Thursday, December 3, 2020

CogHear auditory-motor interaction discussion

 I led a discussion on auditory-motor interactions with the CogHear group today. There were many interesting questions written in the chat window. Here I quote and respond to them. My responses are in italics

If you are interesting in watching the live discussion, contact Malcom Slaney: malcolm@ieee.org


Matt Leonard

9:20 AM

Is "the motor system" defined here solely based on canonical anatomy? Or does it also have a functional definition?

 

We look at the question both ways, but with an emphasis on the functional definition. 

 

Liberty Hamilton

9:22 AM

Have you looked at the specific phonological contrasts that are or are not able to be performed in these cases? Which pairs are tested (only initial consonant? also vowel?)

 

No, we have not.

 

roberta bianco

9:26 AM

would those patients able to pick on prosodic cues? e.g. discrimintae question and statement : pear vs pear?

 

Great question and I don’t know the answer. 

 

Sean Gilmore

9:26 AM

What kind of noise was used? 

 

White noise. 14 dB.

 

Julie Elie

9:26 AM

In case of complete anarthria, people cannot even express non-word prosody sounds (e.g. anger groan)? 

 

Emotional vocalizations (groans, laughs) can be possible as can spontaneous smiles (the so-called Duchenne smile).

 

Sam Norman-Haignere

9:32 AM

Isn't a 10% effect kind of large for TMS?

 

Yes, potentially. But note that it’s 10% at threshold level SNRs with contrived tasks only. These effects are not found in normal comprehension. In response to my task critique, this study used a comprehension paradigm and found no effect on error rate. An RT effect was observed but only for some stimuli. So the TMS effect on comprehension appears to amount to a few milliseconds for some contrasts, out of context. It would be good replicate this if this is indeed the magnitude and type of the effect of motor disruption on receptive speech

 

Schomers, M. R., Kirilina, E., Weigand, A., Bajbouj, M., & Pulvermuller, F. (2014). Causal Influence of Articulatory Motor Cortex on Comprehending Single Spoken Words: TMS Evidence. Cereb Cortex. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhu274

 

Jack L. GALLANT

9:34 AM

I agree with the argument that the motor system isn't partocularly importnat for speech perception. When people are passibely listening to speech, a motor (articulatory) model does a really poor job of predicting activity in motor cortex.

 

I think Eddie Chang and colleagues found a result that is similar in spirit. 

 

Abby Noyce

9:34 AM

Greg, so you’re arguing that the motor contribution is about the working memory demands on these kinds of tasks?

 

Kind of: a component of what goes into working memory. More generally, I think the motor speech system contributes to the performance of the *task* rather than the perception of the phonemes. It could be that articulatory recoding (Baddeley’s articulatory rehearsal part of the phonological loop) is the bit that matters. But it would seem that if you have a nonword span of at least two items, you should be able to do a discrimination. Our patient had such a span but still struggled with nonword discrimination. One response to this is that span is measured with phonologically dissimilar items thus over estimating the span for similar items like on our discrimination task. Or, it could be that the motor system is the means through which we can allocate conscious attention to the sublexical structure of speech, something we don’t normally do unless an experimenter asks us to or if we are learning to read. (Illiterate people tend to have trouble with discrimination, by the way https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23379298/).

 

Frederic Theunissen

9:35 AM

If the contribution of the motor system is about working memory, you might get the same effect with remembering images?

 

No, it is not generalized working memory but something more closely related to phonological STM.

 

Yulia Oganian

9:38 AM

was the opercular lesion patient's working memory impaired 

thank you!

 

Yes, nonword span = 2 items.

 

Sean Gilmore

9:41 AM

It's not necessarily speech related, but what about the large amount of literature in music cognition showing the involvement of the motor system in auditory perception. Does this implicate the motor system in auditory perception to some degree? 

 

An interesting topic: musicians not only are skilled in listening to music, but also in producing music via their motor system. We can expect more auditory-motor interaction in skilled musicians. 

 

Jack L. GALLANT

9:45 AM

Again, both during speech perception and music perception. activation throughout the motor system is quite low and motor features do not predict well in the motor system. 

If there are motor responses during speech perception, one possibility is that this activity is related to action words. A similar thing is seen in vision, where some have reported small motor system activation while people watch movies that involve motor manipulation, but not otherwise.

 

The action word-motor system association is an interesting, but different question. I addressed it at length in the embodied cognition chapter of my book, The Myth of Mirror Neurons.

 

Andrew Meier

9:46 AM

Why was it previously thought that arcuate fasciculus damage causes conduction aphasia?

