Fernando Llanos Lucas
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Neuroscience
Which speech sounds a listener can tell apart depends on the languages they have heard for years. A contrast that is obvious to one person can pass unnoticed by another.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
- Topics
speech perception
auditory plasticity
auditory neuroplasticity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Compare how speakers of languages with simpler versus more complex sound systems perceive key speech features, using auditory perception tasks.
- Record non-invasive brain activity during speech listening to test how long-term language experience changes the way the brain encodes speech features.
- Use artificial intelligence techniques to identify reliable neural markers that separate language-specific sound processing from general auditory processing.
- Model how the auditory system adjusts to familiar and unfamiliar speech sounds, with the goal of updating current accounts of auditory neuroplasticity.
More about the research
Over time the auditory system, the brain's hearing network, reorganizes to prioritize the sound features that carry meaning in a familiar language. This reshaping by experience is called auditory plasticity, and understanding it matters both for accurate models of hearing and for tools that read auditory function from brain signals.
Why it matters
Understanding how language experience reshapes hearing could support brain-based technologies for auditory function. The grant names clinical diagnostics, neurobiometric identification (recognizing a person from brain signals), and brain-computer interfaces. Better models of how listeners adapt to unfamiliar speech sounds may help such tools work across speakers of different languages.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Chung Yin Joseph Lau
Northwestern University, IL·Neuroscience
Test whether the balance between top-down expectation signals and local speech representations is disrupted in autism, using EEG to measure context-dependent processing of speech sounds.
Tian Zhao
University of Washington, WA·Neuroscience
Test whether infants with a family history of developmental language disorder show a longer sensitive period for speech learning than low-risk infants, by comparing brain responses at about 6, 12 and 14 months.
Adeen Flinker
New York University, NY·Neuroscience
Map the integration periods, the time windows over which neurons combine sound, across primary and non-primary auditory cortex, using direct cortical recordings in neurosurgical patients.
The school
University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.
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