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Adam Tierney

@adamtierney.bsky.social

I am a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London. Cognitive science, neuroscience, music, speech. He/him.

1,052 Followers  |  1,891 Following  |  51 Posts  |  Joined: 11.12.2023  |  5.2732

Latest posts by adamtierney.bsky.social on Bluesky

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Wait, that can't be right--the cerebellum is where auditory cortex is.

07.11.2025 09:30 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Neural tracking of melodic prediction is pre-attentive Musicโ€™s ability to modulate arousal and manipulate emotions relies upon formation and violation of predictions. Music is often used to modulate arousal and mood while individuals focus on other tasks,...

New preprint by Mika Nash and others on how selective attention affects neural tracking of prediction during ecologically valid music listening: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

04.11.2025 16:09 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Speech perception strategies shift instantly To perceive speech listeners must decide how to prioritize information from multiple acoustic dimensions. Over the course of language learning, indiviโ€ฆ

๐Ÿ“„ New paper out!

Itโ€™s long been known that listeners reweight acoustic cues in speech when cue reliability changes. Here @adamtierney.bsky.social, Kyle Jasmin, and I show that this can happen instantly after a single exposure to 'accented' speech. tinyurl.com/mwt6usdw

@rhulpsychology.bsky.social

12.09.2025 14:30 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 7    ๐Ÿ” 4    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Laurelโ€“Yanny percept affects the speech-to-song illusion, but musical anhedonia does not - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Laurelโ€“Yanny percept affects the speech-to-song illusion, but musical anhedonia does not

New paper ๐Ÿšจ! Our class project on Illusions of the Mind: Laurel vs. Yanny and Sometimes Behave So Strangely #speech2songillusion now out www.nature.com/articles/s41... with 3 undergrad, 2 postgrad, & 1 postdoc, & 3 PI authors #musicscience

25.08.2025 17:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 20    ๐Ÿ” 5    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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UCL โ€“ University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

๐Ÿ“ฃcog neuro postdoc opportunity! Interested in studying attention & exploration w/ cutting edge M/EEG? ๐Ÿง care about making vision science a bit more naturalistic? ๐ŸŒฑLandauLab is hiring! We seek resourceful, curious and creative researchers who can join the newly forming London-based team@ucl.ac.uk! ...

15.05.2025 16:07 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 23    ๐Ÿ” 17    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 3

The kid has started calling me โ€œcool dadโ€ whenever he wants something. This is startlingly effective emotional manipulation

05.05.2025 12:23 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 6    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Divisional Vacancies Job Vacancies in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences

New *Funded PhD opportunity* for UK students to work with me at UCL (London), researching auditory training interventions to improve speech understanding in noisy environments. Deadline 28th April. Full details and job description: bit.ly/4ccbbzj @uclpals.bsky.social [please share]

31.03.2025 12:49 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 7    ๐Ÿ” 9    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 3
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PhD Studentship & Graduate Teaching Assistant at Birkbeck, University of London Apply now for the PhD Studentship & Graduate Teaching Assistant role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

There's a PhD studentship opportunity available at the Birkbeck School of Psychological Sciences! 4 years, funded by working as a graduate teaching assistant. Feel free to get in touch if you have questions. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMD691/p...

07.04.2025 08:11 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4    ๐Ÿ” 6    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Having a kid really drives home how we're all linguistically complacent, settling for mediocrity when we should be innovating to realize the full potential of language. Anyway he called baby ducks "ducklets" this morning and I'd like to request that we all switch to that from now on

03.04.2025 09:54 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 29    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

New preprint! Musical aptitude and experience, pitch discrimination, and neural encoding of speech harmonics are linked to the ability to perceive prosody in Mandarin-accented speech. Led by Amir Hossein Ghooch Kanloo (his MSc dissertation!) osf.io/preprints/ps...

18.03.2025 10:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 8    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

New preprint! Do individuals with musical anhedonia perceive illusory speech in song? Sort of! They rate all speech stimuli as less musical than controls, but hear increased musicality with repetition. And they don't like hearing speech, whether or not it transforms into song. osf.io/preprints/ps...

