ExpORL Crashes the Special Olympics!

A couple of weeks ago, our PhD candidate Dimitar Borisov Spirov and our student Mira Van Wilderode volunteered at "Healthy Hearing", an initiative part of the "Unifié de Basketball" competition in the framework of the Special Olympics Belgium.

They examined and screened athletes and the general population overall, while raising awareness about taking care of our ears. Good job, guys!

ExpORL Goes Royal

The Anual Congress 2017 of the Royal Belgian Society for Ear, Nose, Throat, Head and Neck Surgery took place in Louvain-la-Neuve on the 24th and 25th of November, 2017.

Not only did our Jan Wouters give a talk about current state of B-Audio, but ExpORL also had a strong presence with contributions by Astrid van Wieringen, Tobias Busch, Anouk Sangen, Benjamin Dieudonné, Sam Denys, Benson Hsu, Sara Magits, Annelies Devesse, Lien Decruy, Tilde Van Hirtum, and Charlotte Borgers.

This gathering was a fantastic platform to present the results of some of our most recent studies to the scientific community in Belgium in different ways. Additionally, it allowed the discussion, sharing, and exchange of new ideas.

Symposium on Auditory EEG/MEG Signal Processing (AESoP) - save the date!

We are pleased to announce the first edition of the Auditory EEG Signal Processing (AESoP) symposium, to be held from May 21 (noon) to May 23 (noon) in Leuven, Belgium. We aim to bridge the gap between the existing auditory neuroscience and engineering conferences.

The topic of the symposium is research on hearing, speech and language, making use of novel EEG or MEG signal processing. It is intended to be multidisciplinary between neuroscience, audiology and engineering, bringing people from these fields together.

The symposium is organised by the Leuven team and supported by the steering committee:

Tom Francart
KU Leuven (BE) 

Jan Wouters
KU Leuven (BE)

Jonathan Simon
U. of Maryland (USA)

Ed Lalor
U. of Rochester (USA)

Alain de Cheveigné
CNRS (FR)

Andrew Dimitrijevic
Sunnybrook Research Institute (CA)

Apart from talks by the steering committee members, so far confirmed speakers are:

Lucas Parra
CCNY (USA)

Stefan Debener
U. of Oldenburg (DE)

Alexander Bertrand
KU Leuven (BE) 

Dante Mantini
KU Leuven (BE)

Malcolm Slaney
Google Research (USA)

Michael X Cohen
Radbour U. (NL)

More information on the programme, abstract submission, and registration will follow soon on our website: http://www.kuleuven.be/exporl/aesop.php

During the 3-day symposium there will be opportunities to discover and taste the beautiful historic city of Leuven, known as "the mecca of books and beer".

Photo credit: visitflanders.com

Looking forward to meeting you in Leuven in May!

Seminar Raúl Granados Barbero - 13 November 2017

Bekijk de webversie

Invitation Holy Hour ExpORL, Dept. Neurosciences   Measures of auditory brain responses in children / adolescents. Raúl Granados Barbero Research Seminar in framework of doctoral education When? Monday, 13 November 2017, 16:00-17:00 Where? Seminar room 04.330 O&N 4 - KU Leuven Herestraat 49 B-3000 Leuven Abstract Different studies have performed analysis at the electrode level comparing different aspects of the EEG signals. Including auditory stimulation and population with reading difficulties such as dyslexia. These studies showed interesting results proving that EEG recordings with auditory stimulation may show differences between the populations under study. Studying at the source level the underlying differences showed at electrode level might provide even more information about the differences between groups with reading difficulties and normal developing readers across different ages. Please reply to this email if you are planning to attend the presentation.     Copyright KU Leuven

Seminar Benjamine Dieudonné - 14 December 2017

Bekijk de webversie

Invitation Holy Hour ExpORL, Dept. Neurosciences   Towards a comfortable cocktail party for bimodal listeners Benjamin Dieudonné Research Seminar in framework of doctoral education When? Thursday, 14 December 2017, 17:00-18:00 Abstract An increasingly common solution to severe hearing loss is bimodal stimulation: a cochlear implant in one ear and a hearing aid in the other. Although more and more companies are offering so-called bimodal solutions, the two devices are not designed to work together. This leads to poor transmission of binaural cues, resulting in major difficulties with sound localization and speech understanding in noisy environments. We will present the difficulties that bimodal listeners experience due to poor perception of binaural cues, and suggest some possible solutions to overcome these difficulties. One novel sound processing strategy that we recently developed, head shadow enhancement, did yield some promising results. Where? Seminar room 04.226 (HP1) O&N II - KU Leuven Herestraat 49 B-3000 Leuven Please reply to this email if you are planning to attend the presentation.     Copyright KU Leuven

