MARCS blog

Possible Model for MMMs

2010-06-08T15:22:00.002+10:00

A proposal: Two types of MMMs

First Monday of Every Month: Student and Postdoc only MMM.
Chaired by a different student each time (roster organised by the MMM organisers)
Content:
* Conference practice talks by students
* Update talks by students, e.g,. "this is what I found in Expt 1, and here’s what I plan to do in Expt 2 ...."
* Maybe some instructional stuff of particular interest to students

General MMMs – all MARCS.
Chaired by a different student each time (roster organised by the MMM organisers)
Content:
A. Published paper MMMs: about once every 4 to 8 weeks or so have an MMM dedicated to talks on published papers - up to 3 talks (10 mins talk + 10 mins discussion each (max) about recently published papers. No need to have every MARCS published paper presented, but a representative sample from a range of people.

B. General MMMs, including:
i. WIDAWIDIs
ii. Papers by visiting students, interns
iii. Float CoCs (i.e., early versions of CoCs in which ideas are being formed, rather than reasonably polished versions just before these are to be presented for College review
iv. Instructional stuff re MARCS equipment, s/w use, stats, etc., etc., by staff, students, visitors etc.
v. Other

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What do people think?

And The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat

2010-03-16T11:17:00.004+11:00

Although in a study on movement it might have been better to use Movement VI of Saint-Saëns' Le carnaval des animaux (this might just be a peculiarly Australian preference), Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola used the Finale with its bouncy eighth note rhythm (along with the last movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) to test whether preverbal infants engage in rhythmic behavior to music.

What they did was to carry out two experiments (in which 120 infants were tested, experiment 1: n = 51; experiment 2: n = 69). To investigate the type of auditory stimulus that best elicited rhythmic engagement, Zentner and Eerola tested infants with excerpts of classical music (the aforementioned Saint-Saëns and Mozart), rhythm-only versions of these excerpts, a children’s song, isochronous drumbeats, and a musical stimulus with rapid tempo shifts. As control stimuli they used prerecorded human speech - adult-directed speech (ADS) in Experiment 1 and infant directed speech (IDS) in experiment 2. Infants were tested on their parent’s lap with parents instructed to try to avoid moving during the experiment (they also wore headphones through which they heard spoken text). Several methods were employed to measure any rhythmic response by the infants. In Experiments 1 and 2, videos of the infants were coded by two independent raters (with inter-rater reliability sampled over a quarter of the ratings, κ=0.84 in Experiment 1 and κ=0.82 in Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, 3D motion capture (Qualisys) was used to facilitate the mapping of movement time onto musical time).

In the results, infant's rhythmic engagement with music, rhythm and speech were compared (check out the figure to the right).

The authors also examined development trends and whether the timing of infants’ rhythmic movements was coordinated with musical time (see this video).

There is a lot more in the paper as well - an exploration of whether the degree to which infants coordinate movement to metrically regular sound patterns is affected by pulse clarity and whether rhythmic engagement and coordination with music induce positive affect.

If you're interested why not read Zentner, M. & Eerola, T (2010). Rhythmic engagement with music in infancy. PNAS, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1000121107, I am interested in your comments.

FLMP or not FLMP, that is the question

2010-02-23T11:23:00.006+11:00

The well-known "McGurk Effect" is an illusion in which visual cues to the syllable "ga" are combined with auditory cues to syllable "ba" resulting in the perception of "da" or "tha".

Below is an example from Pat Kuhl’s lab web site. Try listening to the following video with your eyes closed, then, after several repetitions, open your eyes to see how your perception changes in the presence of the visual stimulus.

Having experienced the conditions for the McGurk effect yourselves, now consider this recent paper by Schwartz …. It begins with the following observation "When a public demonstration of the McGurk effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976) is presented to visitors or students, there appears a large variability in the subjects’ audiovisual (AV) responses, some seeming focused on the auditory (A) input, others more sensitive to the visual (V) component and to the McGurk illusion".

This simple observation begs the question of whether people differ in their ability to combine auditory and visual speech or whether the variability in perceiving the McGurk effect is simply due to differences in mono-modal A and V perception per se.

The two points of view are represented by Grant and Seitz (1998) and Schwartz and others (e.g., Schwartz & Cathiard, 2004, Schwartz, 2006) on the one hand (who take the position that individuals can differ in their ability to fuse AV information) and Massaro and colleagues (see Massaro 1987, 1998) on the other (who have adopted the view that all participants are “optimal integrators” who combine AV evidence for available categories in the same multiplicative way).

Schwartz points out in his paper that answering this question has been obscured by methodological issues in how to model AV integration. What I like about the paper is that it provides both a methodological framework for analysis of audiovisual speech perception data and shows (by using this framework) that there are inter-individual differences in the process of AV fusion. Nice work Jean-Luc!

So what is it that Schwartz does?

First, he establishes the ground over which this issue will be decided – it is all about models of AV integration and in how well they can account for the pattern of observed data. Schwartz then goes on the compare two models, Masarro’s FLMP (which does not have a participant specific weighting factor) and the WFLMP, a variant of FLMP that explicitly incorporates participant-dependent weights for AV integration. To give these models something to work with, Schwartz uses a corpus and AV data that crosses a synthetic five-level audio /ba/-/da/ continuum with a synthetic video similar continuum. The 10 unimodal (5A, 5V) and 25 bimodal (AV) stimuli were presented for /ba/ vs. /da/ identification to 82 participants, with 24 observations per participants. These responses have been made publically available by Massaro and colleagues on their web site.

So, far so good; but how “good” a model is, is not only about how closely it can fit data. Schwartz refers to his work (Schwartz, 2006) in which he identifies the so-called 0/0 problem in Masarro’s FLMP model (Massaro, 1987, 1998).

Basically, this 0/0 problem allows a FLMP an indirect way to decrease the importance of a modality in fusion on a per participant basis by slightly but consistently mis-fitting the unimodal data – but it does this without actually having to use participant-specific weights. This “problem” in modeling needs to be taken into account in assessing the model and Schwartz argues that simply considering error (RMSE) does not do this. In order to “properly” evaluate the models, Schwartz uses a variant of a Bayesian Model Selection (BMS) criterion (he uses a more easily computed Laplace approximation of BMS).

So, what is the outcome? Why don’t you read Jean-Luc’s paper?– and I would recommend also having a look at a tutorial prepared by Schwartz on a practical implementation of BMSL.

So, what do you think?

Musical Scales ... some biological underpinning?

2010-01-16T12:06:00.011+11:00

In a recent article in PLoS ONE, Kamraan Gill and Dale Purves examined the issue of why only a few of the enormous number of possible tone combinations are employed to create music.

They began their article with a brief description of the musical scales that have been widely employed in world music, noting that the same five-note and seven-note collections that are used in major and minor pentatonic and heptatonic scales of Western music are also prevalent in traditional Indian, Chinese and Arabicin music. This lead to the question of why only a few scales have been so strongly favored (i.e., since there are billions of possible ways to divide octaves into five to seven tonal intervals, is their a reason why a particular set of these has become so well established?).

Gill and Purves investigated the idea that the scales that have been preferred in music worldwide share an overall similarity to the spectral characteristics of a harmonic series. To do this, they quantitatively compared the harmonic structure defining each interval in a possible scale to a harmonic series. With this in hand, they could then ascertain whether the scales with the highest degree of similarity to a harmonic series are in fact the scales commonly used to make music.

Of course this approach meant that they had to evaluate all "possible scales", a huge task. They did not do this, but selected a subset of scales by restricting the potential scale tones to 60 (leaving 455,126 pentatonic scales, 45,057,474 heptatonic scales and 279,871,768,995 dodecatonic scales).

The results were expressed in terms of the highest mean percentage similarity to a harmonic series. The most similar scale to a harmonic series was the minor pentatonic scale. The second most similar was the Ritusen scale and the third and fourth most similar, the ascending forms of two ragas (Candrika todi and Asa-gaudi) used in classical Indian music. Interestingly, the chromatic scale did not appear that similar to a harmonic series when compared to 10 million other possible 12-note scales. They summarize the results by stating that musical scale preferences are predicted by the overall similarity of their component intervals to a harmonic series (here "musical scale preference" is being used as a short-hand denoting the popular scales that exist in world music).

In the discussion, Gill and Purves considered the basis for why the component intervals of existant musical scales are similar to a harmonic series. They proposed that the use of such scales derives from a preference for tone combinations that reflect the spectral characteristics of conspecific vocalizations.

What do you think?

Reference

Gill, K. & Purves, D. (2009) A Biological Rationale for Musical Scales. PLoS ONE 4(12): e8144. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008144

Getting an edge on tinnitus

2010-01-01T15:20:00.006+11:00

One strand of research at MARCS involves investigating various aspects of tinnitus (when a person perceives an on-going sound in the absence of an external sound source).

