Current Lab Members

Frank Guenther, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Departments of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, a Faculty Member in the Harvard/MIT Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program, and a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Guenther is a computational and cognitive neuroscientist specializing in speech and sensorimotor control. His research program combines theoretical modeling with behavioral and neuroimaging experiments to characterize the neural computations underlying these faculties in humans. Dr. Guenther also develops brain-computer interfaces to restore synthetic speech and other communication skills to paralyzed individuals. His research has been covered extensively in the science and popular media, including television spots on CNN News, PBS News Hour, and Fox News; articles in popular science magazines Discover, Scientific American, and Popular Science; and popular press coverage in Esquire, Wired, The Boston Globe, and BBC News.

Faculty

Jason Tourville, Ph.D. is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences and Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology at Boston University. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University. He is a cognitive and computational neuroscientist primarily focused on mapping the brain regions involved in speech motor control. His research combines mathematical modeling with functional and structural brain imaging to study the neural mechanisms underlying normal and disordered speech, including persistent developmental stuttering, apraxia of speech, spasmodic dysphonia, and autism. Dr. Tourville also has an extensive background in human neuroanatomy and MRI-based brain morphometry that he uses to develop expert-guided semi-automated brain region labeling methods.

Joseph Perkell, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Perkell has been engaged in research on speech motor control since 1965. His former laboratory, in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, developed EMMA, the first electromagnetic articulometer system shown to have accuracy and reliability sufficient for rigorous research on speech kinematics. From the early 1990’s until 2012, Dr. Perkell headed the Speech Motor Control Group in RLE and was PI on two long-running R01 grants from NIDCD. The group published a number of carefully conducted, hypothesis-driven, methodologically sophisticated studies of speech production: on biomechanical constraints and motor control strategies, including the role of hearing. For its last 15 years, the group collaborated closely with Prof. Guenther, whose DIVA model provided the theoretical framework for research in both projects, guiding work on brain mechanisms and the influence of these mechanisms on speech kinematics and acoustics. Dr. Perkell was also a participating faculty member in the Harvard-MIT Graduate Program in Speech and Hearing Biosciences and Technology Program, for which he served on the program’s admissions committee and supervised graduate students. Dr. Perkell’s most recent review papers showed how his group’s work was consistent with a coherent theoretical framework that modeled relations among brain mechanisms, audition and speech motor control.

Research Staff

Barbara Holland, M.A. is Assistant Director of Research in the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences at Boston University. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of New Hampshire and M.A. in Psychology, emphasis in Neuropsychology, from the University of Northern Colorado. Prior to joining BU, Barbara worked at the Center for Morphometric Analysis on a study of attentional network pathology in persons diagnosed with schizophrenia. Responsibilities included recruitment and neuropsychological testing of participants, conducting fMRI experiments, analysis of functional and structural data MRI, refinement of structural MRI analysis methods developed at the Center for Morphometric Analysis.

Alfonso Nieto-Castanon, Ph.D. is  a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences at Boston University.  In his private practice he also works as a statistical consultant, analyst, and methods/software developer. In addition to providing modeling and statistical support to research groups in the field of computational neuroscience, some of his ongoing projects involve functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (fcMRI) analysis methods, the application of functional localizers to investigate the selectivity of language-related areas, and method development for speech restoration in subjects with locked-in syndrome.

Postdocs

Graduate Students

Hilary Miller is a doctoral student in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Boston University. She received a dual degree from the University of New Hampshire with a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Spanish. She also completed her M.S. in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of New Hampshire, where she also completed a thesis on treatment of childhood apraxia of speech. Prior to coming to BU, she worked clinically as a speech-language pathologist in a Vermont public school system. Her research interests are focused on understanding the neural bases of speech motor control and speech disorders.

Rohan Deshpande is a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. He received his B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Louisville. His research interests focus on understanding how changing stimuli impact electrophysiological responses. Currently, Rohan is investigating the effect of repetition suppression on neural activity collected with ECoG.

Haochen Wan, M.S. is a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. He received his B.Eng. in Biomedical Engineering from Zhejiang University and his M.S. in neuroinformatics from Kyoto University. His research interests focus on human speech/language systems and brain-machine interfaces, and he hopes to better reveal the mysteries of the brain with his background in engineering tools and computational models. Currently, Haochen is investigating the neural mechanisms underlying sub-syllabic sequencing in human speech using fMRI.

Jackie S. Kim, M.S. CCC-SLP is a doctoral student in the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Department at Boston University. She received her B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Southern California and her M.S. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Columbia University. Jackie worked as a medical speech-language pathologist for three years at an acute care hospital in Los Angeles before starting her PhD program. Her research focuses on neural computations of speech motor control and neurogenic communication disorders. Currently, Jackie is examining the role of the basal ganglia in motor speech sequencing through deep brain stimulation (DBS) implantation surgery studies on people with Parkinson’s, as well as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on people who stutter.

Lakshmi Girija Dhulipati is a master’s student in Artificial Intelligence at Boston University and a research assistant in the Guenther Lab. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, where she focused on modeling brain data in the context of recognizing speech properties. Currently, her research centers on identifying different types of stuttering using fMRI data and mitigating bias in neural networks, including models like Stable Diffusion. At the Guenther Lab, she applies machine learning and signal processing techniques to analyze brain data, contributing to a deeper understanding of the neural control of speech. Her work aligns with the broader goal of enhancing computational models such as DIVA and GODIVA to better understand and address speech disorders.

Undergraduate Students

Anita Keltcher, Boston University, class of 2025, is pursuing a B.A. in Neuroscience and a minor in flute performance. They are currently helping with preprocessing of audio data for further analysis. Their hobbies and interests include drawing, reading, classical music, flute, cooking, baking and Kendo which is a Japanese Martial art. Anita hopes to pursue an MD/PhD and continue neuroscience research into their professional career.