Online discussion and reading group

Virtual pre-workshop discussions & reading group

We normally meet at 9AM Pacific, 12 Noon Eastern, and 6PM European time on Thursday.  (But we might have to change based on speaker's availability.)  Send email to coghear@gmail.com if you wish to be added to the mailing list.

We are back for a few more topics.  Please join us!!!

Future Talks

Talks are listed from the present going forward.

Past Talks

• 2 November at 1PM Eastern - Panel discussion on how do we measure synaptopathy in humans?

  • • Andy Oxenham (Moderator) -  Predicting the Perceptual Consequences of Hidden Hearing Loss

    • Chris Plack  -  Reliability and interrelations of seven proxy measures of cochlear synaptopathy

    • Magdalena Wojtczak - The search for correlates of age-related cochlear synaptopathy: Measures of temporal envelope processing and spatial release from speech-on-speech masking

    • Sarah Verhulst - Enhancing the sensitivity of the envelope-following response for cochlear synaptopathy screening in humans: The role of stimulus envelope

    • Enrique Alejandro López Poveda - Perception of stochastically undersampled sound waveforms: a model of auditory deafferentation

    • Panel video and transcript

• 21 September 2023 - Florencia Assaneo (UNAM, Mexico) - What is an oscillator (and what is not)?

  • • Neural oscillations are a start toward understanding brain activity rather than the end

• 5 May 2022 - Daphne Bavelier (Geneva) - How do different forms of attention interact in complex environments?

  • • Action video game play facilitates “learning to learn”

    • Games for Enhancing Cognitive Abilities [Ask for a copy.]

    • Enhancing Attentional Control: Lessons from Action Video Games

• 21 April 2022 - Virginie van Wassenhove (Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, France) - What is integration?

  • • Time Order as Psychological Bias

    • Emergence of β and γ networks following multisensory training

    • Multisensory correlation computations in the human brain uncovered by a time-resolved encoding model

• 7 April 2022 - Gopala Anumanchipalli (Berkeley)  leading a  panel on decoding imagined audition

  • • Stephanie Martin (NextSense) - Decoding spectrotemporal features of overt and covert speech from the human cortex

    • Jun Wang (UTAustin) -  Decoding imagined and spoken phrases from non-invasive neural (MEG) signals

    • Timothée Proix (Geneva) - Imagined speech can be decoded from low- and cross-frequency intracranial EEG features

    • Giovanni Di Liberto (Dublin) - The music of silence, Part 1 and Part 2

    • David Moses (UCSF) - Neuroprosthesis for Decoding Speech in a Paralyzed Person with Anarthria

    • Christian Herff (Maastricht) - Real-time synthesis of imagined speech processes from minimally invasive recordings of neural activity

• 10 March 2022 - Lucas Parra (CCNY) - What engages the brain?

  • • Audience preferences are predicted by temporal reliability of neural processing

    • Engaging narratives evoke similar neural activity and lead to similar time perception

• 24 February 2022  - Behtash Babadi (Maryland) - How do we make causality great again?

  • • For example: Granger Causality Analysis in Neuroscience and Neuroimaging

• 10 February 2022 - Nai Ding (Zhejiang Univ., China) - How do we parse the structure of speech?

  • • Cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures in connected speech [Ask for a copy.]

    • Cortical encoding of acoustic and linguistic rhythms in spoken narratives

• 9 December 2021 - Liberty Hamilton (UT Austin) - Is Speech Special or Different?

  • • Parallel and distributed encoding of speech across human auditory cortex (or this overview)

    • On Finding that Speech is Special (by A. Liberman in 1982)

    • Language prediction mechanisms in human auditory cortex

    • The organization and physiology of the auditory thalamus and its role in processing acoustic features important for speech perception

• 11 November 2021 - Alain de Cheveigné (ENS) - Benchmarking Brain Decoding Algorithms (a discussion)

  • • See this summary document describing many issues and listing publicly available databases.

