Past Events Category: Brains and Bagels

Tim Murphy, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
October 16, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brains and Bagels Seminar Series

When speakers detect an unexpected change in the acoustics of their vocal output, they adapt their productions to oppose these changes. Researchers investigate this sensorimotor adaptation using altered auditory feedback, a technique that alters speech in near-real time to measure how the speakers adjust to auditory errors. Because adaptation is implicit and unconscious, targeting sensorimotor adaptation through altered auditory feedback has the potential to complement traditional speech therapies that rely heavily on conscious, effortful practice. Our lab is investigating whether altered auditory feedback can increase vowel distinctiveness in speech, with the long term goal of using this technique to improve speech intelligibility in individuals with hypokinetic dysarthria. We have found that sensorimotor adaptation can be used to increase speakers’ average vowel spacing, which in turn correlates with changes in speech intelligibility. I will share findings from our study examining whether this adaptation is retained across multiple days and how repeated sessions modulate adaptation over time. Participants visited our lab twice weekly for four weeks, completing eight total sessions of reading monosyllabic words and sentences. Half of these participants received altered auditory feedback across all sessions, while the remaining half did not. Our preliminary results indicate that robust adaptation occurs within individual sessions, but that the magnitude of adaptation attenuates across consecutive sessions. Importantly, adaptation does not appear to be retained across sessions. I will conclude by contextualizing these findings within the broader speech and motor learning literature to interpret their implications for designing effective, long-term auditory feedback therapies.

Rosa Laufer-Sosa, PhD
Waisman Center
October 9, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brains and Bagels Seminar Series

Much is known about what visual cortical neurons respond to, but far less is known about what their activity causally contributes to perception. I will describe recent experiments using behavioral optogenetics in macaque area V4 to address this question. Monkeys reliably detect focal optogenetic perturbations of V4, and their ability to do so depends on the visual image being viewed at the time of stimulation. Unlike in inferotemporal cortex, however, weakening concurrent visual input does not impair detection and can enhance it, suggesting that V4 stimulation adds a visual event to ongoing perception. Intriguingly, nearby V4 sites produce distinct, feature-dependent perceptual effects. I will discuss how these findings motivate a new approach combining functional imaging with behavioral optogenetics to ask whether the known functional organization of visual cortex predicts the perceptual consequences of causally perturbing it.

Sigan Hartley, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
October 2, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brain and Bagels Seminar Series

People with Down syndrome are genetically at-risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Establishing the average age-based timeline of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down syndrome could help clinicians, interventionists, and families to understand disease time course and inform the design of clinical trials of potential therapies. Data will be presented from recent analyses aimed at establishing the age-based average timeline of Alzheimer’s disease plasma (NfL, GFAP ptau217) and imaging (Hippocampal volume, PET-tau, PET-amyloid) biomarkers in relation to multiple domains of cognition in people with Down syndrome.

Bobby Gibbs, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
September 25, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brains and Bagels Seminar Series

Contributors to Efficient Use of Partial Speech Information in Electric Hearing

Jason Brandt, M.D., FACS
Waisman Center
September 18, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Brains and Bagels Seminar Series

Cochlear implantation is one of the most successful neural prostheses in medicine, yet its impact on vestibular function remains an underappreciated clinical concern. This talk will provide an overview of vestibular physiology and its assessment, examine the evidence linking sensorineural hearing loss to balance dysfunction, and review the current literature on vestibular outcomes following cochlear implantation. As bilateral implantation becomes the standard of care, the cumulative risk of vestibular loss in the second ear raises important questions about the balance between auditory benefit and vestibular preservation. We will explore how ongoing research in bilateral hearing and spatial processing informs clinical decision-making for these patients.

Dhatri Devaraju, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
April 24, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Speech and language processing in the presence of noise exerts additional demands on cognitive processes, increasing the load on attention and working memory. Phonological units are the smallest structures of speech that are processed and stored in the cortical centers. Studies have evaluated effects of top-down cognitive factors on phonological processing using dual-task paradigms involving both auditory and visual modalities. It is important to understand modality-specific effects as, access to phonological units through the auditory modality is compromised in the presence of noise. Moreover, assessing phonological processing in individuals with communication disorders often involves non-word repetition tasks that place demands on motor programming. We adapted an auditory n-back task in which cognitive demands are manipulated within the auditory modality, and responses do not require overt speech production. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during the task. I will discuss the findings, leveraging temporal response functions to understand the effects of cognitive demands and noise on phonological processing, as well as the implementation of this approach to study these mechanisms in stuttering. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for disentangling the role of cognitive factors in speech and language processing in noisy environments, which is critical for developing evidence-based intervention strategies in individuals with speech and language disorders.