As Susan Rossiter (the lead author of one study) has been quoted "we wanted to learn more about the ways in which chronic tinnitus disrupts cognitive performance". In this study (with Gary Walker and Kate Stevens) 38 people, half of whom had constant moderate to severe tinnitus, and an age-, educational level-, occupation-, and verbal IQ -matched control group, completed auditory verbal working-memory and visual divided-attention tasks. The results showed that the reading span of the tinnitus group was significantly lower than that of the control group. Furthermore, the tinnitus group had slower reaction times and poorer accuracy in the most demanding dual task context. It was concluded that complaints concerning the distracting effects of tinnitus have a basis in performance test outcomes. A follow-up study (Stevens, Walker, Boyer & Gallagher , 2007) investigated other important variables that might have affected cognitive performance such as depression and hearing loss. Here, the results supported a general depletion of resources hypothesis with the reaction times of the tinnitus group slower in the Stroop task, and in the word reading and category naming conditions of a dual task. As Gary Walker has said "our ultimate goal is to use this knowledge to develop management strategies that will help minimize disruption”.

But what is the cause of tinnitus and how might knowledge of this cause help to tailor treatments? A recent review paper, Kaltenbach (2009) identifies three components of tinnitus: the acoustic (the unwanted sound itself); the attentional (the degree to which a person listens to/or focuses on the tinnitus) and the emotional component (the affective reaction to the tinnitus). In terms of mechanism, the basic idea is that tinnitus is caused by plastic changes that affect the normal balance of excitatory and inhibitory inputs to neurons.

Kaltenbach presented a simple figure outlining the contemporary view of changes in the brain that appear to contribute to tinnitus percepts. First thing to note is the cochlear damage (hair cells). This has follow-on effects on the neurons of the hind, mid and forebrain. How a loss of hearing or of normal cochlear function causes the changes in neural pathways thought to underlie tinnitus is not well understood, but changes in frequency mapping, neural synchrony and hyperactivity (loss of inhibition) have all been implicated.

In a recent PNAS paper, Okamoto, Stracke, Stoll and Pantev (2009) have built on the idea of maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization and proposed a treatment approach that targets the tinnitus percept directly. This treatment approach was based on the results of a previous study (Pantev, Wollbrink, Roberts, Engelien, Lütkenhöner, 1999) that showed that listening to spectrally “notched” music can reduce cortical activity corresponding to the notch centre frequency (although this approach seems curiously at odds with that taken by Norena & Eggermont, 2006).

Okamoto and colleagues tested 23 people in a double-blind trial that lasted for one year. Eight participants received the treatment (see below). Another eight received a placebo and seven participants were simply monitored without any treatment. The treatment method used involved first establishing the central frequency of the tinnitus percept (to do this the authors selected people who experienced strongly lateralized tonal tinnitus – like a beep or whistle – with participants ipsi-laterally matching the tinnitus pitch to the frequency of a pure tone at least four times on two different days. The median across pitch match was used as the tinnitus frequency). Each participant then selected a favourite piece of music.
For the treatment group, this piece of music was then altered so that the frequencies one octave on either side of the participant’s tinnitus pitch were removed (see figure). The placebo group received a “placebo music” modification in which a moving filter of one octave width that spared the tinnitus frequency region was used (i.e., the moving filter randomly chose a frequency band outside the one octave wide tinnitus frequency region). Following this, participant’s listened to this "notched" piece of music every day for a year (listening times were documented daily). Here are two example of the music:

Target notched music treatment
Placebo notched music treatment (using a moving notch filter)

The results showed that after a year, the treatment group felt that their ringing sensation was around 30% quieter, while the other two groups showed no improvements. It was also found that the notched music reduced the activity of the affected neurons within auditory cortex of the treatment group. Here’s the abstract:

Maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization may contribute to the generation and maintenance of tinnitus. Because cortical organization can be modified by behavioral training, we attempted to reduce tinnitus loudness by exposing chronic tinnitus patients to self-chosen, enjoyable music, which was modified (“notched”) to contain no energy in the frequency range surrounding the individual tinnitus frequency. After 12 months of regular listening, the target patient group (n =8) showed significantly reduced subjective tinnitus loudness and concomitantly exhibited reduced evoked activity in auditory cortex areas corresponding to the tinnitus frequency compared to patients who had received an analogous placebo notched music treatment (n =8). These findings indicate that tinnitus loudness can be significantly diminished by an enjoyable, low-cost, custom-tailored notched music treatment, potentially via reversing maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization.

Of course this is a rather small study, but it is the logic that underlies the approach that is interesting (not only in that it addresses acoustic processing using the cortical plasticity framework but by using the participant’s most enjoyable music, it covers both the attentional (encourages engaged attention) and affective (enjoyable) components associated with tinnitus percepts).

References

Kaltenbach, J.A. (2009) Insights on the origins of tinnitus: An overview of recent research. The Hearing Journal, 62 (2).

Norena A.J. & Eggermont J. (2006). Enriched acoustic environment after noise trauma abolishes neural signs of tinnitus. Neuroreport, 17, 559-563.

Okamoto, Stracke, Stoll & Pantev. (2009). Listening to tailor-made notched music reduces tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related auditory cortex activity. PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.0911268107.

Pantev, C. Wollbrink, A., Roberts, L. E., Engelien, A., Lütkenhöner, B. (1999). Short-term plasticity of the human auditory cortex. Brain Research, 842, 192–199.

Rossiter, S., Stevens, C. & Walker G. (2006). Tinnitus and Its Effect on Working Memory and Attention. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 150-160.

Stevens , C. Walker, G. Boyer M. & Gallagher M. (2007). Severe tinnitus and its effect on selective and divided attention. International Journal of Audiology, 46, 208-216.

Verbal communication often occurs in noisy backgrounds - there's a general title for you

2009-12-28T13:44:00.004+11:00

Event related auditory evoked potentials (AEP) can be elicited without the participant in an experiment needing to do anything. One such AEP is generated in the brain stem in response to simple repetitive acoustic stimuli (e.g., a sharp click). Such brain stem responses are often used to evaluate the integrity of the auditory pathway. When using more complex acoustic stimuli, e.g., a spoken syllable, the brain stem response to can be divided into transient (onset response) and sustained parts (frequency-following response, FFR). Brainstem responses appear to provide information about how the sound structure of a speech syllable is encoded by the auditory system.

In the very explicitly named paper “Context-Dependent Encoding in the Human Auditory Brainstem Relates to Hearing Speech in Noise: Implications for Developmental Dyslexia”, Chandrasekaran, Hornickel, Skoe, Nicol and Kraus from Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory recorded electrical activity at Cz (with responses bandpass ﬁltered from 70 to 2000, the low-pass cutoff of 70 Hz was chosen to reduce any cortical contribution) to investigate how responses to auditory stimuli are modulated by the context of speech (context dependent coding).

What they did was to play a synthesized speech syllable to children who had no neurological abnormalities or learning disabilities as they viewed a video. The context manipulation consisted of presenting the syllable either in a repetitive (predictable) or in a variable (unpredictable) fashion. As the title suggests, the authors examined the brain responses of good and poor readers. What did they find? Here is the summary:

SUMMARY
We examined context-dependent encoding of speech in children with and without developmental dyslexia by measuring auditory brainstem responses to a speech syllable presented in a repetitive or variable context. Typically developing children showed enhanced brainstem representation of features related to voice pitch in the repetitive context, relative to the variable context. In contrast, children with developmental dyslexia exhibited impairment in their ability to modify representation in predictable contexts. From a functional perspective, we found that the extent of context-dependent encoding in the auditory brainstem correlated positively with behavioral indices of speech perception in noise. The ability to sharpen representation of repeating elements is crucial to speech perception in noise, since it allows superior “tagging” of voice pitch, an important cue for segregating sound streams in background noise. The disruption of this mechanism contributes to a critical deficit in noise-exclusion, a hallmark symptom in developmental dyslexia.

Reference

Chandrasekaran, Hornickel, Skoe, Nicol and Kraus (2009). Context-Dependent Encoding in the Human Auditory Brainstem Relates to Hearing Speech in Noise: Implications for Developmental Dyslexia, Neuron, 64,311–319.

See also Russo et al (2004). Brainstem responses to speech syllable. Clinical Neurophysiology, 115, 2021–2030.

