Dr. Sébastien Paquette: Decoding Auditory Emotions

Abstract: Many studies support the idea of common neural substrates for the perception of vocal and musical emotions. It is proposed that music, to make us perceive emotions, recruits the emotional circuits that evolved mainly for the processing of biologically relevant vocalizations (e.g., cries, screams). Although some studies have found great similarities between voice and music in terms of acoustic cues (emotional expression) and neural correlates (emotional processing), some studies reported differences specific to each medium. However, it is possible that the differences described may not be specific to the medium, but may instead be specific to the stimuli used (e.g., complexity, length). To understand how these vocal and musical emotions are perceived and how they can be affected by hearing impairments, we assessed recognition of the most basic forms of auditory emotion (musical/vocal bursts) through a series of studies in normal-hearing individuals and cochlear implant users.

Short bio: Sébastien received his Ph.D. in Psychology from University of Montreal and just came back to Montreal after completing a post-doc in the Music, Stroke Recovery, and Neuroimaging Laboratory. He is now a post-doc in Dr. Alexandre Lehmann’s laboratory. His work focuses on the auditory perception of music and voice and how it can be utilized for rehabilitation.

Dr. Bastien Intartaglia: The effect of language and musical experience on neural processing of sounds

Abstract: Listening to sounds from our environment is a process that is shaped by our auditory experience (e.g. native language, musical practice…). Recent work mainly focused on the effect of auditory experience on the neural processing of sounds comparing speakers of tonal and non-tonal languages that use pitch variations to convey phonemic categories (e.g. English vs. Chinese Mandarin respectively). The aim of our work was to determine whether subcortical encoding of speech sounds is sensitive to language experience by comparing native speakers of two non-tonal languages (French and English) and whether this difference in language experience could be compensated by musical practice by comparing musicians and non-musicians’ neural responses to non-native speech sounds.

Short bio: Bastien got his Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France. He is now a post-doc research fellow in Dr. Alexandre Lehmann’s lab. His work focuses on auditory perception and attention using EEG.