Post-Docs
Manda Fischer, Postdoctoral fellow
Hello! I am a cognitive neuroscientist who is interested in and excited about the dynamic interplay between memory and attention in hearing.
Have you ever wondered why a familiar voice stands out at a noisy party or why the sound of a bird chirping biases you to search for it in high places? These everyday situations demonstrate the power of memory-guided attention.
Using EEG and behavioral measures, I have shown how auditory memory can optimize attention and trigger response preparation at different stages of processing of real-world soundscapes (e.g., cityscape or playground). I am also interested in how attention at encoding can produce memories that are either usable for behavior or that are inaccessible to behavior (i.e., silent memory trace). To this end, I have shown that the brain can learn, but not always use the auditory memories that it stores for real-world action. This work was conducted at The University of Toronto and The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Hospital with Dr. Morris Moscovitch and Dr. Claude Alain.
As a postdoctoral researcher, I joined the Johnsrude CoNCH Lab at The Brain and Mind Institute at Western University to examine how a familiar voice (e.g.., of a loved one or friend) can improve speech comprehension in noisy environments. In my research program, I aim to address the following research questions:
Are familiar voices more efficient to process than unfamiliar ones?
Do familiar voices reduce cognitive processing demands?
What are the neural mechanisms underlying the reinstatement of familiar voice memory traces and their relation to attention during speech comprehension?
Caroline Nettekoven, Postdoctoral fellow
Coming soon...