An anatomical signature for literacy

2009-12-20T09:21:00.007+11:00

It has long been known that people who have not learned to read (illiterates) do very poorly on tasks that involve doing things with abstract sound-based properties of words (or nonwords) - see Morais (1993) for a brief review. For instance, illiterate adults have been found to be almost unable to perform a task that involves "deleting" or "adding" a phone at the beginning of a nonword whereas literate adults (from the same sociocultural environment) could easily perform the task (Morais et al., 1979).

Castro-Caldas, Petersson,Reis, Stone-Elander and Ingvar (1998) followed this up in a PET study that looked at the energy response of cortical neurons to oral language processing tasks in illiterate and literate adults. The two groups performed similarly and activated similar areas of the brain when repeating real words. However the illiterate group had more difficulty repeating nonwords correctly and when doing this task different brain regions were activated compared to the literate group.

In this recent study examining the issue of how literacy changes cortical structure and functioning Manuel Carreiras and colleagues used MRI to examine cortical connectivity and neural activation in 42 adult Colombian ex-guerrilla fighters, 20 who had completed a literacy programme and 22 who had yet to start the course. What did they find?

Abstract
Language is a uniquely human ability that evolved at some point in the roughly 6,000,000 years since human and chimpanzee lines diverged1,2. Even in the most linguistically impoverished environments, children naturally develop sophisticated language systems3. In contrast, reading is a learnt skill that does not develop without intensive tuition and practice. Learning to read is likely to involve ontogenic structural brain changes4–6, but these are nearly impossible to isolate in children owing to concurrent biological, environmental and social maturational changes. In Colombia, guerrillas are re-integrating into mainstream society and learning to read for the first time as adults. This presents a unique opportunity to investigate how literacy changes the brain, without the maturational complications present in children. Here we compare structural brain scans from those who learnt to read as adults (late literates) with those from a carefully matched set of illiterates. Late-literates had more white matter in the splenium of the corpus callosum and more grey matter in bilateral angular, dorsal occipital, middle temporal, left supramarginal and superior temporal gyri. The importance of these brain regions for skilled reading was investigated in early literates, who learnt to read as children. We found anatomical connections linking the left and right angular and dorsal occipital gyri through the area of the corpus callosum where white matter was higher in late-literates than in illiterates; that reading, relative to object naming, increased the interhemispheric functional connectivity between the left and right angular gyri; and that activation in the left angular gyrus exerts top-down modulation on information flow from the left dorsal occipital gyrus to the left supramarginal gyrus. These findings demonstrate how the regions identified in late-literates interact.

References

Carreiras et al (2009). An anatomical signature for literacy, Nature, 461,983-986.

Castro-Caldas, A. Petersson, K. M. Reis, A. Stone-Elander, S. & Ingvar, M (1998). The illiterate brain Learning to read and write during childhood influences the
functional organization of the adult brain, Brain, 121, 1053–1063

Morais J. Phonemic awareness, language and literacy. In: Joshi RM,
Leong CK, editors. Reading disabilities: diagnosis and component
processes. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic; 1993. p. 175–84.

Morais J, Cary L, Alegria J, Bertelson P. (1979). Does awareness of speech
as a sequence of phones arise spontaneously? Cognition, 7, 323–31.

Reading this? Thank your left mid-fusiform gyrus ;)

2009-12-17T11:07:00.003+11:00

In this classic use of an N=1 cognitive-neuro approach, Dr Kyrana Tsapkini and Dr Brenda Rapp examined the reading comprehension and spelling abilities of a patient (DPT) who had undergone resection of the left fusiform gyrus due to a tumor.

Tsapkini, K & Rapp B. (2010). The orthography-specific functions of the left fusiform gyrus: Evidence of modality and category specificity, Cortex, In press.

Abstract
We report on an investigation of the cognitive functions of an individual with a resection of the left fusiform gyrus. This individual and a group of control participants underwent testing to examine the question of whether or not there are neural substrates within the left fusiform gyrus that are dedicated to orthographic processing. We evaluated the modality specificity (written vs spoken language) and the category specificity (written language vs other visual categories) of this individual's impairments. The results clearly reveal deficits affecting lexical processes in both reading and spelling. Specifically, we find disruption of normal, rapid access to meaning from print in reading and of accurate retrieval of the spellings of words from their meaning in writing. These deficits stand in striking contrast with intact processing of spoken language and categories of visual stimuli such as line drawings of objects and faces. The modality and category specificity of the deficits provide clear evidence of neural substrates within the left-mid-fusiform gyrus that are specialized and necessary for normal orthographic processing.

A tone is a tone is a tone...

2009-12-16T11:31:00.004+11:00

Krishnana, Gandour,J.T. & Bidelman, G.M (2010). The effects of tone language experience on pitch processing in the brainstem, Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 23, 81-95.

Abstract

Neural encoding of pitch in the auditory brainstem is shaped by long-term experience with language. The aim herein was to determine to what extent this experience-dependent effect is specific to a particular language. Analysis of variance of brainstem responses to Mandarin and Thai tones revealed that regardless of language identity, pitch-tracking accuracy of whole tones was higher in the two tone language groups (Chinese, Thai) compared to the non-tone language group (English), and that pitch strength of 40-ms tonal sections was generally more robust in tone relative to non-tone languages. Discriminant analysis of tonal sections, as defined by variation in direction and degree of slope, showed that moderate rising pitch was the most important variable for classifying English, Chinese, and Thai participants into their respective groups. We conclude that language-dependent enhancement of pitch representation transfers to other languages with similar phonological systems. From a neurobiological perspective, these findings suggest that neural mechanisms local to the brainstem are tuned for processing pitch dimensions that are perceptually salient depending upon the melodic patterns of a language.

Discussion (Beginning)

Using synthetic speech stimuli that contain f0 contours representative of citation forms of Mandarin and Thai lexical tones (see figure), the major finding of this study demonstrates that experience-dependent brainstem mechanisms for pitch representation, as reflected in pitch-tracking accuracy and pitch strength, are more sensitive in tone (Chinese, Thai) than non-tone (English) language speakers. No matter the degree of phonetic similarity between corresponding tones from the two languages, Chinese and Thai are both able to transfer their abilities in pitch encoding across languages

Monkey (proto)Syntax in six calls?

2009-12-12T16:52:00.006+11:00

Ouattara,K., Lemasson,A. & Zuberbühler, K. (2009). Campbell's monkeys concatenate vocalizations into context-specific call sequences , PNAS, doi:10.1073/ pnas.0908118106
Imagine spending 20 months in the Ivory Coast's Tai National Park studying the calls of Campbell's monkeys. If you did, and you were patient, the sounds represented in the figure on the right are what you might hear.

The interest in this paper is not so much the individual calls but the way that they are sequenced and what such sequencing might mean.

Here is the abstract:

Primate vocal behavior is often considered irrelevant in modeling human language evolution, mainly because of the caller’s limited vocal control and apparent lack of intentional signaling. Here,we present the results of a long-term study on Campbell’s monkeys, which has revealed an unrivaled degree of vocal complexity. Adult males produced six different loud call types, which they combined into various sequences in highly context-speciﬁc ways. We found stereotyped sequences that were strongly associated with cohesion and travel, falling trees, neighboring groups, nonpredatory animals, unspeciﬁc predatory threat,and specific predator classes. Within the responses to predators, we found that crowned eagles triggered four and leopards three different sequences, depending on how the caller learned about their presence. Callers followed a number of principles when concatenating sequences, such as non random transition probabilities of call types, addition of specific calls into an existing sequence to form a different one, or recombination of two sequences to form a third one. We conclude that these primates have overcome some of the constraints of limited vocal control by combinatorial organization. As the different sequences were so tightly linked to specific external events, the Campbell’s monkey call system may be the most complex example of ‘protosyntax’ in animal communication known to date.

Interested? Below is a figure showing the composition of call sequences in different behavioral contexts. Here, "Alarm" indicates leopard or eagle alarm calls given by sympatric Diana monkeys.

Postdoc in Barcelona

2009-12-11T16:20:00.001+11:00

Postdoc in Barcelona: “Bilingualism and Cognitive Neuroscience” – (BRAINGLOT) CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 PROJECT “Bilingualism and Cognitive Neuroscience” – (BRAINGLOT)

Position: Post-doctoral position in cognitive neuroscience / multisensory integration. Applications are invited for a full-time post-doctoral research position in the MULTISENSORY RESEARCH GROUP at the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). The post is part of the BRAINGLOT project, a Spanish Research Network on Bilingualism and Cognitive Neuroscience (Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Scheme, Spanish Ministry of Science and Education).

