HESP Seminar Series | HESP l Hearing and Speech Sciences Department l University of Maryland

The HESP Department sponsors a series of talks on current research in the areas of hearing, speech, and language by visiting researchers or members of the HESP faculty, staff, and students. All students, faculty, staff, and affiliates are welcome and encouraged to attend. If you would like to join the email distribution list for all upcoming HESP Seminar Series talks, email Dr. Matthew Goupell at goupell [at] umd.edu or Dr. Jose Ortiz at jortiz5 [at] umd.edu.

Events are listed below, or access the HESP Seminar Series calendar.

Fall 2026 Schedule

Date/Time/Location	Speaker/Topic
Date: September 21 Time: 12-1pm Location: Lefrak 2166	Title: Individual Differences in Phoneme Categorization Relate to Speech-in-Noise Performance and are predicted by Structure and Function of Auditory Brain Regions Speaker: Rose Rizzi Abstract: Listeners vary in how gradiently and consistently they assign speech sounds to phonetic categories. Using a multimodal neuroimaging approach, several experiments assessed how structural and functional properties of the central auditory pathway predict differences in acoustic-phonetic categorization and speech-in-noise (SIN) perception. We recorded brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) and cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) from young, normal-hearing listeners while they labeled vowel sounds along an acoustic-phonetic continuum during active perceptual tasks. We measured consistency (i.e., trial-to-trial stability) of speech coding from FFRs and ERPs. We also measured SIN understanding to relate speech sound categorization to higher-level speech processing. To further assess how volumetric and structural connectivity properties of the auditory-linguistic brain relate to perceptual differences in categorization, we collected structural MRI scans and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Across the various studies, functional EEG and behavioral results collectively suggest i) more perceptually gradient/consistent listeners have stronger neural encoding of speech that is less degraded by noise and thus achieve better SIN perception, ii) speech representations are more gradient in brainstem but more categorical in cortex, and iii) listeners’ perceptual consistency in phonetic labeling is predicted by neural consistency of their speech-evoked potentials. MRI/DWI further revealed i) more gradient perception relates to greater surface area of frontal language regions, while increased perceptual consistency relates to thicker auditory cortical regions, and ii) more gradient listeners have denser white matter pathways in left hemisphere auditory-language tracts. Taken together, these studies reveal important structure-function-behavior relationships across the auditory system that explain variance in categorization abilities and their relation to SIN performance.
Date: September 28 Time: 12-1pm Location: Lefrak 2166	Title: How Reverberation Shapes the Subcortical Encoding of Speech in Older Adults with and without Hearing Loss Speaker: Ebtesam Sajjadi Abstract: Reverberation is common in everyday listening environments, such as classrooms and restaurants, and can interfere with the temporal and spectral cues important for speech understanding. Older adults may be particularly affected by these changes. In this talk, I will describe the effect of reverberation on subcortical speech encoding in older adults with and without hearing loss using frequency-following responses (FFRs). I will present results that compare subcortical neural responses to dynamic and steady-state speech sounds across different levels of reverberation. I will discuss how these findings relate to communication difficulties in reverberant environments and whether hearing loss makes older adults more susceptible to the effects of reverberation.
Date: October 7th Time: 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM Location: 4500 Campus Dr, College Park, MD 20740	Biennial NIDCD-UMD Joint Meeting
Date: October 7 Time: 4pm Location: 2203 Parren Mitchell Art-Sociology Building	DST Talk Speaker: Samira Anderson Title: A Brain in Flux: Neural Mechanisms of Auditory Aging and the Promise of Plasticity
Date: October 9-10 Time: TBA Location: 4500 Campus Dr College Park, MD 20740	Cochlear Implant MASH Conference
Date: October 16 Time: TBA Location: Lefrak	LEAP Playground Ribbon Cutting
Date: November 2 Time: TBA Location: TBA	SODA
Date: November 9 Time: TBA Location: TBA	Clinical Grand Rounds Speaker: Vanessa Reyes
Date: November 23 Time: TBA Location: TBA	To Be Announced
Date: November 30 Time: TBA Location: TBA	Title: Beyond the Audiogram: What Extended High Frequency Hearing Reveals About Auditory Function Speaker: Chhayakanta Patro