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overview
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My research has focused since 1986 on perceptual learning and attention and working memory. Our research uses a wide range of methods including behavioral paradigms for studying learning and sleep consolidation, attention limitations in learning and perception, and the role of working memory in perception. Our lab is equipped for high-density EEG measurements, fMRI data analysis (with access to a 3T scanner), auditory brainstem recordings, and a wide range of speech recording, editing, analysis, synthesis, and sound modification tools. We test individuals, and can carry out nap studies in-lab with polysomnography. We can collect and analyze peripheral physiological measurements (heart rate variability, respiration, etc.) and in collaboration with colleagues carry out genetic analyses. My graduate students and postdoctoral trainees have gone on to become tenured faculty members at a wide range of international research institutions including Michigan State, Purdue, University College London, University of Trento (Center for Mind/Brain Research), and Birkbeck College in London. My graduate students and trainees publish their research in the top scientific journals including Nature, Current Biology, Neuron, J. Neuroscience, PNAS, Learning & Memory, Cognition, and Psychological Science. My students are trained in the lab in basic behavioral research methods, on-line research methods, signal processing, advanced statistical analysis and modelling, human electrophysiology, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, comparative methods in communication (comparing humans and songbirds), sensory research methods, fMRI, and computational modeling. Students in my laboratory reported the first scientific evidence for sleep consolidation of generalized learning (Fenn et al., 2003, Nature), the first behavioral evidence for functional effects of sleep consolidation in songbirds (Brawn et al., 2010, J. Neuroscience), the first evidence that adults can learn perfect pitch and this learning depends on working memory capacity (Van Hedger et al., 2015, Cognition), and the first evidence of the fate of interfering material following sleep consolidation (Brawn et al.. 2013, Psychological Science). Students and trainees working with me develop new methods for research, develop broad and deep cognitive neuroscience skills and knowledge, and publish successfully their research going on to successful tenure track and tenured faculty research positions.
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