Project: The project brings together the efforts of several research groups spanning different scientific disciplines with the common purpose of addressing the phenomenon of bilingualism. The project is conceived with an open and multidisciplinary vocation, as one of its major anchor points places the stress on the mutual influence (both in terms of cognitive and neural processes) between bilingualism and other functions such as auditory perception, multisensory integration, and the executive control attention. This is an excellent opportunity for professional growth for those interested in the fields of psychology, neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience or related disciplines including computer science. This position is available mainly to lead brain imaging studies using fMRI of multisensory integration (possibly complemented with other methodologies like ERP, behavioral, etc…).

Candidate Profile: Candidates must have a PhD and a background in cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience, and/or cognitive psychology. Previous experience in speech perception and or multisensory processing will be strongly valued. Experience with functional MRI data analysis and basic programming skills (e.g., Presentation, E-prime, and Matlab) is *necessary*. Applicants from outside the EU are welcome to apply but must qualify for a valid visa.

Conditions:
• Position: The position will be funded and renewable for up to three years
• Starting date: As soon as possible
• Salary: Commensurate with experience.
• Travel: The project will require short trips within Spain

How to apply: Applications should include:
• a C.V. including a list of publications
• the names of two referees who would willing to write letters of recommendation
• a cover letter describing research interests

For informal enquiries about the position and applications, please contact Salvador Soto-Faraco. salvador.soto@icrea.es (http://www.mrg.upf.edu/mrg-home.htm). Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Please, mention that you are applying to the POSTDOCTORAL position in the email subject

Quick guides and Primers!

2009-12-04T11:08:00.009+11:00

Hey check out the "Quick Guides" and "Primers" over at Current Biology.
These guides give a quick overview of some interesting topics.

For example, in Volume 19, Issue 22, Pages 1875-1968 (1 December 2009):

Binocular rivalry by Colin W.G. Clifford

The cocktail party problem by Josh H. McDermott

Mirror neurons by Christian Keysers (Volume 19, (21), 17 November 2009, Pages R971-R973)

Colony-level cognition by James A.R. Marshall, Nigel R. Franks (Volume 19, (10), 26 May 2009,R395-R396)

Free will by P. Read Montague (Volume 18, (14), 22 July 2008, Pages R584-R585)

Gaze following by Klaus Zuberbühler (Volume 18, Issue 11, 3 June 2008, Pages R453-R455

Aero-tactile integration in speech perception - But (as Greg Hickok would say) why didn't they use d'?

2009-11-26T08:43:00.006+11:00

Bryan Gick, Donald Derrick (2009). Nature, 462 (26) pp. 502-504 doi:10.1038/nature

Visual information from a speaker’s face can enhance or interfere with accurate auditory perception. This integration of information across auditory and visual streams has been observed in functional imaging studies, and has typically been attributed to the frequency and robustness with which perceivers jointly encounter event-specific information from these two modalities. Adding the tactile modality has long been considered a crucial next step in understanding multisensory integration. However, previous studies have found an influence of tactile input on speech perception only under limited circumstances, either where perceivers were aware of the task or where they had received training to establish a cross-modal mapping. Here we show that perceivers integrate naturalistic tactile information during auditory speech perception without previous training. Drawing on the observation that some speech sounds produce tiny bursts of aspiration (such as English ‘p’), we applied slight, inaudible air puffs on participants’ skin at one of two locations: the right hand or the neck. Syllables heard simultaneously with cutaneous air puffs were more likely to be heard as aspirated (for example, causing participants to mishear ‘b’ as ‘p’). These results demonstrate that perceivers integrate event-relevant tactile information in auditory perception in much the same way as they do visual information.

Newborns’ Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language

2009-11-07T09:56:00.003+11:00

Birgit Mampe, Angela D. Friederici, Anne Christophe, and Kathleen Wermke,
Mampe et al., Newborns’ Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language, Current Biology (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.064

Summary
Human fetuses are able to memorize auditory stimuli from the external world by the last trimester of pregnancy, with a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and language [1–3]. Newborns prefer their mother’s voice over other voices [4–8] and perceive the emotional content of messages conveyed via intonation contours in maternal speech (‘‘motherese’’) [9]. Their perceptual preference for the surrounding language [10–12] and their ability to distinguish between prosodically different languages [13–15] and pitch changes [16] are based on prosodic information, primarily melody. Adult-like processing of pitch intervals allows newborns to appreciate musical melodies and emotional and linguistic prosody [17]. Although prenatal exposure to native-language prosody influences newborns’ perception, the surrounding language affects sound production apparently much later [18]. Here, we analyzed the crying patterns of 30 French and 30 German newborns with respect to their melody and intensity contours. The French group preferentially produced cries with a rising melody contour, whereas the German group preferentially produced falling contours. The data show an influence of the surrounding speech prosody on newborns’ cry melody, possibly via vocal learning based on biological predispositions.

Auditory plasticity and speech motor learning

2009-11-03T10:27:00.002+11:00

Sazzad M. Nasira and David J. Ostrya (2009).Auditory plasticity and speech motor learning. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0907032106

Is plasticity in sensory and motor systems linked? Here, in the context of speech motor learning and perception, we test the idea sensory function is modified by motor learning and, in particular, that speech motor learning affects a speaker’s auditory map. We assessed speech motor learning by using a robotic device that displaced the jaw and selectively altered somatosensory feedback during speech. We found that with practice speakers progressively corrected for the mechanical perturbation and after motor learning they also showed systematic changes in their perceptual classification of speech sounds. The perceptual shift was tied to motor learning. Individuals that displayed greater amounts of learning also showed greater perceptual change. Perceptual change was not observed in control subjects that produced the same movements, but in the absence of a force field, nor in subjects that experienced the force field but failed to adapt to the mechanical load. The perceptual effects observed here indicate the involvement of the somatosensory system in the neural processing of speech sounds and suggest that speech motor learning results in changes to auditory perceptual function.

Five-month-old infants' identification of the sources of vocalizations

2009-10-23T10:03:00.003+11:00

by Athena Vouloumanosa, Madelynn J. Druhenb, Marc D. Hauserc and Anouk T. Huizinkd

Abstract

Humans speak, monkeys grunt, and ducks quack. How do we come to know which vocalizations animals produce? Here we explore this question by asking whether young infants expect humans, but not other animals, to produce speech, and further, whether infants have similarly restricted expectations about the sources of vocalizations produced by other species. Five-month-old infants matched speech, but not human nonspeech vocalizations, specifically to humans, looking longer at static human faces when human speech was played than when either rhesus monkey or duck calls were played. They also matched monkey calls to monkey faces, looking longer at static rhesus monkey faces when rhesus monkey calls were played than when either human speech or duck calls were played. However, infants failed to match duck vocalizations to duck faces, even though infants likely have more experience with ducks than monkeys. Results show that by 5 months of age, human infants generate expectations about the sources of some vocalizations, mapping human faces to speech and rhesus faces to rhesus calls. Infants' matching capacity does not appear to be based on a simple associative mechanism or restricted to their specific experiences. We discuss these findings in terms of how infants may achieve such competence, as well as its specificity and relevance to acquiring language.

Reciprocal Face-to-Face Communication between Rhesus Macaque Mothers and Their Newborn Infants

2009-10-10T09:56:00.002+11:00

Ferrari,P.F, Paukner, Ionica, C & Suomi, S.J. (in press) Current Biology

Summary

Human mothers interact emotionally with their newborns through exaggerated facial expressions, speech, mutual gaze, and body contact, a capacity that has long been considered uniquely human [1], [2], [3] and [4]. Current developmental psychological theories propose that this pattern of mother-infant exchange promotes the regulation of infant emotions [4], [5] and [6] and serves as a precursor of more complex forms of social exchange including perspective taking and empathy. Here we report that in rhesus macaques, mother-infant pairs also communicate intersubjectively via complex forms of emotional exchanges including exaggerated lipsmacking, sustained mutual gaze, mouth-mouth contacts, and neonatal imitation. Infant macaques solicit their mother's affiliative responses and actively communicate to her. However, this form of communication disappears within the infant's first month of life. Our data challenge the view that the mother-infant communicative system functions in order to sustain proximity and that infants are simply passive recipients in such interaction. Thus, emotional communication between mother and infant is not uniquely human. Instead, we can trace back to macaques the evolutionary foundation of those behaviors that are crucial for the establishment of a functional capacity to socially exchange with others.

