In 2023, a lot was accomplished by our lab members. New grants, a Canada Research Chair, a new project, several publications, conferences and other scientific events, intense data collection, knowledge mobilization efforts, editorial work, academic work… We worked really hard to contribute to advancing knowledge in the fields of language neuroscience and neurocognitive aging! As there is always so much to do, so many ideas and projects, it’s easy to get buried under the pile and to lose track of what was accomplished. Thus, as the year is now ending, we take a moment to reflect on our main achievements this year:

• Pascale was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology of Speech and Hearing – Tier 1, offered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
• Pascale obtained 2 new grants from federal agencies (SSHRC and CFI).
• The students of the lab obtained 6 competitive scholarships.
• Pascale gave 4 invited talks in Montreal, Québec City, and Calgary.
• The students of the lab gave 12 scientific presentations.
• We published 4 articles in international scientific journals and 4 other articles are currently under review.
• We are working on 5 articles which should soon be submitted to scientific journals.
• Data analysis in underway for several projects.
• We welcomed 13 new members:
  • • David, who started as a research assistant in the winter and has been a master’s student since the fall;
    • Marianne, as a research intern in the lab in the winter;
    • Mélissa, as a research professional in the summer;
    • Jessica, Thomas, and Keir, as research interns in the summer;
    • Philippe and Sarah, who are pursuing a residency in radiology and doing a research project with us;
    • Marie and Sarah-Ève, as research assistants in the fall;
    • Ana and Coralie, as research interns in the fall;
    • Natália, who joined us as a research professional (lab coordinator) in the fall.
• Pascale was invited to join the editorial board of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (MIT Press) as an associate editor. For her first year as editor, she handled 26 manuscripts. The main challenge: finding reviewers!
• Pascale was asked to lead the Stratégie du développement de la relève of the Quebec Bio-Imaging Network (QBIN, funded by FRQS) and to co-lead the Linguistic and Musical Plasticity research axis of the Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music – CRBLM, an FRQNT-funded research cluster.
• Pascale organized two one-day internship with First Nations students as part of the New Pathways Foundation BECOME program, one in January and another one in November.
• Pascale and Alexandre were part of the organization of the QBIN Scientific Day 2023 in Quebec City – the first ever in Quebec City!
• Alexandre developed and offered an activity on brain imaging at the Les filles et les science event.
• We started data collection for one large-scale project (NeuroSPiN, funded by CIHR), and continued recruitment for our EEG-TMS project (ElectroStim, funded by NSERC). A new TMS project is in development (funded by the QBIN) and will begin in January.
• We started collecting MRI data at the new and amazing MRI facility at CERVO.
• We welcomed 103 participants to our lab for a total of 174 sessions (most participants came to the lab more than once):
  • • 82 participants in one or more of the three lab visits included in the NeuroSPiN project: 6 pilots, 71 in Visit 1 (cognitive assessment), 39 in Visit 2 (EEG), and 33 in Visit 3 (MRI) (143 sessions in total);
    • 6 participants in one or more of the three lab visits included in the ElectroStim project (16 sessions in total);
    • 15 participants in other projects whose recruitment ended this year.
• We published 23 new blog posts in French; all our graduate students contributed to this knowledge mobilization effort (Valérie, David, Alexandre, Xiyue) and several of our undergraduate students too (Keir, Thomas, Marianne)!
• We published 34 new blog posts in English (including the translation of older posts that had been originally published only in French – we’re almost up to date!).
• We got 81 new followers to our Facebook page, and now have a total of 1391 followers!
• Pascale continued on with her role of graduate research program director at the School of Readaptation for a second year. She was also in charge of the doctoral exam and the Research Methods course in speech pathology and audiology.
• Natália taught two courses as a lecturer at Université Laval: Phonologie II (Département de langues, linguistique et traduction) and Elementary Portuguese I (École de langues).

We’d like to thank all the lab members for their hard work and commitment this year. We’d also like to thank everyone else (our participants, research collaborators, personnel at CERVO and Université Laval, and many others) who were instrumental to the advancement of our research projects in one way or another.

We hope 2024 will be as productive as 2023!