{"id":67849,"date":"2020-09-08T10:34:52","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T14:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=67849"},"modified":"2020-09-10T09:41:18","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T13:41:18","slug":"faculty-focus-veena-dwivedi-combines-the-art-and-science-of-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2020\/09\/faculty-focus-veena-dwivedi-combines-the-art-and-science-of-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"FACULTY FOCUS: Veena Dwivedi combines the art and science of connection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: Faculty Focus is a monthly series that highlights faculty whose compelling passions, innovative ideas and various areas of expertise help weave together the fabric of Brock University\u2019s vibrant community. For more from the series, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Growing up in a linguistically rich environment, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for Veena Dwivedi\u2019s parents, who immigrated to Canada from India, to switch between three or four languages a day.<\/p>\n

While multilingualism was an integral part of her childhood \u00ad\u2014 the Professor in Brock University\u2019s Department of Psychology and Centre for Neuroscience is fluent in English, French and Hindi \u2014 she credits her career trajectory with having passionate mentors, who helped divert her original plan of going to medical school to combining linguistics and neurology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m Canadian \u2014 from Montr\u00e9al \u2014 but fluent in Hindi,\u201d says Dwivedi. \u201cWhen I\u2019m in India, people don\u2019t know I\u2019m Canadian. Hindi has a property that many languages have, which is that it can flexibly change word order which allows for sentence structures not found in languages like English. I wanted to understand how people comprehend sentences where the syntax is flexible to word order.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her studies, there were few doctoral theses out on Hindi.<\/p>\n

This only made her more intrigued.<\/p>\n

There are at least 7,000 counted languages in the world in addition to various dialects that don\u2019t make it onto the census form. The greatest challenge in Dwivedi\u2019s field, she says, is the sheer amount of knowledge that\u2019s required to put it all together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just plain hard work,\u201d she says. \u201cHow can our mind\/brain learn and use it without any effort at all? Children\u2019s brains are \u2018ready\u2019 for language at birth itself. As long as kids interact with their community, they will learn whatever language they\u2019re exposed to growing up. Your brain has to acquire whatever language you are exposed to. Figuring out that machinery is fascinating to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The focus of her current research is measuring people\u2019s behaviour in response to sentences, as well as the electrical (EEG) activity of their brains as they read or listen to sentences. Currently, she is examining how someone\u2019s inherent emotional state affects their neural responses to sentence comprehension.<\/p>\n

Soon, she will look at the effects of music\u2019s ability \u2014 in both English and Hindi \u2014 to induce strong emotional states. This will involve having research participants listening to music and measuring their brain wave responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic makes people feel a particular way,\u201d she says. \u201cThink back to events like your prom or weddings. You never forget your first dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Dwivedi\u2019s favourite things about working at Brock is its earned reputation in being interdisciplinary, which is something she\u2019s been doing since graduate school.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing multicultural, where you traverse different worlds, can really help when you\u2019re moving between disciplines,\u201d she says. \u201cYou always know what it\u2019s like to be the odd person out. You learn to get comfortable with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says language and the connection it provides is what helps make humans unique.<\/p>\n

\u201cParrots repeat a few phrases that they hear,\u201d says Dwivedi. \u201cPolly can say, \u2018I want a cracker.\u2019 Polly can\u2019t say, \u2018Tomorrow, I think I might want a cracker; Polly wants five crackers; all the crackers.\u2019 Only humans can talk about the future as possible scenarios and quantify things in very specific ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Dwivedi isn\u2019t teaching or working on her research, she enjoys singing and jamming to Indian music with her family, who she says are all musical. When her children were young, they would perform together at cultural events.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of my musical time is Indian,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s emotional for me and helps me keep up with Hindi. My husband isn\u2019t a speaker, and if you don\u2019t use it, you lose it. I want to keep it alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to poetic ghazals in Hindustani, she also enjoys Bhojpuri folk music.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother, who still lives in Montr\u00e9al, sings folk music,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a great connection we share. We\u2019ve done a few Zoom calls throughout COVID where we\u2019re singing and it\u2019s nice. It\u2019s a form of communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the classroom, Dwivedi often ends her lectures by sharing some words of wisdom (some of which she recently shared<\/a> in The Globe and Mail<\/em>). It\u2019s such a sought-after part of her lectures that you can hear a pin drop. For students fearful of an uncertain future, especially in a COVID-19 world, she offers some sound advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cPay attention to what you like, what you don\u2019t like and pursue the things that move you,\u201d says Dwivedi. \u201cPursue people that inspire you. Listen to them; move towards inspiration. Are there obstacles? Always. But you have to keep your eye on the ball and what\u2019s good and count your blessings. That\u2019s the only way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in a linguistically rich environment, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for Veena Dwivedi\u2019s parents, who immigrated to Canada from India, to switch between three or four languages a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":67856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,3319,1,4,5,38],"tags":[159,3130,546,8634,522,29,3325,3492],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67849"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67857,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67849\/revisions\/67857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}