Dr. Adam S. Greenberg of Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin

A central challenge of auditory processing involves the segregation, analysis, and integration of acoustic information into auditory perceptual objects for processing by higher order cognitive systems. We explored the influence of low-level features on auditory object perception by asking participants to rate the musicality of randomly generated pure tone sequences. High (versus low) ratings were interpreted as indicating strong (versus weak) object formation. Participants then rated manipulated versions of those sequences in which random subsets of tones were changed along one of three dimensions (timbre, amplitude, fade-in) and three strengths (low, medium, high). We then used fMRI to explore the neural mechanisms mediating auditory scene analysis (ASA) and object perception by having participants perform a 1-back memory task on their four most- and least-musical sequences, along with similarly altered versions of these stimuli. We separately localized a music processing brain network and an ASA brain network, observing that ASA and auditory object perception are subserved by largely distinct (but partially overlapping) brain regions. We used representational similarity analysis to explore the functional profiles of these two networks. ASA manipulations correlated most strongly with brain regions near primary auditory cortex; while object grouping (i.e., musicality ratings) correlated with the right intraparietal sulcus (rIPS). Critically, rIPS was the only brain region that correlated with
participant behavior, suggesting that attentional mechanisms may play an important role in the perceptual organization of auditory stimuli.

Biography:

Adam Greenberg is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Marquette University. His undergraduate and master’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering are from Case Western Reserve University and the University of Alabama-
Birmingham, respectively. He earned a PhD in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University and completed postdoctoral training in the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University. Adam started as an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee in 2013 and moved his lab to the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2019. His current work focuses on the neurobiology of attention and perception and how our moment-tomoment behavioral goals are implemented in neural mechanisms. He uses brain imaging
techniques integrated with psychophysical methods, computational modeling, and clinical populations to examine the information processing architecture of the brain in both health and disease. Adam also serves as the Associate Dean of Postdoctoral Education in the MCW Graduate School and in this role he supports and advocates for the postdoctoral trainee community at MCW.

Email:

Address:Milwaukee, United States