The Meandering Course from Psycholinguistics to Cognitive Science and Neuroimaging: The Organization of (Inter-) Disciplinary Research in the History of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

This article is a historical and philosophical exploration of the psycholinguistics work at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPIPL) from its very beginnings until 2002. Historical archival and interview materials provide useful and important evidence on the meandering course of the research programs at the MPIPL that so tidily mirror the historical changes in the larger field. From the psycholinguistics trajectory of Jerome Bruner (1915–2016) to recent behavioural neuroscience work, pioneered for example by psychiatrist Detlev Ploog (1920–2005), what we can learn from these traditions of psychology is that they harbour potential still not fully harvested by neuroscience. Pim Levelt (b. 1938) and his colleagues at the MPIPL observed these important changes in their research programs over a period of three decades, exemplified by their work on the neural basis of vocalization. In fact, both Levelt and Ploog had for some time been interested in the comparative aspects and differences of corticopyramidal tract instantiations of speech-motor systems while also considering Bruner’s psychological work in regard to this endeavour. Yet, the “switch” to neurolinguistics and neurobehaviourism at the Nijmegen institute occurred only with the late 1990s and early 2000s, fomented especially by collaboration with the Donders Institute at Radboud University in Nijmegen.