References

1 D.N. Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology, Basic Books, New York (1985).
2 C. Trevarthen, Conversation with a two-month-old, New Sci. 2 (1974), pp. 230–235.
3 C. Trevarthen, The foundation of intersubjectivity: Development of interpersonal and cooperative understanding in infants. In: D. Olson, Editor, The Social Foundation of Language and Thought, Norton, New York (1980), pp. 316–342.
4 E.Z. Tronick, Emotions and emotional communication in infants, Am. Psychol. 44 (1989), pp. 112–119.
5 C. Trevarthen and K.J. Aitken, Infant intersubjectivity: Research, theory, and clinical applications, J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 42 (2001), pp. 3–48.
6 C. Reck, A. Hunt, T. Fuchs, R. Weiss, A. Noon, E. Moehler, G. Downing, E.Z. Tronick and C. Mundt, Interactive regulation of affect in postpartum depressed mothers and their infants: An overview, Psychopathology 37 (2004), pp. 272–280.
7 P. Hobson, The Cradle of Thought: Exploring the Origins of Thinking, Macmillan, London (2002).
8 T. Matsuzawa, Evolutionary origins of the human mother-infant relationship. In: T. Matsuzawa, M. Tomonaga and M. Tanaka, Editors, Cognitive Development in Chimpanzees,
9 K.A. Bard, M. Myowa-Yamakoshi, M. Tomonaga, M. Tanaka, A. Costall and T. Matsuzawa, Group differences in the mutual gaze of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Dev. Psychol. 41 (2005), pp. 616–624.
10 M. Myowa-Yamakoshi, M. Tomonaga, M. Tanaka and T. Matsuzawa, Imitation in neonatal chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Dev. Sci. 7 (2004), pp. 437–442.
11 Y. Mizuno, H. Takeshita and T. Matsuzawa, Behavior of infant chimpanzees during the night in the first four months of life: Smiling and suckling in relation to behavioral state, Infancy 9 (2006), pp. 221–240.
12 R.A. Hinde and Y. Spencer-Booth, The behaviour of socially living rhesus monkeys in their first two and a half years, Anim. Behav. 15 (1967), pp. 169–196.
13 R.A. Hinde, T.E. Rowell and Y. Spencer-Booth, Behaviour of socially living rhesus monkeys, in their first six months, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 143 (1964), pp. 609–649.
14 E.W. Hansen, The development of maternal and infant behavior in the rhesus monkey, Behaviour 27 (1966), pp. 109–149.
15 G.D. Jensen and B.N. Gordon, Sequences of mother-infant behavior following a facial communicative gesture of pigtail monkeys, Biol. Psychiatry 2 (1970), pp. 267–272.
16 D. Maestripieri, Maternal encouragement of infant locomotion in pigtail macaques, Macaca nemestrina, Anim. Behav. 51 (1996), pp. 603–610.
17 S. Chevalier-Skolnikoff, The Ontogeny of Communication in the Stumptail Macaque (Macaca arctoides), Karger, Basel (1974).
18 J. Van Lawick-Goodall, The behaviour of free-living chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream Nature Reserve, Animal Behaviour Monographs 1 (1968), pp. 161–311.
19 P.F. Ferrari, E. Visalberghi, A. Paukner, L. Fogassi, A. Ruggiero and S.J. Suomi, Neonatal imitation in rhesus macaques, PLoS Biol. 4 (2006), p. e302.
20 K.A. Bard, Emotions in chimpanzee infants: The value of a comparative developmental approach to understand the evolutionary bases of emotion. In: J. Nadel and D. Muir, Editors, Emotional Development, Oxford University Press, New York (2005), pp. 31–60.
21 P.F. Ferrari, A. Paukner, A. Ruggiero, L. Darcey, S. Unbehagen and S.J. Suomi, Interindividual differences in neonatal imitation and the development of action chains in rhesus macaques, Child Dev. 80 (2009), pp. 1057–1068.
22 P.F. Ferrari and V. Gallese, Mirror neurons and intersubjectivity. In: S. Bråten, Editor,On Being Moved: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy, John Benjamins Publishing Co., Amsterdam (2007), pp. 73–88.
23 S.J. Suomi, Attachment in the rhesus monkey. In: J. Cassidy and P.R. Shaver, Editors, Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, Guilford Press, New York (2008), pp. 173–191.

Music and speech come together

2009-10-09T11:58:00.001+11:00

Check out this video

WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT: Psycholinguistic Approaches to Speech Recognition in Adverse Conditions

2009-10-02T11:23:00.000+10:00

CALL FOR POSTERS

Psycholinguistic Approaches to Speech Recognition in Adverse Conditions
University of Bristol 8-10 March 2010

The workshop aims to gather academics from various fields in order to discuss the benefits, prospects, and limitations of considering adverse conditions in models of speech recognition. The adverse conditions we will consider include extrinsic signal distortions (e.g., speech in noise, vocoded speech), intrinsic distortions (e.g., accented speech, conversational speech, dysarthric speech, Lombard speech), listener-specific limitations (e.g., non-native listeners, older individuals), and cognitive load (e.g., speech recognition under an attentional or memory load, multi-tasking).

Registration now open:
http://language.psy.bris.ac.uk/workshop/index.html

Speakers

* Jennifer Aydelott, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
* Ann Bradlow, Northwestern University, USA
* Martin Cooke, University of the Basque Country, Spain
* Anne Cutler, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, NL
* Matt Davis, MRC CBU Cambridge, UK
* John Field, University of Reading, UK
* Valerie Hazan, UCL, UK
* MLuisa García Lecumberri, University of the Basque Country, Spain
* Sven Mattys, University of Bristol, UK
* Holger Mitterer, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, NL
* Dennis Norris, MRC CBU Cambridge, UK
* Kathy Pichora-Fuller, University of Toronto, Canada
* Sophie Scott, UCL, UK
* Laurence White, University of Bristol, UK

Important Dates

* Poster abstract deadline: 30 November 2009
* Notification of acceptance: 11 December 2009
* Preregistration deadline: 31 January 2010
* Conference dates: 8-10 March 2010

Organiser

* Sven Mattys (sven.mattys@bris.ac.uk)

Post doc opp

2009-09-30T14:32:00.001+10:00

Postdoctoral position available at the University of Hamburg

Requirements: PhD in Psychology or related fields, strong knowledge in experimental psychology, familiarity with the cognitive neurosciences, research interests in tactile and multisensory processing, experience with EEG/ERP technique in humans, programming experience. It is expected that past research experience is documented in publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Tasks: Research related to an EU project which aims to develop a new tactile display for reading and the presentation of graphs: Design of psychophysical and EEG studies on tactile perception and tactile reading; coordination of the subproject with other subprojects of the consortium (comprising groups in Spain, the UK and Slovakia).

The Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology lab of the University of Hamburg has access to three high-density EEG systems, an eye tracker, several experimental chambers, and a neuropsychological testing unit. Measurement time at a 3-T MR Research Scanner and a MEG system is available at the nearby University hospital Eppendorf (UKE).

The position will be available Nov 1, 2009 (or later). The appointment will end August 31, 2012. Salary is based on E13 TV-L (approximately 50.000 Euro/year; after tax approximately 30.000 Euro/year). The position calls for 39 hours per week. The fixed-term contract will end after three years see also § 2 of the Academic Fixed-Term Contract Law (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz).

The university intends to increase the number of women amongst its academic personnel and expressly encourages qualified women to apply. In compliance with the Hamburg Equal Opportunity Law, preference will be given to qualified female applicants.
Please send your application (CV, reprints, names of two referees) to Brigitte Roeder, Von-Melle Park 11, D-20146 Hamburg. Electronic applications are accepted (quade@uni-hamburg.de). For informal inquiries please contact: Brigitte Roeder (Brigitte.Roeder@uni-hamburg.de, +49(0)40-428383251. The deadline for receipt of applications is October 1, 2009. Preference will be given to disabled applicants with equal qualifications.

Processing visual and auditory stimuli

2009-08-13T19:39:00.002+10:00

Marc Schonwiesner and Robert J. Zatorreb (2009) Spectro-temporal modulation transfer function of single voxels in the human auditory cortex measured with high-resolution fMRI. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0907682106

Abtract
Are visual and auditory stimuli processed by similar mechanisms in the human cerebral cortex? Images can be thought of as light energy modulations over two spatial dimensions, and low-level visual areas analyze images by decomposition into spatial frequencies. Similarly, sounds are energy modulations over time and frequency, and they can be identified and discriminated by the content of such modulations. An obvious question is therefore whether human auditory areas, in direct analogy to visual areas, represent the spectro-temporal modulation content of acoustic stimuli. To answer this question, we measured spectro-temporal modulation transfer functions of single voxels in the human auditory cortex with functional magnetic resonance imaging. We presented dynamic ripples, complex broadband stimuli with a drifting sinusoidal spectral envelope. Dynamic ripples are the auditory equivalent of the gratings often used in studies of the visual system. We demonstrate selective tuning to combined spectro-temporal modulations in the primary and secondary auditory cortex. We describe several types of modulation transfer functions, extracting different spectro-temporal features, with a high degree of interaction between spectral and temporal parameters. The overall low-pass modulation rate preference of the cortex matches the modulation content of natural sounds. These results demonstrate that combined spectro-temporal modulations are represented in the human auditory cortex, and suggest that complex signals are decomposed and processed according to their modulation content, the same transformation used by the visual system.