• 28 October 2021 - Maryam Hosseini (Universite de Sherbrooke) - End to end speech enhancement with auditory attention via EEG

  • • Speaker-Independent Speech Enhancement with Brain Signals

    • Brain-informed speech separation (BISS) for enhancement of target speaker in multitalker speech perception

• 21 October 2021 - Lucia Melloni (Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik) - How do we segment and create a hierarchical structure of the auditory world?

  • • Tracking transitional probabilities and segmenting auditory sequences are dissociable processes in adults and neonates

    • Learning hierarchical sequence representations across human cortex and hippocampus

• 17 June 2021 - Jonas Obleser (Lübeck) - Listening in cluttered auditory scenes: How do our neural measures relate to behavior?

  • • Neural Entrainment and Attentional Selection in the Listening Brain [Ask for a copy.]

    • Local cortical desynchronization and pupil-linked arousal differentially shape brain states for optimal sensory performance

• 20 May 2021 - Nima Mesgarani (Columbia) - How to interpret real (neurophysiological) and artificial (DNN) models?

  • • Estimating and interpreting nonlinear receptive field of sensory neural responses with deep neural network models

    • Influence of Context and Behavior on Stimulus Reconstruction From Neural Activity in Primary Auditory Cortex

• 13 May 2021 (one week delayed) - Andrea Chiba (UCSD) - How do we learn the dynamics of the outside world?

  • • Simulation of cholinergic and noradrenergic modulation of behavior in uncertain environments

• 22 April 2021 - Andrea Halpern (Bucknell) - Can we capture the internal experience of musical imagery?

  • • Differences in Auditory Imagery Self-Report Predict Neural and Behavioral Outcomes [Ask for a copy.]

    • Neuronal Correlates of Perception, Imagery, and Memory for Familiar Tunes

• 8 April 2021 - Michael Casey - Do we all perceive (and decode) music the same way?

  • • A Model of Representational Spaces in Human Cortex

    • Music of the 7Ts: Predicting and decoding multivoxel fMRI responses with acoustic, schematic, and categorical Music Features.

• 25 March 2021 - What can fNIRS do for auditory neuroscience? - Panel moderated by Ruth Litovsky

  • • Colette McKay (Bionics Institute) - Cortical speech processing in post-lingually deaf adult cochlear implant users as revealed by fNIRS

    • Douglas Hartley (Nottingham) - Adaptive benefit of cross-modal plasticity following cochlear implantation in deaf adults

    • Heather Bortfeld (Merced) - Functional near-infrared spectroscopy as a tool for assessing speech and spoken language processing in pediatric and adult cochlear implant users.

    • Antje Ihlefeld (New Jersey Institute of Technology) - A quantitative comparison of NIRS and fMRI across multiple cognitive tasks

• 11 March 2021 - David Poeppel - Do neural oscillations (excitability cycles) causally influence auditory perception?

  • • Best overview (send email for a preprint): Cortical oscillations and speech processing: emerging computational principles and operations

    • Speech and Motor: The coupling between auditory and motor cortices is rate-restricted: Evidence for an intrinsic speech-motor rhythm

    • Music: An oscillator model better predicts cortical entrainment to music

• 25 February 2021 - Preben Kidmose - What can we decode in or near the ear?

  • • Ear-EEG Forward Models: Improved Head-Models for Ear-EEG

    • On the Keyhole Hypothesis: High Mutual Information between Ear and Scalp EEG

• 17 December 2020 - Jeremy Skipper (UCL) - A Contrary Opinion on How and why do auditory and motor systems interact?

  • • The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue: Review of the role of the motor system in speech perception

    • Echoes of the spoken past: how auditory cortex hears context during speech perception

• 3 December 2020 - Greg Hickok (UC Irvine) - How and why do auditory and motor systems interact?

  • • Sensorimotor Integration in Speech Processing: Computational Basis and Neural Organization

    • Language prediction mechanisms in human auditory cortex

=> Follow-up questions/answers to the discussion. 11

• 12 November 2020 - Jeremy Wolfe (Harvard) - What do visual models of attention tell us about audio?

  • • Five factors that guide attention in visual search

• 29 October 2020 (1800 Standard European time, watch the summer/winter timing adjustments!) - Elia Formisano (Maastricht) : How do we recognize sounds? How do we investigate the underlying neural-computational mechanisms?

