My Perspective

If self-voice intelligibility benefit is more than unfamiliar-voice intelligibility benefit it confirms that there is an internal sensorimotor speech model of self-voice that further aids speech intelligibility. Thus it would also further the proposal that learned talker-specific speech representations underlie familiar-voice intelligibility benefit.  Further, self voice has additional rich information: life long history of motor command, efference copy, auditory re-afference, somatosensory feedback from vocal cords. Consequently, self voice is associated with an extraordinarily rich internal model. Thus if internal models of speech production is the underlying main causative reason for familiar-voice intelligibility benefit then we would predict a larger self-voice intelligibility benefit over familiar-voice intelligibility benefit.   Would anyone be interested to collaborate with me on this idea to test self-voice vs familiar-voice intelligibility benefit?

Courting to survive, and to learn: an active-inference reading of the courtship–survival trade-off A classic life-history problem asks how an organism with a finite life should divide effort between surviving and reproducing. My earlier mathematical model of courtship versus survival [1] solved a two-year version by maximizing lifetime fitness over mating effort m , giving the optimal effort. So the key idea is invest hard now when survival is poor or mates are abundant now; conserve when the future is bright.  Natural selection shapes organisms whose internal models encode adaptive prior preferences. Expected free energy minimization therefore provides a mechanistic process theory for achieving fitness rather than replacing evolutionary theory. Hence, I recast the same problem as active inference i.e. action selection by minimization of expected free energy (EFE) and show two things. First, the classic optimum is recovered almost exactly as the pragmatic (preference-satisfying) l...

This 2011 Journal of Neuroscience paper [1] show dissociation between relative beat based timing localized to striatum and absolute duration based timing localized to cerebellum. Given this dissociation , I'm not convinced that olivo-cerebellar absolute timing framework subserves or finesses the striatal relative timing framework as proposed in the 2014 Frontiers papers [2]. Further evidence against the unified model is from the 2010 PNAS paper [3] on cerebellar atrophy patients (SCA-6) which shows intact beat based timing abilities but deficient ability for absolute duration estimation. If unified model of time perception is indeed correct then why does cerebellar atrophy spare beat based timing abilities and why is there a dissociation between the two timing mechanisms in fMRI? Further, there is no mention of SCN - suprachiasmatic nucleus -  which tracks day-night cycle.  So I think the two timing circuits are not unified but disparate mechanisms.   References : [1...

On Monday March 23rd 2026, Cambridge NeuroWorks held a workshop entitled "NeuroSparks: Developing Problem-Solving Neurotech Ideas" in Scotland Christof Gaunt, Innovation Pathway Manager at Cambridge NeuroWorks, led a session entitled "Identifying untapped opportunities, exploring early business ideas and refining your concept".  The aim of this session is to compress the 12-week process of finding a "Need" into a single hour of structured thinking. The first two stages of this six stage process pertains to identifying "why" where the goal is to find and screen a need. Next two "what" stages pertain to concept generation and screening it. Final two "How" stages pertain to strategy development and business planning. The road map is to first start with an initial idea based on a raw scientific concept. For instance hyper-mirroring causes distress in Misophonia from my own 2021 Journal of Neuroscience study.   Secondly focusing on...

Chronic pain affects millions of people and remains extremely challenging to treat. Because of this, researchers are trying to find reliable signals in the brain that could help us understand chronic pain better and guide new treatments. One such signal is called mismatch negativity (MMN) — a small, automatic brain response that occurs when we hear an unexpected sound. In our review paper [1], we looked at all the published studies that examined whether MMN changes in people with chronic pain. After searching major medical databases, we found 17 studies, of which 7 met our criteria for detailed analysis. These studies included people with a variety of long-lasting pain conditions, and one study used a controlled method to create a long-lasting pain sensation experimentally. Most studies measured either the size of the MMN response or the speed at which it occurred. Three studies found that people with chronic pain had smaller MMN responses , suggesting the brain may be less efficien...

Have you ever wondered how the brain makes sense of the sounds we hear—speech, music, or everyday noises? My latest review paper looks at a simple but important question: do humans and monkeys listen to the world in the same way? It turns out they don’t. Humans tend to combine and interpret sound over slightly longer periods of time, while monkeys rely more on short, quick snapshots of sound. These “listening windows” shape how each species understands the acoustic world. Humans, for example, benefit from longer windows because speech unfolds over hundreds of milliseconds and relies on patterns that stretch across time. The review brings together many studies using brain scans, electrical recordings, and computer models. When you compare all the evidence, a clear pattern appears: the architecture of the human auditory brain has evolved to integrate sound over longer timescales than that of macaques or marmosets. This difference likely helped support the emergence of speech and other co...

I am presenting my first attempt at creating a new Sanskrit shloka which presents a riddle.  Try to solve this riddle. Here is my attempt at modifying an original verse that was taught to us in Parichaya module to create a similar riddle but rooted in a mythological context while still keeping prosody (छन्दस्) in mind Riddle : गुरूणा कथितं, छात्र, श्लोकं लिख ममाज्ञया | न तेन लिखितः श्लोकः, शिक्षकाज्ञा न लङ्घिता || Translation : A teacher (Sage Veda Vyasa) asked his student (Shri Ganesha) to write a verse (for his epic Mahabharata) according to his directions. Neither he wrote the verse nor did he disobey the teacher. How is this possible? Solution to the riddle : Answer can be obtained by rearranging the words in the verse. Read the words न तेन as one word नतेन means 'with humility' or 'with his head bowed down'. Since Ganesha wrote the verse obediently, Vyasa was not disobeyed by him. Original shloka:  as taught in Parichaya levlel by Samskrita Bharati which gives us ...