The Hamilton Lab is part of the NeuroComm Labs at UT Austin's Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences in the Moody College of Communication. We are also jointly affiliated with the Department of Neurology at UT Austin's Dell Medical School. Our research aims to determine how natural sounds including speech are represented by the human brain during speech perception and production, and how these representations change during development. We study how the human brain processes speech sounds using intracranial electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings from patients with intractable epilepsy who are undergoing surgery to treat their epilepsy. We also study how the brain can track speech in clean and noisy environments during perception and production using noninvasive EEG and behavioral studies in healthy participants. We use a combination of electrophysiology, behavior, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to address these questions.
We would not be able to do this work without the generous help of clinicians and our patient volunteers, who participate in listening tasks during their hospital stay. You can read more about our research on the Research page.
Funding Sources:
We are grateful for funding from the following organizations:
- The Texas Speech Language Hearing Foundation
- The National Institutes of Health - National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
- Coleman Fung Foundation

Speaker-Induced Supression in EEG during a Naturalistic Reading and Listening Task
"Speaker-induced Suppression in EEG during a Naturalistic Reading and Listening Task" by Kurteff et al. is now out in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. J Cogn Neurosci 2023; doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02037
Read Below for Lab News and Updates
Garret Kurteff is a William Orr Dingwall Dissertation Fellow
Garret Lynn Kurteff has received the William Orr Dingwall Dissertation Fellowship in the Cognitive, Clinical, and Neural Foundations of Language, which is a competitive $40,000 fellowship for doctoral candidates studying the neuroscience of language.

Check out this paper!
Maansi Desai, Alyssa Field, and Dr. Liberty Hamilton recently published a paper on data size considerations for EEG data on natural stimuli.

Maansi Desai's PhD Defense
Maansi Desai held her defense on 21 June 2023. She now continues her pursuits in the lab as a postdoctoral fellow.

Alyssa Field is awarded the 2023 Moody College Impact Staff Award
Congratulations to Alyssa Field, our Research Associate, for receiving the Moody College Impact Staff Award. The Moody Impact Staff Award recognizes two staff members who go above and beyond their regular duties to make a significant impact at Moody.
May 2023: Malinda Mullet is a Recipient of the Sertoma Scholarship
Malinda Mullet is selected to receive the Sertoma Scholarship for excellence in audiology and record of service to the community.

Erica recieves a TSHA award January 2023
Erica McVey receives a Texas Speech-Language Hearing Association award for an EEG project on speech in noise processing in ASL interpreters

Jacob Cheek goes to American Academy of Audiology
April 2023 - AuD student Jacob Cheek presents his work on hearing loss and virtual learning fatigue at the American Academy of Audiology meeting in Seattle, WA.

Garret receives TSHA award January 2023
Garret Kurteff receives a Texas Speech-Language Hearing Association award for an EEG project on the role of audio motor feedback in apraxia of speech

APAN & SFN 2022
Maansi will be presenting at APAN/SfN
Dr. Liberty Hamilton is awarded the Ellen A. Wartella Distinguished Research Award
Dr. Liberty Hamilton is awarded the Ellen A. Wartella Distinguished Research Award by the Moody College of Communication for her article “Parallel and distributed encoding of speech across human auditory cortex”
October 2022: Dr. Liberty Hamilton is a Kavli Fellow
Dr.Liberty Hamilton is selected as a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Hamilton participated in the Israeli-American Frontiers of Science Symposium held in Irvine, CA October 19-21.

Walk to End Epilepsy 2022
Some of our lab members attended Walk to End Epilepsy ATX this October 2022
NIH R01 Supplement
Elise has received funding from NIH R01 supplement
OVPR special research grant recipient
Jacob Cheek receives an OVPR special research grant to study virtual learning fatigue in students with hearing loss

Cold Spring Harbor Neurobiology of Language Attendance
Garret attended and presented at Cold Spring Harbor Neurobiology of Language conference this summer 2022.
Lab Goes to ARO 2022!
Garret Kurteff is presenting a poster on Stereo EEG Mapping of Sensorimotor Responses to Self-Generated Speech. Dr. Hamilton and Maansi Desai will be giving talks during Symposium 34: Insights From Naturalistic Stimuli for Models of Human Speech Perception
Check out this feature!
Dr. Hamilton is a part of this new article published in Quanta Magazine about work on speech processing both in the Hamilton Lab as well as the Chang Lab at UCSF.
Check out Dr. Liberty Hamilton's feature in this Dell Med Report
Check out this report on how the Hamilton lab is part of an interdisciplinary approach to a study aimed at shielding critical brain functions from surgery.
August 2021: The Lab welcomes 2 new members!
The Hamilton Lab welcomes Malinda Mullet and Elise Rickert. Malinda is interested in speech and language development outcomes and is pursuing her Au.D. Elise is a first-year Au.D student who is interested in the neuroplasticity of the auditory cortex and speech perception.
April 12-15, 2021 - TSHA

April 2021 - Front Cover of Epilepsia!
March 22, 2021 - Welcome Donise Tran!
March 2021 - Maansi Desai receives research grant from TSHA
February 8, 2021 - Welcome Alyssa Field!
January 2021 - Jacob Cheek joins our research group as an AuD student
January 25, 2021 - Welcome, Sahar Hashemgeloogerdi!
December 2020 - Congratulations to Garret Kurteff for completing his Master's thesis!
December 2020 - The lab is awarded R01 funding!

October 2020 - Liberty presents at the Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias
October 2020 - The lab receives NIH funding for our research on speech and language in the brain
October 2020 - The lab presents at APAN 2020
October 2020 - The lab presents research at the Society for Neurobiology of Language
September 2020 - The lab welcomes Brittany and Tasha!
May 2020 - Congratulations to Maansi Desai on completing her Master's Thesis!

March 2020 - "Minds at Work"

February 2020 - Brain Stimulation to Understand Music and Language

Feb 2020 - Speech in natural noisy situations coming to OHBM!
January 2020 - Welcome Jacob and Nick!

October 2019 - The Lab presents at APAN and SfN
August 2019 - Congratulations to Mary Lowery!
June 25, 2019 - New paper out in Scientific Data
June 2019 - Welcome Amanda, Nicole, Paranjaya, and Natalie!
May 2019 - Congratulations to Mary, Natalie, and Cassie!
March 2019 - The Lab wins awards from the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation
July 2018 - New review on natural stimuli!
February 2019 - Welcome, Stephanie!
January 2019 - Welcome, Ian and Rachel!

December 2018 - Making intracranial EEG data sharing easier!
September 2018 - Welcome, Maansi and Garret!
Welcome Cassandra, Jade, Natalie, and Noora!

May 2018 - New paper in Current Biology!

April 2018 - UT Care Research Day

February 2018 - ARO Conference

October 31, 2017

October 10, 2017

September 14, 2017

August 24, 2017
