Barbara Shinn-Cunningham 4pm (Online, Zoom only):

How disruptive sounds impact auditory selective attention and recall
Communicating in a social setting relies upon the ability to focus on an important sound amidst competing sounds. In healthy, normal-hearing listeners, complex negotiations between volitional, top-down attention and involuntary, bottom-up attention govern how listeners focus on and understand sounds around them. While the mechanisms of top-down attention have been (pardon the pun) a focus of much research, few studies have explored how unexpected and salient sounds interfere with attention. This talk will discuss behavioral and neurophysiological results revealing the interplay between selective attention and bottom-up interruptions. 

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham trained as an electrical engineer (Brown University, Sc.B.; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.S. and Ph.D.). In 2018, she became Director and Professor of the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she holds the Cowan Chair in Auditory Neuroscience and courtesy appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Psychology. Prior to this, she was on a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University for over two decades. She has received awards for her research and her mentorship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, the Vannevar Bush Fellows program, the Society for Neuroscience, and the Acoustical Society of America. Recognized for her expertise in spatial hearing, auditory attention, and sensory deficits, her research combines behavioral experiments, brain imaging (EEG / MEG and fMRI), computational, and other methods to understand the mechanisms involved in everyday communication.