Lab Manager · Stanford Linguistics
Erxiao Wang
I study how the neural activities give rise to what we experience as language.
I am a lab manager in the Department of Linguistics at Stanford University, where I work with Dr. Cory Shain. My research interests lie at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics, and computational modeling. My central question is how the human brain constructs and maintains linguistic representations from temporal unfolding of sensory inputs. This process is complex yet efficient and fast enough to support our real-time language use. How?
My interests follow three connected directions. First, I study sentence processing in naturalistic and controlled contexts: I ask what theory- and LLM- inspired linguistic features predict processing difficulty and neural effort in continuous time input, and how intepretable computational models and analyses can reliably reveal the link between the linguistic information and observed data. Second, I am drawn to the translational challenge of communication restoration for populations living with impaired language abilities. I investigate neural mechanisms that could inform brain–computer interfaces, including the cortical organization of language and speech planning, sequence processing, and word decoding. Third, I am curious about bilingual neural plasticity, with particular interest in how Mandarin–English experience and proficiency reshape language representations and speech control.
Methodologically, I am interested in exploring time-resolved and spatially precise measures of brain activity, such as precision fMRI, invasive brain recordings, as well as behavioral experiments, and explicit computational models. I am preparing to pursue Ph.D. training beginning in Fall 2027, and I am especially interested in research environments that connect rigorous theories of language with naturalistic data and human neuroscience.