  • • Encoding of Natural Sounds at Multiple Spectral and Temporal Resolutions in the Human Auditory Cortex

    • Reconstructing the spectrotemporal modulations of real-life sounds from fMRI response patterns

• 8 October 2020 - Ingrid Johnsrude (Western Ontario): What is listening effort?  Can we measure it?

  • • A model of listening engagement (MoLE) (Published version or Reprint)

    • Factors That Increase Processing Demands When Listening to Speech (Published version or Reprint)

• 24 September 2020 - Jack Gallant (Berkeley): What can we decode and what statistics are useful?

  • • Encoding and decoding in fMRI

    • Decoding the Semantic Content of Natural Movies from Human Brain Activity

• 10 September 2020 - Christ Stecker (Boystown) and Erick Gallun (OHSU): How can we collect online data for cognitive hearing experiments?

  • • See this wiki for the current thinking: http://spatialhearing.org/remotetesting

• 30 July 2020 - Jonathan Simon (UMd): What can we decode (with MEG)?

  • • Attentional Selection in a Cocktail Party Environment Can Be Decoded from Single-Trial EEG.

    • Rapid transformation from auditory to linguistic representations of continuous speech. 

• 16 July 2020 - Prof. Nilli Lavie (UCL): How does attention affect auditory processing?

  • • Blinded by the load: attention, awareness and the role of perceptual load.

    • Inattentional Deafness: Visual Load Leads to Time-Specific Suppression of Auditory Evoked Responses.

• 2 July 2020 - Prof. Lori Holt (CMU): Is speech understanding more about perception or hallucination?

  • • Dimension-selective attention as a possible driver of dynamic, context-dependent re-weighting in speech processing. Or PMC6107307

    • Simultaneous tracking of co-evolving distributional regularities in speech. Or PMC6205888

• 11 June 2020 - Shihab Shamma (UMd and CNRS, with Giovanni Di Liberto, Claire Pelofi, Guilhem Marion): Do we decode speech and music differently?

  • • Cortical encoding of melodic expectations in human temporal cortex.

    • Neurophysiological and Behavioral Measures of Musical Engagement.

• 28 May 2020 - Jean-Rémi King (CNRS): How are linguistic features represented in the brain?

  • • Discriminating the Influence of Correlated Factors from Multivariate Observations: the Back-to-Back Regression

    • Neural dynamics of phoneme sequencing in real speech jointly encode order and invariant content

• 21 May 2020 - Ed Chang (UCSF): Do parallel pathways decode speech?

  • • The Encoding of Speech Sounds in the Superior Temporal Gyrus, By Han Gyol Yi, Matthew K.Leonard, Edward F.Chang.

• 7 May 2020 - Ed Lalor (Rochester and Trinity): Do our eyes help decode audio?

  • • "Look at me when I'm talking to you: Selective attention at a multisensory cocktail party can be decoded using stimulus reconstruction and alpha power modulations," by Aisling E. O'Sullivan, Chantelle Y. Lim, Edmund C. Lalor.

    • "Congruent Visual Speech Enhances Cortical Entrainment to Continuous Auditory Speech in Noise-Free Conditions," by Michael J. Crosse, John S. Butler and Edmund C. Lalor. 

• 23 Apr 2020 - Tom Frankcart (KUL): How do we measure performance of auditory attention decoding systems?

  • • S. Geirnaert, T. Francart and A. Bertrand, "An Interpretable Performance Metric for Auditory Attention Decoding Algorithms in a Context of Neuro-Steered Gain Control," in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 307-317, Jan. 2020.

• 17 Apr 2020 -  Jens Hjortkjær (DTU): Do older brains decode speech differently?

  • • Søren A. Fuglsang, Jonatan Märcher-Rørsted, Torsten Dau and Jens Hjortkjær, "Effects of Sensorineural Hearing Loss on Cortical Synchronization to Competing Speech during Selective Attention," Journal of Neuroscience, 40 (12) 2562-2572, 18 March 2020.