Research

My interests focus on three brain processes as lenses to understand typical and atypical human speech processing: (1) ‘neural tracking’ (how brain signals align and respond to millisecond-scale acoustic and linguistic features) of continuous speech; (2) functional connectivity between cortical (sensory and higher-order cognitive and language-related) regions; and (3) inter-brain synchrony (brain-to-brain ‘communication’) during interpersonal interactions. I am keen to understand how these processes are shaped/altered by sensory auditory, or higher-level cognitive or language comprehension disorders, and what roles they may play when the brain reorganises to compensate for these disorders. I combine neuroimaging methods of electroencephalography (EEG) (measuring neural tracking) and functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) (measuring functional connectivity and inter-brain synchrony).

I am parts of some ongoing projects that look into these processes in aphasic or cochlear implanted individuals:

- Neural tracking of auditory speech in post-stroke aphasia

- Inter-brain synchrony during mother-child interactions

- Neural tracking of audiovisual speech in cochlear-implanted adults

Previously, I did studies that explore neural speech tracking in those with typical listening or age-related hearing loss:

- Neural tracking of auditory speech in typically listening adults

- Neural tracking of auditory speech in adults with age-related hearing loss

Hopefully these pieces of work will not only advance understanding of brain processing of speech but also contribute to developing useful clinical tools for objectively monitoring speech comprehension outcomes, esp when reliable behavioural measures are not easy to obtain in many clinical individuals; for the long term, contribute to bases for neuroscience-inspired innovation and rehabilitation to support – not limited to hearing loss or aphasia – but also wider neuropsychological conditions (e.g., neurodivergence and neurodegeneration) when day-to-day speech comprehension and communication become challenging.