Every day, we communicate with other people via complex sounds like speech, which evolves rapidly and only persists for mere moments. Attention and working memory are crucial cognitive constructs behind successful speech communication and adaptive listening behaviors. We want to understand how human listeners direct attention to a sound of interest, what information about the sounds listeners maintain "alive" in working memory, and the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying the interaction between attention and working memory.

Research Questions:

• How do the sensory and cognitive networks of the brain support the flexible interaction between selective attention and working memory?

• What external and internal factors can enhance the maintenance of auditory information in memory and facilitate speech communication?

• How do individual differences in sensory and cognitive capacities influence working memory for speech?

Auditory and speech category learning is fundamental in making sense of the sounds we hear in our daily lives. We must learn our native language speech categories during infancy. But also, learning continues throughout adulthood when we try to master foreign languages or to recognize speech and other sounds during auditory rehabilitation. However, auditory and speech learning during adulthood can be notoriously difficult. Our prior work shows that interactive videogame training can lead to efficient auditory learning in adults. We want to understand the neurobiological basis and mechanisms underlying auditory learning and how different training experiences can result in learning-related changes in brain function and structure.

Research Questions:

• How do people develop perceptual expertise with complex sound categories?

• What are the underlying neurobiological networks that can drive brain plasticity in adulthood?

• How do different types of learning experiences shape perceptual learning?

• Which neurobiological networks are engaged in qualitatively different types of training experience?

There is enormous variability in the speech sounds we hear. For example, different talkers, different contexts, and speakers' dialects result in radically different acoustic signatures of the same word. Such variability in speech sounds can impose a burden on our perceptual and cognitive systems. We want to understand how acoustic variability and dynamic changes in listening environments impact our general cognitive and speech-specific processes, and how different networks in the brain are responsible for accommodating variability.

Research Questions:

• How do input variability and different listening contexts shape listeners’ attentional and perceptual processes?

• Does the impact of input variability depend on one's attentional state or the behavioral goals of the listener?

• What are the cognitive and neural bases of individual differences in accommodating input variability?