18.03.2025 10:30 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 7    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

New preprint! Listeners adjust their speech perception strategies after a single "accented" speech trial. However, these shifts in strategy vanish as quickly as they appear, lasting a single trial before returning to baseline. With @ashleysymons.bsky.social and Kyle Jasmin. osf.io/preprints/ps...

18.03.2025 10:22 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

...with @ashleysymons.bsky.social and Fred Dick

11.03.2025 13:04 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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New preprint! When listenersโ€™ predictions about upcoming speech sounds fail, the subjective passage of time slows down. This suggests that people make linguistic predictions even when ignoring speech and prediction errors capture attention. osf.io/preprints/ps...

11.03.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 7    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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โฐCALL FOR PARTICIPANTSโฐ 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 ๐Ÿง ๐Ÿง ๐Ÿง  #auditory #neuroscience @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social Contact @mkachlicka.bsky.social for details. Please share!

12.02.2025 10:10 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 8    ๐Ÿ” 4    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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New preprint! This paper shows that the perceptual boundary between speech and song can shift due to the surrounding context. Specifically, speech/song categorization is affected by contrastive adaptation: perceptual movement away from the previous stimulus.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

07.02.2025 15:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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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 ...

New preprint! We find grid-like coding in entorhinal cortex when participants complete a task requiring mental manipulation of the frequency and duration of sounds. This suggests that people use spatial circuits when thinking about sound.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

06.02.2025 10:48 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 7    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

So if I'm understanding you correctly, the best way to prepare for the upcoming challenges is to integrate myself into a community of naked mole-rats

06.02.2025 10:44 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Newton International Fellowships | Royal Society This fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.

If you're a non-UK scientist who wants to come to the UK for a postdoc, this year's Newton Fellowships are now open. You'll need a lab to host you (which could be me, but truly, could be any PI, so get in touch with someone you'd like to work with!)

royalsociety.org/grants/newto...

29.01.2025 17:27 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 128    ๐Ÿ” 147    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 6

Blackout dates would be an ideal solution! I wonder if any journal's implemented this?

06.01.2025 10:43 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

In trying to fix scientific publishing, maybe we could start with the small things? Like, say, counting work days instead of seven days a week when calculating review deadlines? I'm really sick of being told a review is due on Christmas, or on a Sunday

05.01.2025 16:48 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 11    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Good point, but now I just wonder where that m came from

24.12.2024 01:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

That could explain the โ€œrโ€, I guess, but the โ€œmโ€? They canโ€™t all be snare rolls!

24.12.2024 01:32 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

No drum in existence makes a sound that even remotely resembles โ€œpa rum pa pum pumโ€. What drum can produce a nasal consonant? Drums do not have a nasal cavity. What kind of horribly cursed drum are we talking about here and why is it tormenting that baby

23.12.2024 21:27 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 9    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Exclamation points are a naturalistic way to convey that a finding is particularly important or notable. The scientific writing custom for this is something like "Strikingly, " or "Remarkably, X was true" which sounds so awkward and clunky

19.12.2024 13:49 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

"This effect was, as you can see in Figure 1, truly whopping."

19.12.2024 12:17 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Puns in text: absolutely not. Puns in title: allowed for some reason

19.12.2024 12:15 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

If you're going to begin a sentence with "Remarkably," just use an exclamation point or two. You're already 99% of the way there

19.12.2024 12:12 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

It's odd how strong the taboo is against certain stylistic elements in scientific writing. For example, I don't think I've ever read a scientific paper that contained an exclamation point! Or ellipses... What if I dared include them? Would an exclamation point doom an otherwise publishable paper???

19.12.2024 11:57 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 10    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 8    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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A universal of speech timing: Intonation units form low frequency rhythms and balance cross-linguistic syllable rate variability Intonation units (IUs) are a universal building-block of human speech. They are found cross-linguistically and are tied to important language functions such as the pacing of information in discourse a...

Excited to inaugurate my bluesky presence with this exciting preprint! Lead by the one and only Maya Inbar and together w Eitan Grossman we investigated temporal structure of prosodic units in over forty languages. Check out what we found!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

04.12.2024 18:50 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 19    ๐Ÿ” 6    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 3    ๐Ÿ“Œ 4

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