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Nathaniel Zuk

Nathaniel Zuk

Senior Lecturer

School of Social Sciences

Role

Nathaniel Zuk is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Hearing in the Department of Psychology.

Career overview

Nathaniel Zuk received his PhD from the joint Harvard-MIT program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, where he was advised by Bertrand Delgutte (Massachusetts Eye and Ear) and studied how the brain encodes moving sound sources. He moved into human cognitive neuroscience as a postdoctoral researcher with Edmund Lalor (University of Rochester; Trinity College Dublin), and then focused on the neural correlates of perceptual learning as an ELSC-SWC Postdoctoral Fellow with Merav Ahissar (Hebrew University) and Athena Akrami (UCL).

Research areas

Nathaniel Zuk's research uses electroencephalography (EEG) to study how the human brain interprets the world around us and learns new, unfamiliar sounds. This is done using experiments with game-based training, machine-learning-based EEG analysis, and auditory experiment designs with realistic contexts.

External activity

He is a co-founder of the Cognitive and Natural Sensory Processing workshop and initiative, which provides resources and tutorials on doing EEG analysis recorded in continuous, naturalistic contexts:  https://cnspworkshop.net/

Publications

Zuk NJ, Weiss Y, Akrami A, Ahissar M (in review) Reduced perceptual error monitoring in autism. bioRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2024.07.23.604831

Bianco R, Zuk NJ, Bigand F, Quarta E, Grasso S, Arnese F, Ravignani A, Battaglia-Mayer A, Novembre G (2024) Neural encoding of musical expectations in a non-human primate. Curr Bio, 34(2):444-450.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.019

Broderick MP, Zuk NJ, Anderson AJ, Lalor EC (2022). More than words: neurophysiological correlates of semantic dissimilarity depend on comprehension of the speech narrative. Eur J Neurosci, doi: 10.1111/ejn.15805

Zuk NJ, Murphy JW, Reilly RB, Lalor EC (2021). Envelope reconstruction of speech and music highlights stronger tracking of speech at low frequencies. PLOS Comput Biol, 17(9):e1009358. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009358

Crosse MJ, Zuk NJ, Di Liberto GM, Nidiffer AR, Molholm S, Lalor EC (2021). Linear modeling of neurophysiological responses to naturalistic stimuli: methodological considerations for applied research. Front Neurosci, 15:705621. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.705621

Zuk NJ, Teoh ES, Lalor EC (2020). EEG-based classification of natural sounds reveals specialized responses to speech and music. NeuroImage, 210:116558. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116558

See all of Nathaniel Zuk's publications...

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