Research Focus

My research is in the field of cognitive neuroscience and focuses on the brain processes that mediate perception and cognition of auditory patterns and events, specifically short-term memory and selective attention. I use a combination of neuroimaging techniques (e.g., ERPs, MEG, and fMRI) to investigate which, and how, different brain areas work together when participants' attention is directed to a particular sound identity and/or sound location in the auditory field. The hypothesis is that the auditory system provides the listener with the identity of the event as well as its location, i.e. the what and the where, and that these two types of information are provided by different areas of the brain. I am also interested in the neural and psychological mechanisms that underlie auditory scene analysis and how these mechanisms are influenced by the aging process. We are currently conducting several experiments that focus on the neural correlates of auditory scene analysis using either EEG, MEG and/or fMRI. These include investigating age-related differences in auditory cortical activity underlying concurrent sound perception, age-related differences in identifying and localizing auditory objects, and the effect of musical expertise on auditory scene analysis.Keywords: auditory cognitive neuroscience, psychophysiological and neural mechanisms of audition perception, attention, and cognition. perceptual learning, rehabilitation, memory, human brain eletrophysiology, functional neuroimaging and magnetoencephalography.

Select Publications

• Rabi R, Chow R, Paracha S, Hasher L, Gardner S, Anderson ND, Alain C. (2022). Time of day effects on inhibitory functioning: Cognitive and neural inhibitory evidence of sundowning in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 90, 869-890.
• Rabi R, Chow R, Paracha S, Hasher L, Gardner S, Anderson ND, Alain C. (2022). Cognitive and neural inhibitory sundowning in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 90, 869-890.
• Chow R, Rabi R, Paracha S, Vasquez BP, Hasher L, Alain C, Anderson ND. (2022). Inhibitory deficits in single- and multiple-domain amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 77, 71-83.
• Alain C, Chow R, Lu J, Rabi R, Sharma V, Shen D, Anderson ND, Binns M, Hasher L, Yao D, Freedman M. (2022). Aging enhances neural activity in auditory, visual, and somatosensory cortices: The common cause hypothesis revisited. The Journal of Neuroscience, 42, 264-275.

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Curriculum Vitae

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