New URL for Outlook Web Access

2009-08-06T20:42:00.003+10:00

Fellow MARCSists, some of you may have had trouble logging in to Outlook Web Access for your @uws.edu.au email address. Don't resort to TXTing, phoning, and emailing from your personal email address. There is a new URL. Simply cut out the .ad from email~~.ad~~.uws.edu.au, which makes the new URL:

https://email.uws.edu.au

Happy emailing.

EMA - How accuarte?

2009-08-04T09:32:00.002+10:00

Yana Yunusova & Jordan R. Green (2009) Accuracy Assessment for AG500, Electromagnetic Articulograph. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52, 547-555 April 2009. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2008/07-0218)

Purpose: The goal of this article was to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the AG500 (Carstens Medizinelectronik, Lenglern, Germany), an electromagnetic device developed recently to register articulatory movements in three dimensions. This technology seems to have unprecedented capabilities to provide rich information about time-varying positions of articulators. However, strengths and weaknesses of the system need to be better understood before the device is used for speech research.

Method: Evaluations of the sensor positions over time were obtained during (a) movements of the calibration device, (b) manual movements of sensors in a cartridge within the recording field of the cube, and (c) various speech tasks.

Results: Results showed a median error to be under 0.5 mm across different types of recordings. The maximum error often ranged between 1 and 2 mm. The magnitude of error depended somewhat on the task but largely on the location of the sensors within the recording region of the cube.

Conclusion: The performance of the system was judged as adequate for speech movement acquisition, provided that specific steps are taken for minimizing error during recording and for validating the quality of recorded data.

The Irvine Phonotactic Online Dictionary

2009-07-28T12:46:00.001+10:00

The Irvine Phonotactic Online Dictionary (IPhOD) is a resource that was developed at UC Irvine in 2003 for research on phonological processing of words and pseudowords. The database can be used for word and pseudoword selection, in order to control or manipulate sublexical or lexical phonological aspects of stimuli. The IPhOD contains 33,432 words and 815,066 pseudowords with Kucera-Francis word frequencies (1967), CMU Pronouncing Dictionary transcriptions (Weide, 1994), and several values that we derived: phonological neighborhood density, positional probabilities, and second- and third-order phoneme-sequence probabilities. The database is publicly available online to search or download, so other researchers may use it in their studies. If a word or pseudoword is not included in the database, some IPhOD values can be calculated online using input phonological transcriptions. On the website, we describe the motivation for the database, the computations used, and examples of their use in experiments concerned with phonological processes in speech. There is also a blog so users can give us feedback, ask questions, and make suggestions for other interesting phonological measures.

If you use the database and are published in a peer-reviewed journal, conference proceedings, or thesis, please send me your citation data. This helps justify future tool developments, and gives researchers a better idea of how this database is being used. (The list is below the references section, at the bottom of this page.) Also, please cite your use of IPhOD in the following way:

Vaden, K.I., Hickok, G.S., & Halpin, H.R. (2005). Irvine Phonotactic Online Dictionary, Version 1.3. [Data file]. Available from http://www.iphod.com.

New Audacity Beta - fast

2009-07-21T09:38:00.003+10:00

New Audacity Beta
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux/Unix
Audacity 1.3 Beta is the new, not quite finished, development version which will be the basis of our next "stable" version.* Contains dozens of new, exciting features. Very occasionally, these might need final polishing or not be retained in later versions. Occasionally, a feature might not work as it did before, or might be temporarily disabled. Some parts of the program are not yet documented or translated into different languages.
New in Audacity 1.3.8. New Features:
*Effects and Analysis: * VST Effects now display GUI by default * Faster Equalization and Noise Removal; * improved Truncate Silence and Click Track * Chains applied to files now clear temporary data after processing each file * Updated Nyquist implementation with support for SAL syntax and improved memory management * Plot Spectrum now analyzes up to 237.8 seconds of audio, with separate windows for each project and improved display; new preferences for Spectrograms *
Contrast Analysis tool now modeless for easier use Interface:
* Draft Manual/Quick Help included in Windows and Mac installers
* New "Mixer Board" view with per-track VU meters
* Mute, solo, gain, pan and track height saved in projects
* More compact Preferences window with easier-to-use Keyboard tab and new toolbars shortcuts
* New Screenshot Tools and improved screen reader support
Other:
Record more than 16 channels (hardware/drivers permitting)
* Improved support for non-mmap ALSA devices such as PulseAudio
* 32-bit float data over 0 dB now handled without clipping
* "Stop" option when importing preserves already imported data
* AMR NB export now supported if the optional FFmpeg library is installed
* Faster waveform drawing and better response in multi-track projects
Bug fixes for:
* Export Multiple: failed if empty label encountered; files silenced if overwriting imported WAV files without copying them in
* Metadata Editor hidden if it was on a now unavailable second monitor
* Misaligned audio after "Split New" or Noise Removal effect
* Incorrect label movement and paste with linked audio and label tracks
* Equalization, Cut Preview and Advanced Mixing Options dialogue
* (Linux) Mixer Toolbar should now adjust levels and select input sources properly
* "Audio cache" preference caused crashes - data is now only cached in memory if available RAM is above a level defined in preferences
* Various other crashes

A Decade of MARCS Labs - Celebrating 1999-2009; Anticipating 2009-2019

2009-07-16T12:39:00.001+10:00

In 1999, MARCS Auditory Laboratories was established as a University of Western Sydney Research Centre. Over the last 10 years we are pleased to have raised the profile of research on auditory perception and cognition, particularly in speech and music, and to have hosted major projects, distinguished guests, national and international conferences and an ARC Research Network.

In 2009, MARCS is thriving with over 70 members - academics, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research, technical and administration support staff. We have expanded both physically and conceptually and the lab now includes specialised equipment for recording brain activity (EEG, TMS), movement analysis of the face (in speech) and body (in gait and dance), combined articulography and high speed face tracking, 3D scanning, talking heads, infant research, and more.

We are now setting the scene for a further decade of research with expanded interests and specialisations, and look forward to the continuing development of the vibrant research culture and exciting collaborations at MARCS.

To commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the opening of MARCS and to share with you our future aspirations, we invite you to attend a day of presentations, keynotes, demonstrations (e.g. our talking head on a robot arm), tours, official proceedings, and festivities on Monday 20th July.

The day’s events are set out below. You are welcome to join us at any time from morning coffee and the start of the presentations through to the official addresses and points in between.

9.00am Coffee and Registration

10.00am Student Presentations & Short Keynotes (Prof Sally Andrews & Prof Bill Thompson)

12.00pm Lunch

1.00pm Student Presentations & Short Keynotes (Prof Anne Cutler & Prof Simon Carlile)

2.30pm Keynote Presentation – Dr Peter Keller, Dr Emery Schubert and Dr Michael Tyler

3.00pm Afternoon Tea

3.30pm Demonstrations and Tours of MARCS Labs

5.00pm Official Welcome – Executive Dean (Arts), Prof Wayne McKenna

5.10pm Keynote Lecture – Dr Peter Keller

5.40pm Selected Student Speed Papers

5.55pm Address – the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Janice Reid

6.05pm Refreshments

We look forward to seeing you there.

Denis Burnham, Director, MARCS Auditory Laboratories and the Organising Committee – Freya Bailes, Kym Buckley, Chris Davis and Jeesun Kim

Go to the MARCS 10th anniversary webpage.

Clicks!

2009-07-16T08:28:00.004+10:00

Differences in airstream and posterior place of articulation among N|uu clicks. Amanda L. Miller, Johanna Brugman, Bonny Sands, Levi Namaseb, Mats Exter and Chris Collins. (2009). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 39, 129-161.

In this research, Cornell University professor Amanda Miller and her colleagues recently used new high-speed, ultrasound imaging of the human tongue to precisely categorize sounds produced by the N|uu language speakers of southern Africa's Kalahari Desert. The research potentially could change how linguists describe "click languages" and help speech scientists understand the physics of speech production.
"When we say 'k' or 't,' the sound is produced by air breathing out of our lungs," said Miller. "But click sounds are produced by breathing in and creating suction within a cavity formed between the front and back parts of the tongue. While linguists knew this, most didn't want to accept it was something people controlled." So they loosely classified these click consonants using imprecise groupings.
"For nearly a century, some of these sounds fell into an imprecise catch-all category that included every type of modification ever reported in a click language," said Miller. "The movements of the tongue at the front of the mouth were quite accurately classified. But tongue movements at the back part of the mouth were not classified properly."