 

Conduction aphasia appears to be an auditory-motor integration deficit in that word comprehension is intact, production is fluent but error prone with mostly phonological errors. If it were a sensory problem, perception would be impaired. If it were a motor speech problem, production should be non-fluent or at least apraxic (cf, apraxia of speech). The problem seems to be in the ability to use auditory-based networks to guide motor speech planning leading to errors. I talk about this issue here: Hickok, G. (2012). Computational neuroanatomy of speech production. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(2), 135-145. doi: 10.1038/nrn3158

 

 

 

Matt Leonard

9:46 AM

^ another possibility is that "motor areas" have auditory or at least sensorimotor circuits. So I think it's really important here to more specifically define what "motor" means.

 

I agree, kinda. I think there are “ventral stream” auditory-conceptual networks and “dorsal stream” auditory-motor networks. In this sense, we might do away with the unmodified term “motor” completely. However, it does make sense to parse the auditory-motor network into its component parts where some part play a role as auditory-based targets for motor actions.  

 

Christoph Daube

9:47 AM

How would we fit papers like this into this narrative? https://elifesciences.org/articles/12577

 

I think it fits once we recognize that motor systems are fundamentally sensorimotor. The motor system is dependent on sensation, so we find sensory responses in motor cortex.  The reverse is not true, however: sensory/recognition systems are NOT dependent on motor (frontal) systems.  

 

Liberty Hamilton

9:48 AM

^ Agree with Matt, we know there are projections from the motor cortex to the auditory cortex, I don't know about auditory to motor but we do see responses in motor cortex that are more strongly related to manner of articulation and not place (so acoustic). Would be interesting to hear from birdsong folks about this too, because I know there is work on auditory projections to motor song areas

 

Jean-Rémi KING

9:47 AM

@jack "motor features do not predict well in the motor system. " => motor features? Would things like rhythms count? Aren't those relatively large responses?

 

Liberty Jack L. GALLANT

9:48 AM

The SNR of motor cortex is really low during perception so the noise ceiling is very low and all the models fit poorly. We usually use timing models and articulatory models 

 

Matt Leonard

9:48 AM

@Christoph @jack - that's exactly what I'm thinking of. We also see related effects in much of our other data (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29958109/)

 

Jean-Rémi KING

9:50 AM

@greg hickok: did you look at other frequency bands for this planum suppression during speech?

 

Yes. Have a look at the paper for details.  Forseth, K. J., Hickok, G., Rollo, P. S., & Tandon, N. (2020). Language prediction mechanisms in human auditory cortex. Nat Commun, 11(1), 5240. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19010-6

 

Jack L. GALLANT

9:51 AM

@christoph hopefully @liberty will offer some perspective based on the paper that you cite. They do say that motor activity during production and perception are quite different. What they see during perception could be some sort of generalied suppression, or a change in attention, or something else. Its hard to tell without a good encoding model and I don't recall if they did that.

 

Liberty Hamilton

9:52 AM

@jack we did use encoding models, actually found relatively good performance of spectrotemporal models in motor cortex but for a *small region* (two blobs in motor cortex, one ventral, one dorsal. Looks like it overlaps with laryngeal area)

 

Jonathan Fritz

9:52 AM

Greg, suppression of self-vocalization does not seem like such a good strategy if you are a singer trying to hit the right note. Are there different "modes" of activation/suppression depending upon constraints of self-monitoring? You may recall the study suggesting that the arcuate fasciculus is larger in RH in singers? 

 

The idea is that the suppression signal is coding for a prediction of the sensory consequences of the action. So if the correct note is perceived the excitatory bottom up input will cancel the motor-to-sensory suppression. It’s when the inhibitory prediction mismatches the actual feedback that an error signal is detected (more activity for the actually perceive feedback). Details here:  Hickok, G. (2012). Computational neuroanatomy of speech production. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(2), 135-145. doi: 10.1038/nrn3158

 

Jack L. GALLANT

9:53 AM

@liberty ah thanks. That reflects a reasonable possibility that will complicate all experiments: there are some direct perception-related motor responses, but they are in a very limited region or a very limited percptual domain.

I will miss this chat feature when zoom meetings go away.

 

Malcolm Slaney

9:55 AM

Jack, it's like passing notes in class... :-)

 

Except the “teacher” gets to read them all. ;)

 

Jack L. GALLANT

9:57 AM

@liberty and @matt you should give us your perspectives based on the electrophysiology. No one believes fMRI or TMS data... :^)

 

Sam Norman-Haignere

9:58 AM

The bird song seems like a place where a lot is known about the circuit that allows auditory-motor feedback to generate song. Can any of that circuit be mapped onto the human speech production system?

