Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
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Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Director: Natalya Kaganovich, PhD
Dr. Kaganovich’s research has two related goals. The first one is to contribute to the understanding of how complex auditory signals (such as voice, speech, and music) are encoded in the brain and how they interact with such cognitive processes as working memory and attention. In this respect, she is especially interested in how the brain encodes the sounds of human voice and what role encoding of talker characteristics plays in speech perception. The goal of the second component is to evaluate the influence of congruent visual information on auditory processing. Audition is most commonly evaluated in isolation from vision; however, in the majority of cases communication is a multisensory act, and growing research points at pervasive and intricate interconnections between sensory modalities. Dr. Kaganovich’s research focuses on both typically developing children as well as children with speech/language disorders. She also studies auditory processing in young healthy adults.
The Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory is equipped with a 32 channel Biosemi ERP Data Acquisition System, which allows one to collect brain’s electrical signals in response to various stimuli – such as sounds, images, and their combination. The event-related potentials (ERP) technique is a non-invasive method and can be safely and easily used with children and adults. It has an excellent temporal resolution and can be used to study a range of cognitive processes, including language, attention, and memory.