Sara Misurelli, Ph.D., Au.D., CCC-A
Waisman Center
April 17, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

The World Health Organization estimates that by 2050 2.5 billion people will experience hearing loss (HL), with 700 million requiring treatment. Comprehensive hearing evaluations, including word recognition tests (WRTs), are recommended for individuals with HL. While WRTs are a vital component of these evaluations, the availability of validated word lists in a variety of languages, and trained interpreters to score patient responses, is limited. Here our development process and solutions for addressing the lack of WRTs in non-English languages will be presented, using Hmong, a language in which word lists were not available as a case example. Our work involves four phases: 1) creating four professionally recorded phonetically-balanced monosyllabic word lists in White Hmong dialect, 2) validating the word lists, 3) surveying audiologists throughout the U.S. to gauge interest in and feasibility of using non-English word lists, and 4) developing an AI-automated scoring system for Hmong WRTs to improve accessibility and clinical utility. Together this work provides critical insights to barriers, opportunities, and solutions for improved access to equitable hearing health care.

G. Nike Gnanateja, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
April 10, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

The fast-fluctuating components of speech with frequency modulations close to the center frequency of the auditory filters, known as temporal fine structure (FS), and the slower varying amplitude modulations, called the envelope (ENV), are both crucial for speech perception. FS is particularly vital for understanding speech in noisy environments. While FS processing is susceptible to even minor auditory system damage, current hearing rehabilitation approaches often overlook the importance of providing better access to FS for individuals with hearing loss. I will discuss a new accessible speech-based assessment approach for evaluating an individual's ability to utilize speech FS in challenging listening conditions. I will demonstrate how the validity of the assessment approach and the applicability of this approach across different listening conditions. These insights have significant implications for the assessment of speech FS processing and the development of speech processing strategies in hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Hung-Shao Cheng, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
March 27, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Sensorimotor adaptation, learning from errors in sensory feedback, is increasingly positioned as a potential motor learning mechanism to be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech that may improve speech intelligibility. However, one barrier for translating sensorimotor adaptation from laboratories to clinics is that individuals with acquired motor speech disorders who may benefit from such interventions are generally older than the typical age range that past studies of speech sensorimotor adaptation focuses on, and it is possible that aging may impact sensorimotor adaptation potentially due to age-related influences on sensory acuity and motor control ability. In this talk, I will present a study that examined 1) age effects on auditory and somatosensory acuity and 2) the extent to which age, sensory acuity, and/or motor variability predicted adaptation. Results indicate that despite age-related declines in hearing thresholds and tactile acuity of the tongue, older adults were associated with better vowel formant discrimination acuity. Critically, aging did not affect the magnitude of adaptation to the non-uniform formant perturbation. Participants with less motor variability were associated with larger adaptation. These findings support the feasibility that sensorimotor adaptation can be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech in older adults.

Erik Jorgensen, AuD, PhD, CCC-A
Waisman Center
March 20, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Hearing aid users commonly report changes in environmental soundscape perception following hearing aid fitting, yet little work has systematically addressed how hearing loss and amplification alter the subjective experience of everyday sounds. We present a series of experiments examining these effects using perceptual attributes drawn from the international standard soundscape model. Participants rated sounds along these attributes across several contexts: single sounds evaluated in the lab and in the real world, and a variety of virtual urban soundscapes evaluated in the lab. Results indicate that listeners with hearing loss rate environmental sounds less positively than listeners with normal hearing across attributes. Hearing aids partially restore these ratings, though effect sizes are modest. We also examine the relative contributions of acoustic signal properties and semantic sound knowledge to attribute ratings. Together, these findings lay groundwork for understanding how hearing loss and amplification shape everyday soundscape perception, and demonstrate complementary methodological approaches for investigating these effects.