Speech sound representations and their plasticity in language learning are one of the core areas in our research. We have shown that language-specific memory traces, predominant in the left temporal lobe, operate in an automatic fashion. Read the publication here.
We also address the neural basis of auditory and audiovisual processing underlying reading and reading impairments. Furthermore, we aim to shed light on the impaired neural processing stages of speech and auditory information in dyslexia, autism spectrum, and other language and learning deficits. Our work has indicated that with appropriate intervention programs, dyslexia and language impairments can be alleviated, and their neural basis altered. Related publications can be found here.
During past years, the research in the Brain and Music team has shown that music sounds are processed in the auditory cortex as any other sound but partially by spatially distinct neural networks. In professional and amateur musicians, these neural networks can represent musically relevant sound information with higher accuracy than in non-musicians. Importantly, however, also non-musicians can extract highly complex musical information even when they concentrate on a parallel task outside the auditory modality during the brain recordings.
The research on the developmental aspects of audition, memory, and attention is primarily based on event-related potentials and magnetic fields from children, infants, and fetuses. Our studies show that the fetal brain is capable of disentangling sounds with different pitches and that the neonatal brain has high-level cognitive skills related to sound perception.
In children, the development of skills related to understanding speech and music is of great interest due to the benefits of early detection of possible impairments of hearing abilities. Our current projects aim at understanding the normal development of these abilities.
With ageing, speech perception, especially in background noise, becomes increasingly difficult even without major alteration in a pure-tone audiogram. Our goal is to understand the age-related deterioration in the central auditory system and its impact on auditory processing in everyday life. To this aim, we develop and test objective (attention-independent) electrophysiological indices for the different aspects of central-auditory processing such as discrimination and identification of complex auditory signals and the duration and capacity of auditory sensory memory. One promising index is the mismatch negativity. Furthermore, by using these very same indices, we explore the effectiveness of different types of training and practice program, in an attempt at alleviating or cancelling some of the age-related deterioration.
Besides these central research areas, we also investigate the neural basis and plasticity of auditory processing, for instance, phenomena such as auditory memory and primitive intelligence. Furthermore, we determine how auditory training, acquisition of special skills, or extraordinary demands on the auditory system, such as blindness, cause reorganization in the neural substrate of auditory perception. We also constantly strive for improving research paradigms for efficient data acquisition. For example, with the "multi-feature" paradigm ("Optimum-1"), it is possible to record the MMN for about five sound-features in the same time period in which MMN was acquired with the oddball paradigm for 1-2 features only.
We are working to enrich interaction in digital environments by finding new ways of conveying emotional information. Why? To improve human collaboration, decrease misunderstanding, disconnection, and loneliness.
Digital systems are not designed to consider emotions. As a result, the tools we have for expressing our emotions online are severely lacking in quality. This, in turn, inhibits empathy, the mechanisms that allow people to understand each other, connect and collaborate.
The problem is evident in how discussions online easily become unnecessarily heated, in the growing rate of cyberbullying and in the difficulties that distributed teams have in their cooperation.