We have been awarded a UMass FRG/HEG entitled Neural Measures of Real World Speech-in-Noise Processing. This grant will allow us to begin collecting electrophysiological data from children, young adults, and older adults in the field using portable headsets. The field-recorded data will provide critical information for designing future studies and demonstrating the feasibility of our proposed research in multiple grant applications to NIDCD, NIA, NICHD, and IES.

Ahren's paper "Musical Meter Modulates the Allocation of Attention across Time" will appear in the December issue of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. This is the first research to show different early perceptual processing of physically identical sounds at different levels of a metric hierarchy. Ahren wrote short melodies that directed temporal attention to downbeats. This important demonstration of the influence of rhythmic structure on the allocation of selective attention gives us an inkling of the complex patterns of temporal attention that must arise when listening to music and speech.

I'm very excited to have a new webpage to go along with our new focus on using what we've learned about basic auditory perception and selective attention to help people better process important speech signals presented in noise. As part of that new focus, we're establishing new collaborations with researchers studying aging, communication disorders, and hearing-related technology. If that describes you, we'd be very happy to hear from you.