Carrie Niziolek

Email: carrien@bu.edu

Website: http://web.mit.edu/carrien

Education

2010    Ph.D. Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology

2005    B.S. Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Research Interests

speech motor control
auditory feedback
phonetic category structure
speech production learning
perception-production interactions
efference copy and sensory prediction

Current Projects

My new research in the Aphasia Research Lab investigates how abnormalities in auditory-motor prediction signals may contribute to speech production disorders. Specifically, we are exploring whether speakers with aphasia are impaired in their ability to detect acoustic deviations in their own voice, and how this may lead to errors in production.  We are also exploring feedback training methods that could leverage other intact sensory systems to circumvent abnormal auditory processing.

Publications

Niziolek, C.A., Nagarajan, S.S., and Houde, J.F. (2015). The contribution of auditory feedback to corrective movements in vowel formant trajectories. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, Scotland. August 10–14, 2015.

Houde, J.F., Niziolek, C.A., Kort, N.S., Agnew, Z.K., and Nagarajan, S.S. (2014). Simulating a model of state feedback control of speaking. Proceedings of the 10th Intl. Seminar on Speech Production, Cologne, Germany, 2014.

Niziolek, C.A. and Guenther, F.H. (2014). When BED goes BAD: how the brain can fix mistakes in speech while they happen. Frontiers in Neuroscience for Young Minds 2:1.

Sitek, K., Mathalon, D.H., Roach, B.J., Houde, J.F., Niziolek, C.A., and Ford, J.M. (2013). Auditory cortex processes variation in our own speech. PLOS ONE 8(12):e82925.

Niziolek, C.A., Nagarajan, S.S., and Houde, J.F. (2013). What does motor efference copy represent? Evidence from speech production. The Journal of Neuroscience 33(41):16110–16116.

Niziolek, C.A. and Guenther, F.H. (2013). Vowel category boundaries enhance cortical and behavioral responses to speech feedback alterations. The Journal of Neuroscience 33(29):12090–12098.

Chang, E.F*, Niziolek, C.A.*, Knight, R., Nagarajan, S.S., and Houde, J.F. (2013). Human cortical sensorimotor network underlying feedback control of vocal pitch. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(7):2653–2658.        * equal contribution

Houde, J.F., Kort, N.S., Niziolek, C.A., Chang, E.F. & Nagarajan, S.S. (2013). Neural evidence for state feedback control of speaking. In Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (ICA 2013 Montreal) 19:060178.

Patel, R., Niziolek, C., Reilly, K.J., and Guenther, F.H. (2011). Prosodic adaptations to pitch perturbation in running speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 54(4):1051–1059.