About the MACLab:
Our research spans a large number of domains in perception and development. Some of the questions we are interested in are:
- What processes does the brain go through in order to decode everyday speech?
- How do children learn to use this amazing facility?
- How do children link these auditory representations to meanings?
- How are other types of auditory and visual categories perceived and learned?
- How can computational models of the brain help us understand these processes?
The MACLab is committed to the view that the brain is interactive, dynamic, graded, and probabilistic. It can only be understood by examining behavior in the moment. Time is essential, both at the scale of milliseconds and over the lifespan of the organism. Development underpins all aspects of this study, and it is no simple question in and of itself. Development is not simply the unfolding of genes, nor is it the imprinting of the environment. Rather development is the continual interplay of the organism and the environment, constrained by mathematics.
Our lab is heavily invested in students of all stages. Undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, even alumni, are integral to the research we do. In many cases the students lead the research, asking the tough questions, coming up with the right experiments and making the important scientific contributions. If you are serious about learning about the mind, and brain and how they interface with the linguistic and perceptual world, the MACLab is the place for you.