Abstract

This paper describes the consonant inventory of the endangered southern African language N|uu. Our novel approach to segment classification accounts for all 73 N|uu consonants with just four phonetic dimensions (place, manner, phonation, airstream) and does away with the phonetically empty category click accompaniment. We provide ultrasound data showing that the posterior constrictions in clicks are not produced at the ‘velar’ place of articulation, and that posterior place differs with anterior place. We therefore argue for a terminological shift from velaric to lingual airstream mechanism. Our data also show that the posterior place of articulation is the same in N|uu's five lingual ([]) and linguo-pulmonic ([]) stops. We argue that the difference between these segment classes is best captured in terms of airstream, not place. Plain clicks use only the lingual airstream, while linguo-pulmonic segments are airstream contours, in which the transition to the pulmonic airstream occurs within the segment rather than at its boundary. Our evidence suggests that the contrast between ‘velar’ and ‘uvular’ clicks proposed for the related language ǃXóõ is likely also one of airstream and that a contrast solely in terms of posterior place would be articulatorily impossible.

A relationship between reading level and neural encoding of speech sounds?

2009-07-14T09:13:00.003+10:00

Hornickel, J., Skoe, E., Nicol, T., Zecker, S & Nina Kraus. (2009) Subcortical differentiation of voiced stop consonants: Relationships to reading and speech-in-noise perception". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. See http://www.pnas.org/papbyrecent.shtml)

"There are numerous reasons for reading problems or for difficulty hearing speech in noisy situations, and we now have a metric that is practically applicable for measuring sound transcription deficits in individual children," said Kraus, the senior author of the study. "Auditory training and reducing background noise in classrooms, our research suggests, may provide significant benefit to poor readers."

Yhe study used EEG and tested children with good and poor speech-in-noise perception skills. Sounds were delivered through earphones and ERPs to "ba," "da" and "ga" were obtained. In another part of the study, sentences were presented in increasingly noisy environments, and children were asked to repeat what they heard. "In essence, the kids were called upon to do what they would do in a classroom, which is to try to understand what the kid next to them is saying while there is a cacophony of sounds, a rustling of papers, a scraping of chairs," Kraus said.

In a typical neural system there is a clear distinction in how "ba," "da" and "ga" are represented. The information is more accurately transcribed in good readers and children who are good at extracting speech presented in background noise. "So if a poor reader is having difficulty making sound-to-meaning associations with the 'ba,' 'da' and 'ga' speech sounds, it will show up in the objective measure we used in our study," Kraus said. "The brainstem response is just what the brain does based on our auditory experience throughout our lives, but especially during development," Kraus said. "The way the brain responds to sound will reflect what language you speak, whether you've had musical experience and how you have used sounds."

In related research with some interesting implications, recent studies from the Kraus lab show that the process of hearing speech in noise is enhanced in musicians.
"The very transcription processes that are deficient in poor readers are enhanced in people with musical experience," Kraus said. "It makes sense for training programs for poor readers to involve music as well as speech sounds."

A case study of 'selective' language loss in a bilingual

2009-07-09T10:53:00.003+10:00

Ibrahim, R (2009). Selective deficit of second language: a case study of a brain-damaged Arabic-Hebrew bilingual patient. Behavioral and Brain Functions 2009, 5, 17. doi:10.1186/1744-9081-5-17

Background
An understanding of how two languages are represented in the human brain is best obtained from studies of bilingual patients who have sustained brain damage. The primary goal of the present study was to determine whether one or both languages of an Arabic-Hebrew bilingual individual are disrupted following brain damage. I present a case study of a bilingual patient, proficient in Arabic and Hebrew, who had sustained brain damage as a result of an intracranial hemorrhage related to herpes encephalitis.
Methods
The patient's performance on several linguistic tasks carried out in the first language (Arabic) and in the second language (Hebrew) was assessed, and his performance in the two languages was compared.
Results
The patient displayed somewhat different symptomatologies in the two languages. The results revealed dissociation between the two languages in terms of both the types and the magnitude of errors, pointing to aphasic symptoms in both languages, with Hebrew being the more impaired. Further analysis disclosed that this dissociation was apparently caused not by damage to his semantic system, but rather by damage at the lexical level.
Conclusion
The results suggest that the principles governing the organization of lexical representations in the brain are not similar for the two languages.

Shades of Ekman et al (1969)! Emotions in Music

2009-07-06T21:39:00.005+10:00

Fritz,T., Jentschke,S. Gosselin, N., Sammler,D., Peretz,I. & Turner,R., Friederici,A.D & Koelsch, S. (2009). Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music.Current Biology 19, 573–576.

It has long been debated which aspects of music perception are universal and which are developed only after exposure to a specific musical culture [1–5]. Here, we report a crosscultural study with participants from a native African population (Mafa) and Western participants, with both groups being naive to the music of the other respective culture. Experiment 1 investigated the ability to recognize three basic emotions (happy, sad, scared/fearful) expressed in Western music. Results show that the Mafas recognized happy, sad, and scared/fearful Western music excerpts above chance, indicating that the expression of these basic emotions in Western music can be recognized universally. Experiment 2 examined how a spectral manipulation of original, naturalistic music affects the perceived pleasantness of music in Western as well as in Mafa listeners. The spectral manipulation modified, among other factors, the sensory dissonance of the music. The data show that both groups preferred original Western music and also original Mafa music over their spectrally manipulated versions. It is likely that the sensory dissonance produced by the spectral manipulation was at least partly responsible for this effect, suggesting that consonance and permanent sensory dissonance universally influence the perceived pleasantness of music.

Music: beating the head & heart

2009-07-05T19:30:00.004+10:00

Bernardi, L., Porta, C., Casucci, G., Balsamo, R., Bernardi, N.F., Fogari, R. & Sleight, P. (2009). Dynamic Interactions Between Musical, Cardiovascular, and Cerebral Rhythms in Humans. Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, 119, 3171-3180.

Background Reactions to music are considered subjective, but previous studies suggested that cardiorespiratory variables increase with faster tempo independent of individual preference. We tested whether compositions characterized by variable emphasis could produce parallel instantaneous cardiovascular/respiratory responses and whether these changes mirrored music profiles.
Methods and Results Twenty-four young healthy subjects, 12 musicians (choristers) and 12 nonmusician control subjects, listened (in random order) to music with vocal (Puccini’s “Turandot”) or orchestral (Beethoven’s 9th Symphony adagio) progressive crescendos, more uniform emphasis (Bach cantata), 10-second period (ie, similar to Mayer waves) rhythmic phrases (Giuseppe Verdi’s arias “Va pensiero” and “Libiam nei lieti calici”), or silence while heart rate, respiration, blood pressures, middle cerebral artery flow velocity, and skin vasomotion were recorded. Common responses were recognized by averaging instantaneous cardiorespiratory responses regressed against changes in music profiles and by coherence analysis during rhythmic phrases. Vocal and orchestral crescendos produced significant (P = 0.05 or better) correlations between cardiovascular or respiratory signals and music profile, particularly skin vasoconstriction and blood pressures, proportional to crescendo, in contrast to uniform emphasis, which induced skin vasodilation and reduction in blood pressures. Correlations were significant both in individual and group-averaged signals. Phrases at 10-second periods by Verdi entrained the cardiovascular autonomic variables. No qualitative differences in recorded measurements were seen between musicians and nonmusicians.
Conclusions Music emphasis and rhythmic phrases are tracked consistently by physiological variables. Autonomic responses are synchronized with music, which might therefore convey emotions through autonomic arousal during crescendos or rhythmic phrases.

Genetics and Perfect Pitch (?)

2009-07-03T10:51:00.003+10:00

The American Journal of Human Genetics, 02 July 2009

Genome-wide Study of Families with Absolute Pitch Reveals Linkage to 8q24.21 and Locus Heterogeneity

Elizabeth Theusch,Analabha Basu and Jane Gitschier

Abstract

Absolute pitch (AP) is the rare ability to instantaneously recognize and label tones with their musical note names without using a reference pitch for comparison. The etiology of AP is complex. Prior studies have implicated both genetic and environmental factors in its genesis, yet the molecular basis for AP remains unknown. To locate regions of the human genome that may harbor AP-predisposing genetic variants, we performed a genome-wide linkage study on 73 multiplex AP families by genotyping them with 6090 SNP markers. Nonparametric multipoint linkage analyses were conducted, and the strongest evidence for linkage was observed on chromosome 8q24.21 in the subset of 45 families with European ancestry (exponential LOD score = 3.464, empirical genome-wide p = 0.03). Other regions with suggestive LOD scores included chromosomes 7q22.3, 8q21.11, and 9p21.3. Of these four regions, only the 7q22.3 linkage peak was also evident when 19 families with East Asian ancestry were analyzed separately. Though only one of these regions has yet reached statistical significance individually, we detected a larger number of independent linkage peaks than expected by chance overall, indicating that AP is genetically heterogeneous.

