Sayantan Mandal

I am a cognitive neuroscientist and evolutionary psychologist, currently serving on the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Krea University. My work lies at the intersection of biolinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and the computational theory of mind, with a particular focus on the biological foundations of human language.

My theoretical research is grounded in Generative Grammar and Evolutionary Psychology, while my empirical work combines EEG, fMRI, and computational neuroscientific methods to investigate the architecture of phonological computation and speech processing in the human brain. I am especially interested in how abstract linguistic representations interact with sensorimotor systems involved in speech production and perception.

I completed my doctoral research at the Concordia Centre for Cognitive Science and Linguistics, under the supervision of Prof. Tobias Scheer and Prof. Charles Reiss. During this period, I also worked as a MITACS Globalink Researcher at the CNRS Bases, Corpus et Langage (BCL) and Complexité et Cognition (CoCo) laboratories at Université Côte d’Azur, France. My research has additionally been affiliated with Concordia’s School of Health (formerly the PERFORM Centre).

My current work follows two closely related lines of inquiry. The first, Mind 2 Brain, investigates the neurophysiological signatures of phonological computation using electroencephalography (EEG), in collaboration with Prof. Arild Hestvik at the University of Delaware. The second, Ghost in the Cell, uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore whether phonological features may be instantiated by functionally specialised neural maps in auditory cortex.

Before my doctoral work, I completed master’s degrees in Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Auckland and the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad. I also worked in psycholinguistics at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development in Sydney, where I trained in experimental methodology under Prof. Catherine T. Best, Prof. Anne Cutler, and Prof. Jason Shaw. This work focused primarily on bilingual phonology in Malayalam–Australian English bilinguals and continues to shape my current research programme.

Alongside neuroscience and linguistics, I maintain a longstanding interest in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). My research workflow is conducted entirely using FOSS tools, and I occasionally contribute to GNU/Linux and related open-source projects.

I am particularly interested in collaborating with undergraduate and graduate students who wish to explore language through the combined lenses of rationalist epistemology, cognitive neuroscience, and computational theory.