Nina Kraus
Encyclopedia
Nina Kraus is a Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

, investigating the neural encoding of speech and music
Auditory Brainstem Response
The auditory brainstem response is an auditory evoked potential extracted from ongoing electrical activity in the brain and recorded via electrodes placed on the scalp. The resulting recording is a series of vertex positive waves of which I through V are evaluated...

 and its plasticity. Her research examines the neural encoding of sound in the normal system, how it is disrupted in clinical populations, and how it reacts to differing levels of expertise. For individuals with speech and language disorders (reading, auditory processing disorder
Auditory processing disorder
Auditory Processing Disorder , also known as Central Auditory Processing Disorder is an umbrella term for a variety of disorders that affect the way the brain processes auditory information. It is not a peripheral hearing disorder as individuals with APD usually have normal peripheral hearing...

, autism
Autism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...

), the neural encoding of speech can provide a biological marker of deficient sound encoding, while the musician’s brain illustrates how extensive auditory expertise can enhance sensory-cognitive interactions. Investigations on brain plasticity are aimed at improving speech perception
Speech perception
Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted and understood. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonetics and phonology in linguistics and cognitive psychology and perception in psychology...

 and auditory learning in normal and clinical populations.

As a result of the Listening, Learning and the Brain Project, a research study funded by the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...

, the Kraus Lab has developed an objective and non-invasive technique for the diagnosis of physiological disorders in auditory processing, a method now widely known as BioMARK (Biological Marker of Auditory Processing, formerly known as BioMAP).

External links

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