Penn Manipulation and Language (MaLi) Lab

Penn Manipulation and Language (MaLi) Lab. The lab is a research group within the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to understanding the complex interplay between physical action and language. Led by Konrad Kording, it operates at the intersection of neuroscience, computational modeling, and cognitive science. The lab's work seeks to unravel how the brain coordinates manipulation and communication, using innovative experiments and advanced data analysis.

Overview

The Penn Manipulation and Language Lab is situated within the vibrant research ecosystem of the University of Pennsylvania. It is closely affiliated with the Department of Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine and benefits from connections to the School of Engineering and Applied Science. The lab's mission is grounded in a multidisciplinary approach, leveraging tools from machine learning and psychophysics to study embodied cognition. Its research questions are often explored through the lens of rehabilitation science, aiming to translate basic findings into practical applications.

Research Focus

Primary investigations center on the neural and computational principles governing motor control and its integration with linguistic processing. A major theme involves studying how goals for action are represented and how these representations interact with syntactic and semantic structures during tasks like tool use. The lab employs techniques such as motion capture, electroencephalography, and deep neural networks to model these processes. Research often examines populations with atypical motor or language development to inform theories of brain plasticity and learning.

Key Personnel

The lab is directed by Konrad Kording, a professor known for his work in computational neuroscience and data science. Senior research scientists and postdoctoral fellows, many with backgrounds in biomedical engineering or psychology, lead specific project areas. The team includes graduate students from programs like Neuroscience Graduate Group and Bioengineering. Collaborations frequently involve faculty from the Department of Psychology and the GRASP Laboratory, enriching the lab's technical and theoretical expertise.

Notable Projects and Findings

One significant line of work has decoded movement kinematics from brain activity to understand planning hierarchies. Another project has quantified how verb semantics constrain hand gestures during object manipulation, published in journals like Nature Communications and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lab has also developed novel virtual reality paradigms to study language-guided navigation, revealing links between spatial memory and grammatical construction. These findings contribute to broader discussions in cognitive robotics and aphasia research.

Facilities and Resources

The lab occupies dedicated space within the Smilow Center for Translational Research, featuring state-of-the-art equipment. Key resources include a fully instrumented motion analysis studio with systems from Vicon, a sound-attenuated booth for psycholinguistic testing, and high-performance computing clusters for running simulations. Researchers have access to shared facilities at the Penn Center for Neuroengineering and Therapeutics and the Singh Center for Nanotechnology. The lab also maintains a repository of open-source code and datasets on platforms like GitHub.

Collaborations and Affiliations

The MaLi Lab maintains strong ties with numerous centers across University of Pennsylvania, including the Penn Institute for Computational Science and the Center for Language and Science. Extramural collaborations involve partners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science. The lab is part of several National Institutes of Health-funded consortia, such as the BRAIN Initiative, and works with clinical partners at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on translational projects.