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"Interestingly," they write in their paper, "one study [by another research team] showed that infants preferentially use absolute pitch cues over relative pitch cues in certain situations, suggesting that all people might be born with absolute pitch, but that a majority lose their absolute pitch abilities with age. Thus, an attractive hypothesis is that genetic factors might extend this neurodevelopmental window to a duration sufficient to intersect with the onset of musical training."
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University of California Absolute Pitch Study

http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/

Postdoctoral Fellow in Audio-Visual Psychophysics

2009-06-22T19:08:00.002+10:00

School of Psychology,The University of Sydney

Reference No. 146/0609.
Closing: 8th July 2009

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral fellowship working with Associate Professor David Alais in the School of Psychology. The position will involve conducting psychophysical research in the area of audiovisual perception, with an emphasis on temporal processing. More information regarding research in the Alais laboratory can be found by visiting:http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/davida

Essential requirements for the position are (i) a PhD in psychology, auditory or visual science, or a similar field, and (ii) a demonstrated ability to conduct psychophysical research, including programming, executing and writing-up experiments for publication. Experience in programming audiovisual experiments in the Matlab environment would be an advantage.

The successful applicant will work within a large and diverse community of visual perception researchers in the school of Psychology (Professor Anderson, A/Prof Clifford, Dr Holcombe, Dr Cass) and will work closely with the Alais laboratory's collaborators in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (www.physiol.usyd.edu.au/research/labs/auditory) and Electrical Engineering (www.ee.usyd.edu.au/research/allresearch/?group=carlab) who specialise in spatial hearing and high fidelity Virtual Auditory Space.

The position is full-time for a fixed term of 2 years, with the possibility of extension for a further year subject to performance and funding. For any enquiries or further information, send email to David Alais at: davida@psych.usyd.edu.au

Remuneration package: $79k-85k (which includes a base salary $67k - $72k p.a., leave loading and 17% employer's contribution to superannuation). For more information or to apply online, please visit http://usyd.nga.net.au/cp/ and search by reference number 146/0609.

Past MARCS post-grads - we're watching you ;)

2009-06-16T10:12:00.003+10:00

PNAS June 9, 2009 vol. 106 no. 23 9169-9173

Adaptation to audiovisual asynchrony modulates the speeded detection of sound

Jordi Navarraa, Jessica Hartcher-O'Brien, Elise Piazza and Charles Spence

Abstract

The brain adapts to asynchronous audiovisual signals by reducing the subjective temporal lag between them. However, it is currently unclear which sensory signal (visual or auditory) shifts toward the other. According to the idea that the auditory system codes temporal information more precisely than the visual system, one should expect to find some temporal shift of vision toward audition (as in the temporal ventriloquism effect) as a result of adaptation to asynchronous audiovisual signals. Given that visual information gives a more exact estimate of the time of occurrence of distal events than auditory information (due to the fact that the time of arrival of visual information regarding an external event is always closer to the time at which this event occurred), the opposite result could also be expected. Here, we demonstrate that participants' speeded reaction times (RTs) to auditory (but, critically, not visual) stimuli are altered following adaptation to asynchronous audiovisual stimuli. After receiving “baseline” exposure to synchrony, participants were exposed either to auditory-lagging asynchrony (VA group) or to auditory-leading asynchrony (AV group). The results revealed that RTs to sounds became progressively faster (in the VA group) or slower (in the AV group) as participants' exposure to asynchrony increased, thus providing empirical evidence that speeded responses to sounds are influenced by exposure to audiovisual asynchrony.

MARCS file naming convention

2009-06-15T16:23:00.007+10:00

Uploading files to the MARCS server means that each file needs to be unique and identifiable. Please do not upload files called mypresentation.ppt or myarticle.pdf.

Use the following naming convention for journal articles:

Author1, Author2 & Author3 YEAR JournalAbbrev

So, if Christa and Damien coauthored an article last year in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, then the filename would be: Lam & Smith 2008 JASA.pdf.

For posters/conference papers the template would change to:

Author1, Author2 & Author3 YEAR ConferenceAbbrev Place

My talk at the Laboratory Phonology conference last year would be: Antoniou, Best, Tyler & Kroos 2008 LabPhon Wellington.ppt.

Take a look at Kirk's profile page to see the PDF naming convention in action.

List your conference presentations on your profile page in HTML

2009-06-15T16:15:00.003+10:00

Due to limitations in the filtering of publication items in the website's database, only journal articles, books, and book sections will be entered into the Biblio publications database. These will appear in the list of all MARCS publications, on your profile page, and (for a limited time) on the MARCS frontpage.

However, students want to display their conference talks and poster presentations on their profile pages. To do this, enter your conference presentations into the body of your profile page, under the heading Conference Presentations. Don't know how to do that? See the step-by-step guide to editing your profile.

You can provide a download link so that visitors can download your slides, poster, or PDF of your refereed abstract.

See related posts on MARCS file naming convention and How do I upload to the MARCS website?

How do I upload a file to the MARCS website or blog?

2009-06-15T16:00:00.007+10:00

MARCS students and staff can upload their own publications. However, sometimes you might want to upload an image, video, or some other file (e.g., a Praat script, the images on this blog). These files need to be placed on the MARCS server, and then you simply insert a link that points to the desired file on the MARCS server.

Step 1: Getting the files onto the MARCS server.
Two folders have been created on the M: drive. Place files destined for the MARCS website in M:\ForWeb and place files destined for the MARCS blog in M:\ForBlog. Then, send an email to marcswebmaster@lists.uws.edu.au announcing that you have left files in that directory that need uploading and we will upload the files and provide you with links.

Step 2: Inserting the hyperlink(s).
Once you have the links, you may insert them into your page by clicking on the appropriate Edit tab and editing the content of that page.

Small files may be attached to your email to marcswebmaster@lists.uws.edu.au (convenient if you're working from home), however, using the M: drive folders is preferred.

See related post on MARCS file naming convention.

How do I add a publication to my list of published works?

2009-06-15T14:35:00.007+10:00

Each MARCS student and staff member is responsible for keeping their list of publications on the MARCS website up to date.

Creating a new publication is easy.

Step 1: Log in to the MARCS website.

Step 2: In the left menu, click Create content then Biblio.Step 3: Select the publication type (either Journal article or Book). Note there is an unresolved issue for Book chapters. Once resolved, we will advise you re: the appropriate way of entering book chapters.

Step 4: Complete the relevant fields: title, year, etc.

Attaching a PDF of your article or book/chapter is easy too. Not attaching a file? Jump to Step 8.

Step 5: Click File attachments, then Browse.Step 6: Locate your file in the dialog box that opens and click Attach.

Step 7: Click Preview and check that you have not made any errors.

Step 8: Click Save to create your biblio entry.

Read the MARCS file naming convention post to see how you should name your PDFs, PPTs, and other files before uploading.

How to edit your profile on the MARCS website

2009-06-15T13:33:00.006+10:00

Step 1: Log in. If you do not know your password, click the Request new password link type in your email address. An email containing instructions on how to acquire your new password will be sent to you.
Step 2: Click on the People link on the menu and then on your name. You should see a set of tabs across the top.Step 3: Click on the Edit tab.

Step 4 (optional): Click on the Enable rich text link (click the text not the add image icon) to display a formatting toolbar and a mini WYSIWYG editor.Step 5: Enter/edit/format your information.
Step 6: Click Preview and make sure that everything looks as it should. Correct any errors.

Step 7: Click Save.

The WWW MMM: MARCS on the web

2009-06-15T13:09:00.005+10:00

The purpose of the WWW MMM was to make a number of announcements:

New permissions have been granted to MARCS staff and students (edit your profile page, create your own publications in biblio, attach your own PDF files).
The death of the MARCS wiki.
The birth of the MARCS blog.

As is always the case, real-time demonstrations do not work out as smoothly as planned. So rather than simply putting my PowerPoint presentation on the blog, I will create a series of Getting Started posts that will walk you through the following:

MARCS-website-related

How do I edit my profile?
What goes under Publications and what goes into my profile?
How to add a new publication to my list and attach a PDF.
PDF naming convention.
Avoiding incorrect publications in your list: How should I format my name in the Author field?

MARCS-blog-related

A guide to creating blogposts.
How do I upload a file to the blog?

Welcome to the MARCS blog

2009-05-28T05:29:00.001+10:00

Welcome to the blog of MARCS Auditory Laboratories—a place for MARCS researchers and students to share knowledge and ideas.