Andrew Oxenham Receives Social Science Research Grant
We are excited to announce that Andrew Oxenham, faculty, has received the $14,950 Social Science Research Grant for the project “Encoding and decoding of natural timbre in the human cortex.”
Oxenham explains that, “Timbre is the critical quality of auditory perception that distinguishes a trumpet from a flute in music, and an ‘ah’ from an ‘ee’ in speech. Despite its established technical definition as anything distinguishing sounds with the same pitch, loudness, and duration, little is known about how our brain encodes timbre. This project leverages ultra-high-field functional MRI to uncover the intrinsic dimensions in the cortical representation of timbre and their relationships to perception. This research will advance our understanding of how the human brain represents timbre, shedding light on a fundamental aspect of auditory perception and our processing of speech and music.”
The Social Science Research Grant is possible through a generous gift from the Engdahl Family Fund, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Executive Vice President and Provost. This grant is designed to support "hard-to-fund” or “rapid response” research in areas related to brain imaging.
Andrew Oxenham, PhD is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota and the director of the Auditory Perception and Cognition Lab.
Composed by Madison Stromberg, communications assistant.
