Elyse S. Sussman

My research is in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience and is focused on understanding the neural bases of auditory information processing in adults and children. Our laboratory's research uses a combination of non-invasive recordings of human brain activity (event-related potentials [ERPs]) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in conjunction with measures of behavioral performance, to specify the processes and brain structures that contribute to the organization, storage and perception of a coherent sound environment.

The auditory scene provides more information than we can respond to or even fully perceive. The acoustic information entering one's ears is a mixture of sounds originating from several simultaneously active sources. Thus, an important function of the auditory system is to disentangle this mixture of sound and construct mental representations that maintain the integrity of the original sources. Our research is primarily focused on understanding the relationship between the automatic and controlled (attention-related) processes that lead to the perception of a coherent auditory world. Recently, we have determined 1) that a large part of sound organizational processes occur automatically; and 2) that attention can affect the outcome of some of these early sensory processes. In this vein, we are also investigating the normal development of auditory cognition to be able to better understand the neural mechanisms underlying developmental language disorders (DLD). Although many children with DLD have deficits in processing non-linguistic acoustic information, the specific nature of the auditory perceptual deficits is still not known. Non-invasive brain imaging methodology is a valuable tool that can be used to study the neural basis of information processing in both normal and impaired populations across the life span.

Oceák, A., Winkler, I. , Sussman, E., Alho, K. (2006). Loudness summation and the mismatch negativity event related brain potential in humans. Psychophysiology (in press).

Sussman, E., Horváth, J., Winkler, I. and Orr, M. (2006). The role of attention in the formation of auditory streams. Perception & Psychophysics (in press).

Winkler, I., van Zuijen, T., Sussman, E., Horváth, J. and Näätänen, R. (2006). Object representation in the human auditory system. European Journal of Neuroscience (in press).

Sussman, E. and Steinschneider, M. (2006). Neurophysiological evidence for context-dependent encoding of sensory input in human auditory cortex. Brain Research 1075(1): 165-174.

Sussman, E. (2005). Integration and segregation in auditory scene analysis. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117(3): 1285-1298.

Sussman, E., Bregman, A. S., Wang, W.J. and Khan, F.J. (2005). Attentional modulation of electrophysiological activity in auditory cortex for unattended sounds in multistream auditory environments. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 5(1): 93-110.

Sussman, E. and Gumenyuk, V. (2005). Organization of sequential sounds in auditory memory. NeuroReport 16(13): 1519-23.

van Zuijen, T., Sussman, E., Winkler, I., Näätänen, R. and Tervaniemi, M. (2005). Auditory organization of sound sequences by a temporal or numerical regularity—a mismatch negativity study comparing musicians and nonmusicians. Cognitive Brain Research 23: 270-276.

Wang, W., Datta, H. and Sussman, E. (2005). The development of the length of the temporal window of integration for rapidly presented auditory information as indexed by MMN. Clinical Neurophysiology, 116(7): 1695-1706.

Winkler, I., Czigler, I., Sussman, E., Horváth, J. and Balázs, L. (2005). Pre-attentive binding of auditory and visual stimulus features. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(2): 320-339.

Winkler, I. , Takegata, R. and, Sussman, E. (2005). Event-related brain potentials reveal multiple stages of the perceptual organization of sound. Cognitive Brain Research, 25(1): 291-299.