# Auditory cortical processing of self-generated sounds

> **NIH NIH R01** · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $329,405

## Abstract

Project Summary
Even if you’re not a musical genius, each and every one of us is still a highly acoustic person. Speech and
music are the most obvious sounds we make. But almost every other movement we make produces sounds,
too (typing, walking, chewing, shutting a car door). In fact, navigating the world requires us to be able to
detect, recognize, and predict the sounds of our own actions. The fact that we don’t notice most of the
sounds we make speaks wonders to how well our brains can predict them in the first place. Malfunctioning of
the same brain circuitry that normally anticipates the sounds of our actions has been implicated and disorders
including tinnitus and schizophrenia. Understanding how the brain learns to anticipate the sounds of our
actions is therefore key to understanding brain function during both health and disease. This proposal
describes experiments aimed at understanding how auditory and motor systems interact during sound
generating behaviors to anticipate the sounds our movements make. The experiments outlined in this
proposal incorporate a host of innovative techniques. These include closed-loop augmented reality, large
scale physiological recordings during behavior, calcium imaging, and optogenetics. The results of these
experiments will help us understand how circuits of neurons within the brain learn to anticipate the sounds
our movements make.
The significance of the proposed research to the NIH mission is four-fold. First, this research can inform how
the nervous system mediates normal hearing during sound-generating movements, which is essential to
speech comprehension and learning, among other skilled, auditory-guided behaviors (e.g. musicianship).
Second, dysfunction of this motor to auditory interaction at the cortical level is thought to drive auditory
hallucinations in diseases including tinnitus and schizophrenia; characterizing motor-auditory interactions is a
necessary step to understand the genesis of these pathologies and to ultimately design appropriate
therapies. Third, an understanding of how motor-auditory circuits change with experience may provide
insights into how these circuits can be manipulated either through perceptual training or direct manipulation of
neural activity to facilitate auditory comprehension in the face of hearing loss.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10034033
- **Project number:** 1R01DC018802-01
- **Recipient organization:** NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** David Michael Schneider
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $329,405
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-07-02 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10034033

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10034033, Auditory cortical processing of self-generated sounds (1R01DC018802-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10034033. Licensed CC0.

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