KYLE JASMIN
Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow
Department of Psychological Sciences
Birkbeck College
University of London
ABOUT ME
I'm a research fellow in the AlphaLab at Birkbeck. My research focuses on the neural basis of communication.
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In particular:
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+ perceptual weighting strategies
+ functional connectivity and compensatory processes
+ representation of words and concepts
+ clinical conditions affecting communication and social interaction
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UPDATES
THANKS, APS!
2 March, 2021
The Association for Psychological Science has selected me as a 2021 Rising Star. I am very honored by this, and grateful to the APS and to colleagues at Birkbeck who organized and supported my nomination.
SOCIETY FOR THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE ANNUAL MEETING
21 October 2020
A poster summarizing recent published work on perceptual weighting strategies for speech and music was presented at the SNL2020 meeting.
PITCH IMPERFECT
26 August 2020
Editors at eLife featured our recent paper:
"Brain imaging reveals how people who struggle to perceive pitch are nevertheless able to understand speech."
PUBLICATIONS
2021
Pre-Print
Participants categorized instances of a two-word phrase pronounced with typical covariation of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration, and in the context of an artificial ‘accent’ in which F0 and duration covaried atypically. We find that prosodic categories (much like segmental speech categories!) are cued by multiple acoustic dimensions whose perceptual weights dynamically adapt to local regularities in speech input.
*Jasmin, K., *Tierney, A., Holt, L.
2021
Cognition
Here we show that native speakers of Mandarin—a language where pitch is very important—rely heavily on pitch to process other kinds of sounds: They weight pitch highly when processing (second language) English speech, when processing music, and they even struggle to ignore pitch when it's task irrelevant. The results demonstrate a new way that characteristics of one's native language influence perception.
*Jasmin, K., *Sun, H., Tierney, A.
2020
eLife
Individuals with congenital amusia, who have unreliable pitch processing, show decreased functional connectivity between right auditory and left language-related cortex during speech perception, demonstrating a neural basis for compensatory dimensional weighting.
Jasmin, K., Dick, F., Stewart, L., Tierney, A.
Read the eLife Digest feature.
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2020
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Perception of speech and music involves integration of pitch, duration and amplitude cues. Individuals tend to prioritize these dimensions using individualized strategies. Here we show that these strategies arise from perceptual abilities.
Jasmin, K., Dick, F., Holt, L., Tierney, A.T.
2019
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
VIEW THE ISSUE COVER INSPIRED BY OUR ARTICLE
In this opinion article we discuss how temporal response properties of neurons in auditory cortex may give rise to the distinct neuroanatomical pathways for processing 'what' a sound is and 'where' and 'how' it was produced.
Jasmin, K., Lima, C.F, Scott, S.K.
2019
Brain
We use a novel fMRI paradigm to examine neural activity during naturalistic, real-time face-to-face conversations and resting state in autism. We also discuss the study in our recent review.
Jasmin, K., Gotts, S., Xu, Y., Liu, S., Riddell, C., Ingeholm, J., Kenworthy, L., Wallace, G., Braun, A.R., Martin, A.
2016
The Journal of Neuroscience
We show that speaking together (as in group chants) recruits right hemisphere regions outside the classic speech network and blurs the boundary between the self and the other.
Jasmin, K. M., McGettigan, C., Agnew, Z. K., Lavan, N., Josephs, O., Cummins, F., Scott, S. K. The Journal of Neuroscience
2020
Wellcome Open Research
The Multidimensional Battery of Prosody Perception. A new battery for assessing prosody perception across multiple acoustic dimensions and adjustable difficulty levels.
Jasmin, K., Dick, F., Tierney, AT., Wellcome Open Research
2019
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
We review the autism resting state fMRI literature, highlight the potential role of the thalamus and striatum in autism, and emphasize the need for studies that directly compare scanning during multiple cognitive states in addition to the resting-state.
Gotts, S.J., Ramot, M., Jasmin, K., Martin, A. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry​
2018
Book Chapter
We outline the exciting ways virtual reality can be used to study language, as well as the pitfalls.
Casasanto D. & Jasmin K., chapter in Research Methods in Psycholinguistics and the Neurobiology of Language
2017
Neuropsychologia
We used fMRI to show that whether or not someone is looking at your when they're talking (their gaze direction) affects brain activity in left hemisphere areas that process speech.
McGettigan, C., Jasmin, K., Eisner, F., Agnew, Z., Josephs, O., Calder, A., Jessop, R., Lawson, R., Spielmann, M., Scott, S.K. Neuropsychologia​
2017
Cortex
By measuring frequency following responses with EEG, we show that difficulty learning a second language in adulthood may be partly due to auditory perception problems.
Omote, A., Jasmin, K., Tierney, A. Cortex
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2017
Neuropsychologia
We find, using 7T fMRI, that reading sentences with social-emotional words activates regions across the 'social brain' network. Reading sentences with inanimate object words activates object/scene recognition regions. We suggest it is important to take semantic content into account when studying reading.
​Mellem, M., Jasmin, K., Peng, C., Martin, A. Neuropsychologia​
2012
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
We show that, through associations between left-right space and emotion, the hands we use to type words on a keyboard may slowly shape the emotional associations of those words.
Jasmin K. and Casasanto, D. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
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For discussion on the controversies of this effect, click here.
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2012
Cognitive Linguistics
English uses front-back spatial metaphors to talk about time. Do English speakers think about this time way? Here we use evidence from hand gestures to show that English speakers use the front-back axis to gesture about time deliberately, but prefer a left-right axis when gesturing spontaneously.
​Casasnto, D., and Jasmin, K. Cognitive Linguistics​
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2010
PLoS ONE
Speakers associate positive messages more strongly with dominant hand gestures and negative messages with non-dominant hand gestures, revealing a hidden link between action and emotion.
​Casasanto, D. and Jasmin, K. PLoS ONE