People

Dr. Ahveninen uses spatiotemporal neuroimaging (combined fMRI/MEG/EEG), 7T MRI, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate auditory attention and cognitive control, and the functional modularity and short-term plasticity of human auditory cortex. His recent results have revealed that auditory selective attention is supported by transient modulations of feature selectivity of auditory cortex neurons. His lab has also revealed task-dependent modulations of neuronal population tuning in the human auditory cortex “what” and “where” pathways by selective attention. Further, his work demonstrates differential post-stimulus inhibition in anterior and posterior auditory-cortex regions in humans, underlying pre-attentive gating of novel auditory information to consciousness.

Members

Fahimeh Mamashli, PhD, received her doctorate degree at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in 2013. Her unique contribution in human neuroscience research has been the development and application of advanced signal processing and statistical techniques in MEG/EEG data analysis and data mining for basic and translational neuroscience research. In the Martinos Center, in collaboration with world leading scientists; Jyrki Ahveninen and Matti Hamalainen, her research focuses on auditory working memory using multi-modal neuroimaging (fMRI/MEG/EEG) data.

Kaisu Lankinen, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She received her MSc and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Aalto University, Finland.  In her doctoral work, she studied brain activity during movie viewing, measured with magnetoencephalography (MEG). After her PhD, she did her first Postdoctoral Fellowship in University of California, Berkeley, receiving further training in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), before joining Martinos Center in 2019. Her current work focuses on studying functions of auditory cortex and its interaction with other brain areas using high-resolution 7T fMRI and MEG.

Isil Uluc, Ph.D., is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She received an M.Sc. degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Vienna, (Austria); an M.A. degree in Philosophy from the Bogazici University, (Turkey) and her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany and Berlin School of Mind and Brain with her thesis on neural correlates of parametric working memory of abstract quantities. Dr. Uluc joined the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in 2019. Her current research focuses on understanding the neural processes enabling working memory in multiple sensory systems with a focus on auditory working memory lead by Dr. Ahveninen using multiple imaging techniques. She investigates working memory processes on healthy human population as well as on epilepsy patients, studying neural processes that lead to short term maintenance of information and the deficits that cause disruption of working memory due to epilepsy.

Maria Hakonen, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She received her MSc in Bioinformation technology and PhD degree in Systems Neuroscience from Aalto University, Finland. In her doctoral work, she studied speech processing in the human brain using neuroimaging and behavioral methods. After her PhD, she was a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, where she used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the processing of proprioceptive information in the human brain. She joined the Martinos Center on January 10, 2022. The primary focus of her current research is functional mapping of the human auditory cortex in individuals using high-resolution 7T fMRI.

Keerthi Doreswamy is a PhD candidate jointly supervised by Jyrki Ahveninen and Norbert Kopčo. He has an interdisciplinary background with a bachelors in computer science and a masters in computational neuroscience & cognitive robotics. His research interests mainly focus on sensory perception in artificial and biological systems. His current work focus on studying neuronal correlates of auditory distance perception. He applies psychophysics, modeling, fMRI and machine learning for his research. He hopes to bring humanity to robots.

Tori Turpin is a Clinical Research Coordinator for the AC Lab in the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2019. During her undergraduate career at the University of Michigan, Tori researched in the Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab where she contributed to projects to combine the use of brain training, tDCS, and fMRI to modulate and observe effects on cognitive processes. She also completed a summer internship in cognitive development in the Berkeley Early Learning Lab at the University of California in 2018. Tori is interested in neurostimulation such as TMS and neuroimaging approaches (MRI, EEG, and MEG) to probe mechanisms of auditory working memory and attention. Tori is also a member of the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) Lab.

Jenny Fiedler is one of two Clinical Research Coordinators for the AC Lab in the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and Biology at the College of William & Mary in 2020. As an undergraduate, Jenny worked as a research assistant in an autobiographical memory lab, where she contributed to behavioral projects regarding the effects of doodling and mind wandering on short-term memory. She also completed an undergraduate honors thesis entitled The Self-Reference Effect: How Elaborative Processing and Associability Function Through Self-schemas. Jenny is interested in using neurostimulation such as TMS, neuroimaging techniques such as MEG, fMRI, and EEG, as well as behavioral approaches, to explore mechanisms of memory, learning, and attention.

Julianna Barbaro is a Research Coordinator for the Auditory Cognition Lab in the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is currently pursuing a BS in Biology and Neuroscience at Boston College, and has an anticipated graduation of 2024. At Boston College, Julianna is involved with BC EMS and conducts research in a biology lab. Her research interests include investigating the functionality of the brain and its relation to the auditory system through neuroimaging, namely fMRI.

Collaborators