Michael Beauchamp, UT Houston

In this project, the student will collaborate with a neuroscientist (Beauchamp) and a neurosurgeon (Yoshor) to analyze electrophysiological data collected from electrodes implanted in the brains of patients with epilepsy. There will be two main hypotheses tested: first, that neuronal activity in electrodes that overlie brain areas that are highly connected will be synchronous. Second, that brain areas important for multisensory integration will show oscillatory activity, especially in the gamma band range, for auditory speech (recordings of words), visual speech (videos of talkers) and auditory-visual speech.