 

Liberty Hamilton

9:58 AM

Another interesting finding in the animal literature -- if you pair motor movement with predictable acoustics, the motor cortex suppresses the response to that sound https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0520-5

 

Christoph Daube

9:58 AM

So would Greg argue that the activations that Cheung, Hamilton, etal see are somewhat non-causal for the perception of speech in a language one is proficient in? (as in, altering that activity w TMS would maximally result in 10% change in perception)? Would this be somewhat in contrast with papers like this: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2004473 ?

 

Yes, I would argue that these effects are non-causal for perception in the context of normal comprehension tasks. As far as I am aware, there are no experiments showing that motor disruption affects perception in comprehension tasks. 

 

Andrea Halpern

10:00 AM

In a recent study we found that suppressing phonation impairs poor matchers more than good pitch matchers,

 

Interesting! Please send me a link to the paper!

 

Liberty Hamilton

10:02 AM

^Andrea that's really interesting!

 

roberta bianco

10:02 AM

would your model hold for processing of higher levels structures in speech, as sentence level, etc?

 

We are ventured into that realm. Short answer is yes, broadly at least. Details here:  Matchin, W., & Hickok, G. (2020). The Cortical Organization of Syntax. Cereb Cortex, 30(3), 1481-1498. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhz180

 

Victor Minces

10:03 AM

It is common that when you damage a system you don't see an effect of that damage unless the system is under stress. In the laboratory conditions you shown, you don't see a motor effect when the subject is performing at ceiling, but you see it under harder conditions like with background noise or non-words. I think that interpreting that you can unveil the motor effect under stress is more parsimonious than the conclussion that the motor system only kicks in when the subject is performing a task

 

Good point. The question then becomes, are those more demanding conditions ever part of the natural ecology of speech perception? From a speech perception perspective, natural language is pretty much all about comprehending the sounds we hear not deciding whether the pairs of successive nonwords are the same or different. (Yes, we tested whether comprehension of speech in noise depends on the motor system; it doesn’t: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.02.022822v1). So you may be right that stressing the system reveals a contribution of the motor system, if that contribution is never used in actual language processing, then the “contribution” is moot. 

 

Victor Minces

10:04 AM

Plus, "normal" conditions resemble more speech in noise than the aseptic laboratory tasks

 

See above. Also, normal speech in noise experiences are strongly constrained by context (situational, sentential, semantic). I predict that if we pitted such contexts against the motor contribution, non-motor sources of constraint would completely obliterate whatever motor effects might exist. 

 

 

Friday, November 20, 2020

Funded Posdoctoral position at the BCBL- Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain)

 Funded Posdoctoral position at the BCBL- Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) www.bcbl.eu


  1. INFORMATION ABOUT THE POSITION 
  • Position: Postdoctoral position in cognitive neuroscience
  • Researcher Profile: R2 Recognised Researcher
  • Number of vacancies: 1
  • Project: ReadCalibration ERC Consolidator Grant
  • Location:  Spain > San Sebastian
  • Research Field: Neuroscience > Cognition and Language
  • Type of contract/Duration of Contract : Temporary >  4 years
  • Job Status: Full-time
  • Hours per week: 35
  • Starting date: January 1st 2021
  • Application deadline: November 30th 2020
  • Information about the project: The main aim of the ReadCalibration ERC project is to explore the interplay between phonology and orthography in speech perception and production in various populations (children and adults; typically developing or with reading and/or hearing impairments; monolinguals and bilinguals).
  • Job description: The selected candidate will work in the context of the 5-year ERC project Phonemic representations in speech perception and production: Recalibration by reading acquisition (ReadCalibration). He/she will be developing studies exploring phonemic recalibration in populations suffering reading impairment.
  • PI and research group: Pr. Clara Martin, Speech & Bilingualism group.

 

  1. CANDIDATES’ PROFILE AND SELECTION CRITERIA

Required skills:

  • Able to carry his/her own research under supervision
  • Good knowledge of the field of cognitive neuroscience
  • Able to produce, analyze and interpret data under supervision
  • Able to explain the outcome of research and value in written and oral format

Desirable skills

  • Good knowledge in the fields of phonetic/phonology and/or dyslexia
  • Able to take ownership for and manage own career progression
  • Able to set realistic and achievable career goals, and to identify and develop ways to improve employability.

