Dream come true

My childhood dream has finally come true. I was recently awarded PhD in Auditory Neuroscience by Newcastle University, UK.

My thesis is titled "A primate model of human cortical analysis of auditory objects". 

Here is a short summary of my work:

I explored whether monkeys are a good model of human brain mechanisms underlying auditory scene analysis. Using fMRI, I found that monkeys can segregate auditory objects from background sounds based on temporal coherence and that their underlying brain mechanism is similar to that in humans. My study is the first to show such evidence in any animal. 

I further explored whether monkeys are a good model of human brain mechanisms underlying processing of time windows. I found that despite a similarity in the anatomical organization of time window processing between species, humans have an increased sensitivity to longer time windows as compared to monkeys. This difference in sensitivity might be due to the specialization of the human brain for processing of speech. My study highlights the brain mechanisms that might be unique to humans, possibly an outcome of divergent evolution alongside the development of speech.

Electronic version of my PhD thesis is available at: 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332116741_A_primate_model_of_human_cortical_analysis_of_auditory_objects