My Perspective

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 ...

At BioMedical Engineering Conference 2025 held in Glasgow on Sept 4th to 5th, I presented my poster on whether Mismatch Negativity (MMN) is a marker of central neuropathic pain Intensity in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) - these are results from a home-based pilot study. Abstract :  Cross-sectional studies have shown that pain affects brain activity in Central Neuropathic Pain. However, more studies are needed to establish if mismatch negativity (MMN) is a biomarker for pain intensity. This work aims to determine whether the changes in MMN, i.e., amplitude and latency, is predictive of change in central neuropathic pain intensity due to medication. In this longitudinal study, ten people with spinal cord injury-related central neuropathic pain recorded their response to MMN experiment using home-based self-guided EEG set-up for ten days both before and after taking medications over a period of several weeks. We found that the change in MMN was not predictive of change in central neur...

I was selected to participate in Neuro-Hack, a 2-day hackathon powered by ARIA and organised by Nucleate UK. This took place on 28th to 30th Nov at London. The Hackathon brought together an interdisciplinary community interested in developing solutions for engineering a new generation scalable neuro-technologies. The Hackathon sought innovative ways to see, treat, or approach the brain. Key targets included non-surgical access, autonomous delivery, wireless therapeutic action, and non-invasive readouts.  So our product pitch in the competition entitled "Brain Pacer" was a non-invasive, adaptive brain-computer-interface using focussed functional UltraSound (fUS) for sensing and stimulation to deliver personalised neurological therapies. You can find our product pitch presentation here. I thank the organizers for selecting me for this hackathon and awarding me with a travel grant.

A recent study by Turrini et al [1] used cortico-cortical paired associative stimulation (ccPAS) - an non-invasive brain stimulation technique to manipulate brain connectivity achieved via network-based transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) - to alter effective connectivity in action observation network (AON) via Hebbian spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). They showed that enhancing (or weakening) the connectivity between the ventral part of the PreMotor cortical area (PMv) and the primary motor cortex (M1) increases (or decreases) the tendency to automatically imitate the behaviour of others. They also showed that enhancing supplementary motor area’s (SMA) connectivity with M1 actually induces a greater ability to avoid imitation when it is inappropriate to the context. This provides us with a promising avenue to treat disorders of aberrant mirroring. Misophonia is a condition where people have extreme distress towards everyday bodily sounds like eating, chewing, breathing etc...

I was conferred with Shooting Star 'Utkrashtakarta' उत्कृष्टकर्ता Award during Diwali event organized by Scottish Hindu Foundation, on 29th October 2025 hosted by Secretary of state for Scotland at Queen Elizabeth House, Edinburgh, UK, in the presence of MPs and members of Scottish Parliament (MSP) including Jackie Baillie, Sandesh Gulhane, Michael Marra, and Lord Provost of Glasgow. This award is to recognize my efforts (via iSeek ) through gamification of Indian culture and heritage including Hinduism, Scriptures, Yoga, Sanskrit, Indic Language and Arts. The award citation said "Dr. Pradeep is a neuroscientist, engineer, and digital creator whose work unites science, culture, and technology. A Ph.D. in Auditory Neuroscience from Newcastle University, he has pioneered the gamification of Indian culture through his social initiative iSeek — designing twenty five free-to-play digital games on Yoga, Sanskrit, Hinduism, and Indian heritage, in collaboration with organizations...

In my latest paper, we hypothesize that in Misophonia (a condition characterized by intense emotional and physiological reactions to specific human-generated sounds) there is a self-perpetuating cycle of mirror system hyperactivity mediated by iron dysregulation. Here is the predicted pathological self-perpetuating cycle: Mirror system hyperactivity  →  Metabolic stress  →  Iron accumulation  →  Inflammation  →  Impaired inhibition  →  Involuntary mimicry. We suggest that therapies aimed at breaking this self-perpetuating loop may offer effective strategies for managing Misophonia. Reference : [1] Pradeep Dheerendra, Soumita Ramesh, "Is iron dysregulation in the mirror motor cortex associated with misophonia?", Medical Hypotheses, vol. 204, p. 111765, Nov 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2025.111765 Abstract : Iron homeostasis plays a critical role in brain function and mental health, yet its dysregulation in specific psychiatric conditions remains underexplored. In this ...