicity in Language Production. In: Papafragou, A., Grodner, D., Mirman D., and Trueswell, J. C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 2555-2560, August 10-13, Philadelphia, United States. [code]

  5. Venhuizen, N. J., Bos, J., Hendriks, P., and Brouwer, H. (2014). How and Why Conventional Implicatures Project. In: Snider, T., Wiegand, J., and D'Antonio, S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 24rd Semantics and Linguistics Theory Conference (SALT24), pp. 63-83, May 30-June 1, New York, United States.

  6. Venhuizen, N. J. and Brouwer, H. (2014). PDRT-SANDBOX: An implementation of Projective Discourse Representation Theory. In: Rieser, V. and Muller, P. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue, SemDial 2014 - DialWatt, pp. 249-251, September 1-3, Edinburgh, Scotland.

  7. Venhuizen, N. J., Bos, J., and Brouwer, H. (2013). Parsimonious Semantic Representations with Projection Pointers. In: Erk., K. and Koller, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS'13), March 19-22, Potsdam, Germany.

  8. Brouwer, H., Fitz, H., and Hoeks, J. C. J. (2010). Modeling the noun phrase versus sentence coordination ambiguity in Dutch: Evidence from Surprisal Theory. In: Hale, J. H. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2010 Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics, ACL2010, pp. 72-80, Uppsala, Sweden, 15 July 2010.

phd thesis

Brouwer, H. (2014). The Electrophysiology of Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model. PhD thesis, University of Groningen. [pdf] [propositions] [précis]

Supervisors: prof. dr. J. C. J. Hoeks, prof. dr. ir. J. Nerbonne; Reading committee: prof. dr. P. Hendriks, prof. dr. M. Kutas, prof. dr. D. C. Plaut; Extended reading committee: prof. dr. J. J. A. van Berkum, prof. dr. G. R. Kuperberg

talks and posters

My resume contains a full list of talks and posters—send me an email to obtain a copy.

Some slides and posters can also be found on ResearchGate.

software

original

  1. rerps: regression-based Event-Related Potential (ERP) waveform estimation.

  2. Mesh: A lightweight and versatile artificial neural network simulator.

  3. DFS Tools: Distributional Formal Semantics (DFS) tools.

  4. dispace: Implementation of the Distributed Situation-state Space (DSS) model.

  5. PDRT-SANDBOX: A Haskell library implementing (Projective) Discourse Representation Theory.

  6. COALS: Implementation of the Correlated Occurrence Analogue to Lexical Semantics.

ports

  1. LensOSX: A native MacOSX port of Lens, the light, efficient network simulator.

  2. OSXtlearn: xtlearn wrapped in a MacOSX application bundle.

teaching

current

Introduction to Cognitive Science, 2024/25 Semester 1

Bachelorthesis CSAI, 2024/25 Semester 1

recent past

Cognitive Neuroscience, 2023/24 Semester 2

Bachelorthesis CSAI, 2023/24 Semester 2