Eric Larson, PhD
Eric joined the lab in January of 2011 after completing his PhD in biomedical engineering at Boston University. In his doctoral work, Eric worked on modeling neural activity of auditory neurons at the cortical level, doing a combination of modeling and neurophysiology in the zebra finch.
In his postdoctoral research, Eric is looking at mechanisms of intentional attentional reorientation in audition, e.g. how changes in task demands are coordinated at the neural level to allow selective attention to particular sounds. Using psychophysics and multimodal imaging (magnetoencephalography combined with electroencephalography, with an anatomical constraint from MRI structural data), he will examine questions regarding spatial and non-spatial auditory attentional networks.
He receives funding from an F32 entitled, “Cortical dynamics of orientation and switching of non-spatial auditory attention” and a Loan Repayment Program award from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).
Email: larsoner [at] uw [dot] edu
Office: Portage Bay Bldg. Room 368
Tel: (206) 685-4662
Personal website: www.larsoner.com
Ross Maddox, PhD
Ross joined the lab in June of 2011 following his PhD work in biomedical engineering at Boston University. For his doctoral work, Ross used a combination of psychophysics and songbird electrophysiology to study how differences in acoustic features can help or hinder object formation.
For Ross's postdoctoral work, he plans to study crossmodal auditory and visual attention using psychophysics in concert with anatomically constrained MEG/EEG brain imaging. He is partcularly interested in investigating the mechanisms behind binding of acoustical and visual features, and how attention modulates this process.
He receives funding from the Hearing Health Foundation for his research.
Email: rkmaddox [at] uw [dot] edu
Office: Portage Bay Bldg. Room 368
Tel: (206) 685-4662
Personal website: www.rossmaddox.com
Dan McCloy, PhD
Dan joined the lab in June 2013 after completing his PhD in Linguistics at UW. His dissertation looked at the relationship between speech intelligibility and speech prosody.
At [LABS]N, Dan's research is focused on auditory attention in competing speech tasks. By manipulating linguistic cues and listener expectations, he hopes to illuminate differences in cortical activity between directed and accidental attention switching using a combined psychophysics and neuroimaging approach.
Email: drmccloy [at] uw [dot] edu
Office: Portage Bay Bldg. Room 368
Tel: (206) 685-4662
Personal website: http://dan.mccloy.info/
Susan McLaughlin, PhD
Susan joined [LABS]N as a Research Scientist in September 2013 after completing her PhD in Speech & Hearing Sciences at the University of Washington. Her dissertation research employed fMRI to investigate human auditory cortical tuning to interaural level and time differences. Her research interests include: neural processes underlying binaural listening: hemispheric asymmetries in human speech/language processing – particularly basic sound processing essential to speech understanding.
Prior to her doctoral work, Susan was a documentary producer for public television.
Email: smcl [at] uw [dot] edu
Office: Portage Bay Bldg. Room 204
Tel: (206) 616-0102
Majid Mirbagheri, PhD
Majid joined the lab in October of 2014 after finishing his PhD in electrical engineering at University of Maryland College Park. For his doctoral research Majid worked on sound segregation and speech enhancement methods inspired by the models of human auditory system.
Majid's postdoctoral research is focused on audio/speech processing assisted by human through the use of non-invasive EEG brain imaging. In particular, he's interested in developing algorithms to recognize the cognitive state of the brain and augment normal hearing through sound segregation guided by attention.
Email: mbagheri [at] uw [dot] edu
Office: Portage Bay Bldg. Room 368
Tel: (206) 685-4662
Personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/mjmirbagheri/
Bonnie Lau, PhD, CCC-SLP
Bonnie joined the lab in April 2015 following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota and her PhD work in speech and hearing sciences at the University of Washington. For her doctoral work, Bonnie studied pitch perception prior to cortical maturation during early infancy. At the University of Minnesota, Bonnie conducted studies looking at pitch perception in the very high frequencies and the plasticity of cortical and subcortical EEG responses following short-term perceptual training.
For Bonnie’s postdoctoral work in the lab, she plans to study auditory processing abnormalities in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using psychophysics and anatomically constrained MEG/EEG brain imaging. She is interested in investigating the transmission of sound throughout the auditory pathway and assessing central integration and processing in ASD.
Email: blau [at] uw [dot] edu
Office: Portage Bay Bldg. Room 204
Tel: (206) 616-0102