The Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB, Barcelona Science Park) extends its fields of research with the establishment of the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group (GRNC), the former Speech Perception Production Bilinguism, SPPB–part of the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, University of Barcelona), in the teaching building of the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital. The new location of the GRNC has arisen from an agreement between the PCB and the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital. This agreement aims to strengthen the relationships between basic research developed in the PCB and the medical research of the hospital. In the future, research activities between the two institutions will also be co-ordinated with those of the IDIBAPS.

Directed by Núria Sebastián, professor and researcher, the GRNC forms part of the Dept. of Basic Psychology and works in the field of neurocognition. Its research lines are focussed on the processes involved in the perception and production of speech, with special attention on the bilingual population.

The GRNC studies the general bases of speech processing and the way in which exposure to the mother tongue can influence linguistic capacity. In this regard, the group carries out comparative analyses between monolingual and bilingual subjects (Spanish/Catalan) to study the specific characteristics of linguistic processing in bilingual subjects and in those with a distinct exposure to a second language. The laboratory research is covers subjects from infancy to adulthood, using methodologies based on measurements of certain physiological and behavioural parameters.

This group is composed of six groups that study aspects such as linguistic codification of speech perception and production, recognition of the mother tongue and identification of cues in the speech signal that allow discrimination between languages, as well as the fundamentals of human speech in animals. Moreover, the GRNC also addresses, among other fields, the way in which speakers access the terms and grammatical properties of vocabulary to achieve fluent speech or the processes and brain mechanisms involved in the integration of information from distinct sensorial sources such as touch or sight.