Seminar Thanh Vân Phan - 16 November 2017

Bekijk de webversie

Invitation Holy Hour ExpORL, Dept. Neurosciences   Structural connectivity analysis algorithms for young children's brain Thanh Vân Phan Research Seminar in framework of doctoral education When? Thursday, 16 November 2017, 14:00-15:00 Abstract In the research field of developmental neuroscience, an increasing number of studies investigates early childhood as this is the period when drastic structural changes occur in the brain. With the advent of child-friendly scanning protocols, studies based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have started to increase, with the advantage of providing in vivo and non-invasive high-resolution images of the brain. However, it was demonstrated that applying standard MRI software tools on young children data provides inaccurate and biased results, which can lead to erroneous interpretation in the analysis. The aim of this project is to develop and validate a tool for the structural connectivity analysis of young children’s brain. Improved modelling of brain connectivity attempts to better represent the links between brain structures, with accurate segmentation of anatomical brain regions and white matter connections representation. To do so, processing methods based on anatomical and diffusion MRI are adjusted to the young children’s brain. IOptimal pre-processing such as non-linear registration and artefact correction are applied to deal with issue inherent to pediatric data (head motion and anatomical disparity). Age-specific atlases are used (or constructed, if not available) in order to summarise the brain anatomy specific to each age group. Multi-atlas based methods are used in order to improve the segmentation accuracy of multiple labelling of brain sub-regions. Finally, longitudinal design is also included so changes in both micro- and macrostructure can be measured during brain development. Studies are conducted to evaluate the impact of these adapted processing methods applied for brain structural connectivity analysis in young children’s brain in typical and atypical development.​  Where? Seminar room 04.227 (HP2) O&N II - KU Leuven Herestraat 49 B-3000 Leuven Please reply to this email if you are planning to attend the presentation.     Copyright KU Leuven

Seminar James O'Sullivan - 21 December 2017

Bekijk de webversie

Invitation Holy Hour ExpORL, Dept. Neurosciences   Auditory Attention Decoding: Insights from Invasive Electrocorticography  James O'Sullivan When? Thursday, 21 December 2017, 13:00h Where? Seminar room HP1 (04.226) O&N II - KU Leuven Herestraat 49 B-3000 Leuven Please reply to this email if you are planning to attend the presentation.     Copyright KU Leuven

Seminar Dr. Hamish Innes-Brown - 7 November 2017

Bekijk de webversie

Invitation Holy Hour ExpORL, Dept. Neurosciences   Optical imaging for hearing research: possibilities and possible pitfalls  Dr. Hamish Innes-Brown Bionics Institute, Melbourne, Australia Abstract Functional near-infrared spectroscopy is a brain imaging technique that holds great promise for hearing research. It measures regionally-specific changes in the concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin in the superficial layers of cortex that are due to neural activity. Importantly for hearing research, it is non-invasive, silent, can be used in a variety of seating positions, and can be used with implanted devices such as cochlear implants. In this talk I will describe our first few years using this technology, some of the problems we have come across, and the potential we see for future uses. When? Tuesday, 7 November 2017, 13:00h Where? Auditorium Pentalfa (04.543) O&N I - KU Leuven Herestraat 49 B-3000 Leuven Please reply to this email if you are planning to attend the presentation.     Copyright KU Leuven

Seminar Annelies Devesse - Friday 29 September 2017

Bekijk de webversie

Invitation Holy Hour ExpORL, Dept. Neurosciences   Audio-Visual True-to-life Assessment of Auditory Rehabilitation Annelies Devesse Research Seminar in framework of doctoral education When? Friday, 29 September 2017, 13:00h Where? Seminar room HP4 04.230 (4th floor) O&N II - KU Leuven Herestraat 49 B-3000 Leuven Please reply to this email if you are planning to attend the presentation.     Copyright KU Leuven