Guenther Lab
Principal Investigator: Frank H Guenther
Institution: Boston University (Boston, MA)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY The overall aim of this project is to leverage the capabilities of modern deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices to investigate the roles of 2 key subcortical circuits, the basal ganglia (BG) circuit and the cerebellar (CB) circuit, in speech production. No studies to date have investigated DBS effects on learning and execution of speech sequences, functions central to fluent speech and well-known to involve BG and CB circuits. We aim to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the roles of the BG and CB circuits in speech motor sequence learning and execution in DBS implant recipients whose devices can be turned on and off in an experimental context. According to the GODIVA neurocomputational model of speech sequencing, the BG and CB play different roles in sequence learning: the BG contribute to learning the order of items in a sequence, whereas the CB contribute to optimizing the muscle activation patterns (motor programs) for producing the sequence. These hypotheses will be tested for 2 types of speech sequences: phoneme sequences within a syllable (Aim 1) and syllable sequences in multisyllabic pseudowords (Aim 2). Each study will involve 20 participants with DBS…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R01DC022949-02: Investigating Subcortical Contributions to Speech Sequencing in Deep Brain Stimulator Recipients (2026)
- 5R01DC022014-02: Quantitatively Characterizing the Speech Motor Skillsets of Individual Speakers (2026)
- 2R01DC007683-21: Sequencing and Initiation in Speech Production (2026)
- 5R01DC007683-20: Sequencing and Initiation in Speech Production (2025)
- 1R01DC022949-01: Investigating Subcortical Contributions to Speech Sequencing in Deep Brain Stimulator Recipients (2025)
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