Language is a central part of our every- day life. We communicate with many people every day, we argue with one another and tell each other jokes, we recite poems to our loved ones, we neg- otiate deals and treaties, we listen to news reporters, we read books, discuss art, and go to the theater, and these are just a few of the numerous examples of our daily language use. Thus it is fair to state that language is a defining feature of who we are as human beings. To many of us, it might therefore come as a sur- prise that comprehending and produc- ing spoken and written language are extremely complex tasks that are sub- served by many mental processes and a myriad of areas in the brain. Linguistic and psycholinguistic re- search have now provided us with ele- gant models of the cognitive architec- tures of reading, comprehending speech, and producing speech. But even though the state-of-the-art models provide a ‘blueprint’ for the cognitive architecture of normal human language comprehen- sion and production systems, many fiercely debated unresolved issues re- main. Psycholinguistic models disagree, for example, on the degree of interactiv- ity within the language system (from fully interactive to completely modular), and on the way linguistic information is represented. Another issue that is still controversial concerns the domain speci- ficity of language. It is, for example, un- resolved whether there is a dedicated working memory system for language. These and other issues may be con- strained by information on how the brain processes language. However, the implementation of linguistic and psycho- linguistic models of language in the brain is lagging behind. Or, in other words, it is still largely a mystery how our brain solves the problems of compre- hending and producing sentences and stories, syllables and words. One of the obvious reasons for this unsolved mys- tery is that human language is the only cognitive function that cannot be stud- ied directly using animal models. This therefore precludes the study of how the normal human brain processes language by traditional neuroscience methods, and requires the development of other approaches to study language and the brain. One such approach is neuro- imaging. With the advent of fMRI we have an exciting means to study which brain structures are engaged in normal human language processing. In a com- plementary fashion, the electrophysio- logical and electromagnetic signatures of language as measured in event-re- lated brain potentials (ERPs) and event- related magnetic fields (ERFs) provide us with a continuous measure of language processes as they unfold in real time. Finally, patients with focal brain lesions and language impairment can help us identify those brain structures that are crucial to normal language comprehen- sion and production. However, studies that utilize these techniques will only be able to provide clear answers to questions about how the brain processes language if they are embedded in the solid theo- retical framework of linguistic and psy- cholinguistic models. Such a merger between cognition and neuroscience is embodied in the new field of cognitive The Neurocognition of Language Colin Brown and Peter Hagoort (eds), Oxford University Press, 1999. £49.50 (xiv + 392 pages) ISBN 0 19 852448 X neuroscience. Thus far, a comprehensive book that critically reviewed the cogni- tive neuroscience of language has not been available. But here it is. The Neurocognition of Language sketches ‘blueprints’ of the functional architecture of language production and comprehension. Clear and comprehen- sive reviews are given on state-of-the-art linguistic and psycholinguistic research and models. The brain imaging tech- niques that can be used to provide us with a way to link these cognitive mod- els to the brain are discussed, and an ex- cellent overview of strengths and weak- nesses of each of these techniques is given. Moreover, brain imaging and electrophysiological research on word processing and sentence processing is reviewed in a critical manner that allows the reader to see whether results from these studies can constrain our cognitive models, and how our cognitive models should constrain brain imaging research. The current state of knowledge on the semantic network of the brain is dis- cussed in a review of a large body of studies from the lesion literature and compared with results from functional brain imaging investigations into the semantic system. The advent of fMRI has also made it clear that we need ways to refine and sometimes re-define our knowledge of able to present continuous variations of both auditory and visual information to experimental participants in his ex- panded factorial design. Even Baldi’s vi- sual emotions can be continuously varied (and, yes, emotions also combine with speech according to the FLMP). The final three chapters of Perceiving Talking Faces, written by Massaro, Cohen, and Berger, describe Baldi and the synthe- sis, evaluation and applications of talk- ing heads. The book comes with a CD- Rom in which Baldi tells his own story, and the story of auditory–visual speech processing. Baldi exemplifies Massaro’s blend of technology and empirical studies in auditory–visual speech processing to de- rive a behavioural principle. Thus, this book accomplishes what it sets out to do – to apply the FLMP to a wide range of data. It does not aim to tell the whole story of auditory–visual speech, and per- haps no single book can 6 . Nevertheless, Massaro’s new book is a tremendous accomplishment, and adds a significant chapter to the auditory–visual speech processing story. Denis Burnham School of Psychology, University of Western Sydney Macarthur, PO Box 555 FASS 4B, Campbelltown, NSW 2052, Australia. tel: +61 2 9772 6681 fax: +61 2 9772 6584 e-mail: d.burnham@unsw.edu.au References 1 Burnham, D. (1998) Harry McGurk and the McGurk effect, in Proceedings of AVSP’98: International Conference on Auditory–Visual Speech Processing (Burnham, D., Robert-Ribes, J. and Vatikiotis-Bateson, E., eds), pp. 1–2, Ink Press, Sydney 2 Green, K.P. and Miller, J.L. (1985) On the role of visual rate information in phonetic perception Percept. Psychophys. 38, 269–276 3 Dodd, B. and Campbell, R. (eds) (1987) Hearing by Eye: The Psychology of Lip- Reading, Erlbaum 4 Campbell, R., Dodd, B. and Burnham, D., eds (1998) Hearing by Eye II: Advances in the Psychology of Speechreading and Auditory– Visual Speech, Psychology Press 5 Massaro, D. (1987) Speech Perception by Eye and Ear: A Paradigm for Psychological Inquiry, Erlbaum 6 Grant, K. (1999) Hearing by Eye II. Review Trends Cognit. Sci. 3, 319–320 7 Stork, D.G. and Hennecke, M.E., eds Speechreading by Humans and Machines, Springer-Verlag 8 Massaro, D.W. (1999) Speechreading: illusion or window into pattern recognition Trends Cognit. Sci. 3, 310–317 9 McGurk, H. and McDonald J. (1976) Hearing lips and seeing voices Nature 264, 746–748 Books etcetera 488 Trends in Cognitive Sciences – Vol. 3, No. 12, December 1999