Patrick C. Trettenbrein

I’m a cognitive scientist working in the project “Parts of speech and iconicity in German Sign Language” funded by the German Research Foundation Priority Programme on “Visual Communication” which is located at the Experimental Sign Language Lab at University of Göttingen and the Department of Neuropsychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.

My main research interest is the neurobiology of language, focusing on the modality (in-)dependence of linguistic computations in the brain. In other words, I don’t ask, “How come (only) humans can speak?”—Instead, I investigate human language as a species-specific mode of cognition. I have tried to summarise what exactly I mean by that in an accessible manner in this article (in German).

Moreover, I am interested in how brains compute more generally, as well as how research in the cognitive sciences impacts society and policy.




Foto by Stefanie Wetzel