Caroline A Niziolek, PhD

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders

Contact Information:

Waisman Center
1500 Highland Avenue
Room 485
Madison, WI 53705
608-890-0192
cniziolek@wisc.edu
Brain, Language, & Acoustic Behavior (BLAB) Lab

Research Statement

I study the neural control of speaking: how the brain coordinates auditory and motor signals to achieve communicative goals. My research typically combines brain imaging during spoken language with the acoustic analysis of speech behavior. My research centers on three questions in spoken communication and its neural underpinnings:

1. How does what we hear affect what we say? Whenever we speak, our message is transmitted not only to our audience, but to our own ears. Auditory feedback—what we hear when we speak—enables us to learn and maintain speaking skills and to rapidly correct errors in our speech. By combining neuroimaging (fMRI, M/EEG, ECoG) with behavioral measures, my research has characterized speech feedback processing and what purpose it serves in communication.
2. How do our cognitive and linguistic goals affect our speech? Speech is a motor act like reaching or grasping, but unlike hand and limb movements, speech results in a signal whose primary purpose is communication. My work investigates the influence of higher-level language (e.g. word structure, meaning, and nativeness) on motor control.
3. How can we leverage these effects for speech learning and rehabilitation? A long-term goal is to align the outcomes of feedback error-based learning in a way that facilitates communication. For example, we have recently developed an auditory feedback manipulation to directly target speech intelligibility by increasing the acoustic contrast between vowel sounds.

Selected Publications

Pubmed