 

https://www.bcbl.eu/es/node/7021/translate

  1. WORKING CONDITIONS

Salary: 28.000€-30.000€ gross/year (depending on the experience of the candidate)

Entitlements and other benefits: https://www.bcbl.eu/en/join-us/what-is-like-to-work-bcbl

Training opportunities and Career development plan: 

Researchers at any stage of their career, regardless of their contractual situation, are given an opportunity for professional development and for improving their employability through access to a Personal Career Development Plan which includes

  1.  Training through individually personalized research projects under senior supervision
  2. Exchanging knowledge with the scientific community and the general public
  3. Network-wide training in theory and methods
  4. Complementary training courses
  5. Involvement in proposal writing, task coordination
  6. Development of skills for the organization of training and scientific events.

 

  1. OTHER RELEVANT INFORMATION:

Language policy

  • The corporative language at the Center is English but the national language will be an asset for this particular position
  • The center provides initial level Spanish and Basque lessons to all the international staff members
  • The interview will be conducted entirely in English

 

  1. APPLICATION PROCESS: 

Submission of the application and documentation:

To submit your application, please follow this link:  applying for “ERC Postdoc SB 2020” and attach the following documentation:

  • A curriculum vitae
  • A statement outlining research interests and motivation to apply for the position
  • Two letters of recommendation

Application process timetable:

  1. Deadline for application: 30/11/2020
  2. Evaluation by committee: 01/12/2020-10/12/2020
  3. Interview period/phase: 10/12/2020-11/12/2020
  4. Final candidate selection: 15/12/2020
  5. Feedback to candidates: 15/12/2020-17/12/2020
  6. Incorporation date: 01/01/2021

Contact details for enquiries: hr@bcbl.eu


Sunday, September 27, 2020

Junior Faculty Positions in Language Science -- University of California, Irvine

The Department of Language Science (http://www.langsci.uci.edu) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), is seeking applicants for two tenure-track assistant professor faculty positions. We seek candidates who combine a strong theoretical background with computational, psycholinguistic, or cognitive-neuroscientific approaches to the study of language.

 
The successful candidate will interact with a dynamic and growing community in language, speech, and hearing sciences within the Program, the Department of Cognitive Sciences, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, the Center for the Advancement of Logic, its Philosophy, History, and Applications, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience & Engineering, the Center for Hearing Research, and the Brain Initiative. Individuals whose interests add to the strengths of the Department in bilingualism and/or cognitive modeling will be given preference.

 
Interested candidates should apply online at https://recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF06053 with a cover letter indicating primary research and teaching interests, CV, three recent publications, and three letters of recommendation.
 
Application review will commence on November 16, 2020, and continue until the position is filled.
 
The University of California, Irvine is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Funded PhD candidate positions at the BCBL- Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language

Funded PhD candidate positions at the BCBL- Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) www.bcbl.eu 


The Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language – BCBL- (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) is offering a predoctoral position to work on a PhD funded project to investigate the effects of bilingualism on language development in the first years of life. The PhD student will join the Infant Language and Cognition group at the BCBL to work under the supervision of Dr. Marina Kalashnikova.

Application requirements: Applicants should have a Master’s (or equivalent Honours) degree in Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Linguistics, and/or neighboring areas. The applicants must demonstrate excellent written and oral communication skills in English (knowledge of Spanish and/or Basque is not a requirement). Previous experimental experience in developmental research is an asset (but not required).
The successful PhD student will have access to the BCBL BabyLab, which is fully equipped for conducting behavioural and neurophysiological research with young infants and children and has access to an extensive database of monolingual and bilingual families. The student’s responsibilities will include the design and implementation of a research project under the supervision of Dr. Kalashnikova and contribution to the collaborative research activities of the group by recruiting and testing infant participants, analysing behavioural and neurophysiological data, and preparing research reports for journal publication and presentations at national and international conferences. The candidate must have excellent communication skills, be able to interact well with scientific colleagues, and work well both independently and as part of a team. 

The student will receive a stipend of 17.785€ (gross/year).

The BCBL  promotes a rich research environment and provides access to the most advanced behavioural and neuroimaging techniques, including 3 Tesla Siemens PrismaFit MRI scanner, a whole-head MEG system, four EEG labs, a fNIRS lab, a BabyLab,  two eye-tracking labs, and several behavioural labs. The BCBL hosts excellent support staff and research personnel. More information about the BCBL can be found at: https://www.bcbl.eu/

To submit your application, please follow this link: http://www.bcbl.eu/calls, applying for “PhD Infant Language and Cognition group 2020” and upload before September 1st, 2020:
·         A curriculum vitae 
·         A statement outlining research interests and motivation to apply for the position (1 page maximum)
·         Two letters of recommendation

For further information about this position, contact Dr. Marina Kalashnikova ( m.kalashnikova@bcbl.eu). 
Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an online interview.

The Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language – BCBL- (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) is offering a predoctoral position to work on a PhD funded project to investigate metacognitive functions using real-time functional MRI. The PhD student will join the Consciousness group at the BCBL to work under the supervision of David Soto.

Application requirements: Applicants should have an honours and a Masters degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Engineering, Neuroscience, or other relevant area. They must have a strong interest in consciousness and cognition coupled with strong computational skills in Python. Experience with state-of-the art neuroimaging techniques would be an advantage but not required. However, the applicant must demonstrate knowledge and experience in the implementation of machine learning models in Python and a keen interest in mastering neuroimaging methods. The candidate must also demonstrate an excellent knowledge of English both written and oral. The duties of the post-holder will be (i) design and implement psychophysical tasks and neuroimaging protocols, identify improvements and/or propose new analysis pipelines under the supervision of the Principal Investigator (ii) recruiting and testing healthy young adult participants (iii) analysing neuroimaging and behavioural data (iv) writing reports for publication in international reputable journals (v) presenting results at internal lab meetings, national, and international conferences. The candidate must have excellent communication skills, be able to interact well with scientific colleagues, and work well both independently and as part of a team. Excellent coding, analytical and presentation skills are highly desirable.

The student will receive a stipend of 17.785€ (gross/year).

The BCBL  promotes a rich research environment and provides access to the most advanced behavioural and neuroimaging techniques, including 3 Tesla Siemens PrismaFit MRI scanner, a whole-head MEG system, four EEG labs, a fNIRS lab, a BabyLab,  two eye-tracking labs, and several behavioural labs. The BCBL hosts excellent support staff and research personnel. More information about the BCBL can be found at: https://www.bcbl.eu/

To submit your application, please follow this link: http://www.bcbl.eu/calls, applying for “PhD Consciousness group 2020” and upload before September 1st, 2020:
·         A curriculum vitae 
·         A statement outlining research interests and motivation to apply for the position (1 page maximum)
·         Two letters of recommendation

For further information about this position, contact Prof. David Soto ( d.soto@bcbl.eu).
Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an online interview.

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Research Professors & Research Associates positions at the BCBL

Research Professors & Research Associates positions at the BCBL- Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) www.bcbl.eu

The Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) offers  Research Professors & Research Associates positions in three main broad areas or research: 

(1)-Language, reading and developmental disorders: How language acquisition, comprehension, production, and reading take place in the human brain. Special attention will be paid to language disorders and the development of computerized tools for their early diagnosis and treatment.

(2)-Multilingualism and second language learning: The cognitive and brain mechanisms of language acquisition and processing in a second language, taking into consideration the age of acquisition, proficiency and usage. Special attention will be paid to multilingualism within the school system and to the development of new educational technologies for second language learning.

(3)- Neurodegeneration, brain damage and healthy aging: Language and Cognition: Early cognitive and brain markers related to language for neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer, Parkinson); neural plasticity and language functions through brain stimulation in the awake patient during surgical brain operations; developing of computerized diagnostic and training tools for aphasic patients and neurodegenerative diseases.

The Center promotes a rich research environment without substantial teaching obligations. It provides access to the most advanced behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, including 3 Tesla MRI, a whole-head MEG system, four ERP labs, a NIRS lab, a baby lab including an eyetracker, two eyetracking labs, and several well-equipped behavioral labs.  There are excellent technical support staff and research personnel (PhD and postdoctoral students). 

We are looking for cognitive neuroscientists or experimental psychologists with a background in psycholinguistics and/or neighboring cognitive neuroscience areas, computational modelers, and physicists and/or engineers with fMRI/MEG expertise. 

These  permanent positions are for researchers willing to develop a long-term scientific career in the Basque Country. This call is open both to stablished researchers as Research Associates, with 8 to 12 years of postdoctoral experience; and senior leading researchers as Research Professors, with longer research experience. The applicants must have their PhD completed before January 2012.

Applications from women researchers are specially welcome. 

An acceptance letter Scientific Director of the host institution is mandatory.

To submit your application please follow this  link  https://calls.ikerbasque.net/


Deadline: September 17, 2020, at 13:00, CET

For further information please contact the Director of BCBL, Manuel Carreiras (info@bcbl.eu)