鈥淚t鈥檚 important to do what you鈥檙e most interested in, to persist, and to not take rejection personally.鈥�
Dr. Shari Baum is a professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at 海角社区. Driven by a commitment to building and supporting the research community, she founded the CRBLM over twenty years ago. Here, she reflects on how exciting it was to be the CRBLM鈥檚 founding director and on how gratifying it is to see the centre鈥檚 evolution and expansion. She also discusses her own interest in research on speech and the brain, and how her work has evolved over time. She concludes on a positive note: despite being challenging, academic work is ultimately highly rewarding.
Lab website:听/neurolinguistics-lab/
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I would really love to hear about the CRBLM鈥檚 beginnings. I'm curious about what brought you to first set up the centre and what it was like to be the founding director.
In the late 1990s, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) was launched. It was an opportunity to obtain infrastructure for research purposes, and in Canada there had been very few opportunities prior to that to get funding for equipment. So we got together a whole bunch of people at 海角社区 whose work was focused on language鈥攖here were quite a few people in psychology at the time, and some folks in a department that no longer exists that used to be called second language education, and linguistics, and the school of communication sciences and disorders. We wrote the application together, and remarkably, we were awarded the funding. And this is all background to how the centre got started鈥� so now I was suddenly aware of all the people at 海角社区 who did research on various aspects of language. Then, within the next year or two, there was this opportunity by a Quebec funding agency which is now the FRQ, and they were going to provide funding for research centres. I was energetic and really committed to research at the time, and I had a lot of interest in doing things that would help the research community. And so I thought, I can do this鈥攏ow I have around 30 people that I know at 海角社区 who work on language, and also some people from Concordia and UdeM, so I included them all in this application for centre funding. I believe that in the first year we weren鈥檛 successful, but then we applied again, and we were funded, so we had a new Centre for Research on Language, Mind and Brain. It was really a great opportunity to bring people together and enhance interdisciplinary work. We started having activities and meetings, and it was a great way to meet more people, both at 海角社区 and across the city, who were working on related topics but who didn鈥檛 really know each other.
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It must have been exciting to see that community start to build and to be a big part of that.
Yeah, that was great. It was an opportunity to expand my network, and it was an exciting time because prior to that 海角社区 had been in a bit of financial distress, so there weren鈥檛 many faculty members hired or many opportunities to expand. But the centre gave us a boost to be able to do more things, to attract new Canada Research Chairs, and to make research on language and the brain more broadly known.
听
Right, it was an amazing opportunity not just for you, but for all the other people that were able to get involved as well. That's great! How have you seen the centre evolve over the years, and when did music come into play?
When we went for our first renewal, we talked to Isabelle Peretz and Robert Zatorre, who had recently established BRAMS (the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research). We had some overlapping areas of interest, so we got together with them and thought that we would be strengthening our chances of receiving funding by broadening our reach and including these great researchers who also did work on auditory perception. And the FRQ (Quebec funding agency) were receptive to that. So that was a great change in terms of broadening the domains of research that were included and looking at parallels across music and language processing. That鈥檚 when we changed the name to the Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music.
Since then, the membership of the centre has expanded exponentially, and a bunch of former students who have ended up in various places like Laval or other universities in Quebec have joined and then made larger nodes in those places. When Lucie M茅nard came to UQAM we got her involved, and she engaged a bunch of other people at UQAM, so that became a major partner in the whole operation. You know, I think things have evolved only to the benefit of everyone. And now in addition to broad themes, the centre also has a few focused areas of interest that emerged organically, like the Montreal Bilingual Brain Initiative and cochlear implant initiative.
听
Yeah, it's really given researchers a network to draw from, which is wonderful.
So, could you give a brief overview of your own research interests?
Well, I've always been interested in language and the brain鈥攊n what networks within the brain are involved in various aspects of speech and language processing. When I started, I studied brain damaged patients, so mostly individuals who had suffered strokes and had aphasia. I did all sorts of stuff on their speech production, word recognition, and sentence processing, using patients as a window into the brain. Then, when that population became a bit too challenging to recruit, particularly patients who spoke English as a native language and were not multilingual, I shifted to using EEG (electroencephalography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to look at various aspects of language processing and their underlying neural substrates. Most recently, I have sort of shifted again, focusing more on bilingualism and multilingualism鈥攍ooking at how the brain changes when you learn a second language, and how learning a second language may support cognitive reserve, especially now that I鈥檓 aging rapidly. But it鈥檚 all still the same broad question, with a large focus on speech, like phonetics and prosody.
听
Great, so you've always had this interest in speech and the brain, and you鈥檝e found different ways of approaching that interest. You've had a long and accomplished career, so I'm curious鈥攚hat are you proudest of?
I guess there are two things that jump to mind. One is having managed to establish the CRBLM and watched it flourish, because I don鈥檛 think I envisioned 25 years ago that this would really be a going concern for this long. And I suppose the other thing鈥攁nd I don't know that this is my accomplishment鈥攊s the students. You know, working with great, and not-so-great, students who ultimately achieve great things. Students who have gone on to become leaders in their fields. They provoke novel ideas and make me think about things that I wouldn鈥檛 have considered, and it鈥檚 really rewarding to watch them progress.
听
And some of the students go on to become your colleagues as well, right?
Well, yes, certainly. I mean, Marc Pell was my first doctoral student, and then ultimately not only was he a colleague, but he was director of the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, so he was my boss. There have been many people who I supervised or whose committees I was on who have gone on to do great things, so it鈥檚 really nice to see that, and hopefully we have some kind of longstanding impact one way or another as supervisors.
听
Well, between the CRBLM and all of the students you鈥檝e supervised, you certainly have a legacy. To conclude things, what advice would you give to students and aspiring researchers in the field?
I would say it鈥檚 important to do what you鈥檙e most interested in, to persist, and to not take rejection personally. Do what you鈥檙e interested in and what keeps you motivated, and ultimately, good work gets rewarded. You know, academia is one of the best jobs there are鈥攏ot that I've had many others鈥攂ut you have tremendous freedom and flexibility, you get to learn new things all the time, and engaging with students really keeps you on your toes. So, despite the negative things you might hear about how hard it is to get tenure and grants and all of this, I would encourage people that it鈥檚 a life worth pursuing.
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