Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology
Esther J. Burnham Senior Fellow

apatel@nsi.edu
http://www.nsi.edu/users/patel

Dr. Patel’s work focuses on music and the brain. A primary area of interest is the relationship between music and language, and on how the comparative study of these uniquely human abilities can shed light on their underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. Another research area concerns rhythm and the processes by which humans extract rhythmic information from auditory signals. In addition, Dr. Patel conducts research on how the auditory cortex processes sound sequences, using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to explore brain dynamics during the perception of musical sequences.

Education:

• B.A., Biology, University of Virginia
• Ph.D., Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
• Postdoctoral Fellow, The Neurosciences Institute

Awards and Honors:

• 2008, ASCAP Deems Taylor award for Music, Language, and the Brain
• 1997, McDonnell-Pew Fellowship, Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience
• 1988-92, National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
• 1987-88, Henry Luce Foundation: Luce Scholar
• 1983-87, University of Virginia: Jefferson Scholar

Selected Publications:

Patel, A.D. (2008). Music, Language, and the Brain. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press). http://www.oup.com/us/patel

Patel, A.D, Wong, M., Foxton, J., Lochy, A., & Peretz, I. (2008). Speech intonation perception deficits in musical tone deafness (congenital amusia). Music Perception, 25: 357-368.

Iversen, J.R., Patel, A.D., & Ohgushi, K. (2008). Perception of rhythmic grouping depends on auditory experience. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124: 2263-2271.

Patel, A.D., Iversen, J.R., Wassenaar, M., & Hagoort, P. (2008).  Musical syntactic processing in agrammatic Broca’s aphasia. Aphasiology, 22: 776-789.

Patel, A.D., Iversen, J.R., & Rosenberg, J.C. (2006). Comparing the rhythm and melody of speech and music: The case of British English and French.  Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119:3034-3047.

Patel, A.D. & Balaban, E. (2004). Human auditory cortical dynamics during perception of long acoustic sequences: Phase tracking of carrier frequency by the auditory steady-state response. Cerebral Cortex, 14:35-46.

Patel A.D. (2003). Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience, 6:674-681.

In the News:

“Concerto for Mother Tongue”. 9 July, 2005 New Scientist, pp.32-34 (by Philip Ball).

Televised lecture on “Music and the Mind”, for the UCSD Grey Matters series: http://www.ucsd.tv/search-details.asp?showID=11189