Purpose

The workshop is structured as a hands-on non-traditional research conference where the focus is more on open forums and live discussions rather than research talks. The meeting is held over 4 and ½ days where interdisciplinary teams including senior researchers and younger trainees and students work together to pilot new ideas, exchange approaches, and compare methodologies around themes relevant to auditory cognition.

The workshop promotes interdisciplinary collaborations and communication across sensory and cognitive researchers focused on understanding brain function. The meeting provides a forum for knowledge gathering, idea sharing and research dissemination, as well as building bridges between basic science and engineering disciplines.

Scientific program

The meeting aims to take stock of current state of affairs and look forward to future of cognitive decoding. 

Clinical

Sandra Gordon-Sallant

University of Maryland

Overview of links between age-related hearing loss and cognitive decline in older people 

Presentation: Slides available upon request

Papers: Bio at UMD

Jonathan Simon

University of Maryland

Neural Representations of Same-Species Vocalizations in a Human Primate Model

Presentation: Video, Slides

Papers: Neural dynamics of speech features, Neural tracking of speech intelligibility

Stefanie Kuchinsky

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

Keeping an Eye on Listening Effort: Toward Enhanced Clinical Hearing Tests

Presentation: Video by request only

Papers: Bilingualism, Eyes as Windows,  Pupillometry for Listening Effort

Lucas Parra

City College of New York

Auditory narratives drive the whole dynamical system: brain, heart and eyes -- And how to distinguish effort from attention

Presentation: Video

Papers: Brain from the inside out, Brain-body coupling, Intelligibility and effort

Ken Grant 

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

Hearing deficits in listeners with normal hearing thresholds and mild hearing impairment: Effects of blast exposure. 

Technology

Heather Bortfeld

UC, Merced

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy for neuroimaging in cochlear implant recipients: innovations and applications

Samu Taulu

University of Washington

Recent advances in OPM-MEG

Sridhar Kalluri

Starkey

Important clinical problems in hearing aids

Abhinav Uppal/Shreshth Saxena

UC San Diego/McMaster University

In-ear EEG and mobile eye-tracking to study audiovisual interactions in naturalistic settings

Presentation: Video, Presentation

Papers: Multi-person eye tracking, Earable multimodal sensing, In-ear integrated sensor array

Patrick Kanold 

Johns Hopkins University

Understanding the auditory brain with two-photon imaging

AI/LLM

Jean-Remi King (virtual)

Meta/Ecole Normale Superieure

Emergence of Language in the Human Brain 

Presentation: Video

Papers: Emergence of language, brain to text decoding,  thought to action

Samuel Norman-Haignere

University of Rochester

Conducting experiments on models: using deep artificial neural networks to guide experimental neuroscience research

Presentation: Video

Papers: Time structure, speech recognition 

Shailee Jain

UC San Francisco

Building out-of-the-box speech decoders with large-scale self-supervision

Presentation: Video

Papers: Computational account of temporal context effects in language, Incorporating context into language models for fMRI 

Laura Gwilliams

Stanford University

Neural Algorithms of Human Language

Papers: Hierarchical dynamic coding, Neural dynamics of phoneme sequences, Computational Architecture

Chris Honey 

Johns Hopkins University

Memory and Agency in Biological and Artificial Intelligence

Introduction to presentation (technical problems): Video 

Presentation: PDF

Papers: Context-swapping, persistent content

BCI

Vikash Gilja (virtual)

Paradromics Inc. /  UC San Diego 

Neural Prostheses

Cheol Jun Cho 

UC Berkeley

Speech neuroprostheses for restoring naturalistic communication and future prospects

Presentation: Video

Paper: Streaming brain to voice interface

Nathan Crone

Johns Hopkins University

Speech decoding with implantable electrocorticographic BCIs

Edmund Lalor

University of Rochester

Explaining the explainable variance in EEG responses to natural speech.

Presentation: Video

Papers: EEG responses to natural speech, Covert cognition during natural speech, Generative tracking of natural speech

Behtash Babadi

University of Maryland

Advances in Neural Data Analysis Through the Granger Formalism

Presentation: Video, Presentation

Papers: Granger causality for MEG, Granger for neuroscience, physiology, sociology and econometrics 

Forward looking

Alain de Cheveigne

Ecole Normale Superieure

Graceful forgetting - A theory of memory

Presentation: Video, Slides

Papers: Graceful forgetting, Graceful forgetting II 

Giovanni diLiberto

Trinity College 

Speech neurophysiology in realistic contexts: Big hype or big leap?

Presentation: Video

Papers: Emergence of cortical encodings, Neural features for 2nd language, Speech neurophysiology in realistic environments  

Nima Mesgarani

Columbia University

From Selective Listening to Brain-Controlled Hearing

Scientific committee

Mounya Elhilali (Johns Hopkins University)

Shihab Shamma (University of Maryland and École Normale Supérieure)

Malcolm Slaney (Stanford University and ICSI @ Berkeley)

With generous support from the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders (R13DC018475)