Auditory Neuroscience Lab

The deadline has been extended to the 10th June. There are still a couple of spots available. Apply before it's sold out! EEG/fNIRS/hyperscanning/TRFs/Speech/Music/Ping pong!

These findings suggest that training which taxes attention, memory, and production but is not perceptually taxing may be a way to boost neural encoding of sound and auditory pattern detection in individuals with poor auditory skills. 🧵6/6

However, voice actors didn’t show advantage in fine sound discrimination, which was instead linked to musical experience, suggesting that low-level auditory processing can only be enhanced by demanding perceptual training. 🧵5/6

We found that the consistency of neural sound encoding, prosody perception, and musical phrase perception are enhanced in voice actors, suggesting that a range of neural and behavioural auditory processing enhancements can result from training which lacks fine perceptual precision. 🧵4/6

We compared voice actors and a group of non-actors matched in musical training and assessed their neural encoding of pitch 🧠 , as well as their prosody 💬, music 🎵, and sound perception 🔉. 🧵3/6

Professional 🎙️voice actors 🎙️ exaggerate prosodic patterns to convey emotion, character or accents, drawing upon auditory attention, memory, and accurate sound production, but not fine perceptual precision. 🧵2/6

Are high perceptual precision demands always necessary for training to drive auditory neural plasticity? 🧠 🔊🎙️ Find out more in this cool study with voice actors doi.org/10.1016/j.co... by @mkachlicka.bsky.social & @adamtierney.bsky.social @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social #auditory #neuroscience 🧵1/6

This supports the idea that the brain doesn’t solely map physical locations but also structures abstract knowledge in a similar way. Our findings take this a step further, revealing that spatial neural resources are not just engaged but necessary for this kind of mental organization. 🧵4/4

A second experiment showed that when spatial thinking was disrupted, people struggled to mentally navigate sound, indicating that the brain’s navigation system isn’t just involved—it’s essential for this process. 🧵3/4

When participants imagined changes in sound, like a pitch rising or falling, or a note getting longer or shorter, their brains showed grid-like activity in the entorhinal cortex, the same neural pattern used for physical navigation. 🧵2/4

Spatial coding supports auditory conceptual navigation Grid cells in human entorhinal cortex encode spatial layouts for real-world navigation, yet their role in conceptual navigation remains unclear. Here we show that mentally transforming tones within a ...

Our brains have an internal GPS that guides us through physical space. But does it do more than that? A recent preprint from the lab shows that the brain’s navigation system also maps sound 🧠 🌎 🔉 Read more here: doi.org/10.1101/2025... #auditory #neuroscience @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social 🧵1/4

⏰CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS⏰ We're looking for London-based #participants who would like to take part in an fMRI study and gain insight into how our brains process second language speech 🧠🧠🧠 #auditory #neuroscience @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social Contact @mkachlicka.bsky.social for details. Please share!

⏰CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS⏰ We're looking for London-based #participants who would like to take part in an fMRI study and gain insight into how our brains process second language speech 🧠🧠🧠 #auditory #neuroscience @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social Contact @mkachlicka.bsky.social for details. Please share!

New preprint by @mkachlicka.bsky.social et al.! Perceptual strategies set by one's first language can make learning a second language difficult. Can short-term training change participants' strategies, potentially facilitating second language learning? The answer is sort of! osf.io/preprints/ps...

Our "Many Voices" 75-author collaboration led by Yuto Ozaki finding global regularities in music-speech relationships is now out on the cover of Science Advances: science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Full video of 18 coauthors singing/speaking in our own languages at youtu.be/a4eNNrdcfDM

Weighting of cues to categorization of song versus speech in tone-language and non-tone-language speakers One of the most important auditory categorization tasks a listener faces is determining a sound's domain, a process which is a prerequisite for succes…

Hi new followers! Here are a few recent papers from the lab:

@mkachlicka.bsky.social shows that Illusory transformation of speech into song is unaffected by language background, suggesting cross-cultural similarity in cues used to distinguish speech and music: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Auditory Neuroscience Lab We are a part of the Auditory Language Processing, Hearing and Attention (ALPHALAB) Lab at the Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck. Our lab uses behavioural techniques and EEG to study the ...

Do you want to know more about our research? Check our website: sites.google.com/view/audione... and follow us here! 🦋 #research #auditory #neuroscience