Director

Dr. Benjamin Zendel

Dr. Zendel holds a Canada Research Chair in Aging and Auditory Neuroscience and is an Assistant Professor in Community Health in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland.  Most recently, Dr. Zendel completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Université de Montréal, where he conducted research at both the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM) and at The International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS).  He earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in Psychology from the University of Toronto, while working at the Rotman Research Instituite, and earned his B.A. (hons) in Psychology from the University of Calgary.

Post-doctoral Fellow

Dr. David Fleming

Dr. Fleming completed his Ph. D. at the University of Glasgow (Scotland, U.K.) where his research focused on the behavioural and neural basis of the “Language-Familiarity” effect in voice recognition (where voices speaking in a listener’s native language are better remembered than voices speaking in an unknown foreign language). Prior to joining the CAANLab, he was a visiting fellow at the Montreal Neurological Institute, focusing on speech perception in bilinguals. He has a particular interest in how speech perception and language abilities influence talker identification. In addition, he has general interests in voice and speech perception, and how bilingualism interacts with these abilities. In previous research, he has used a combination of behavioural methods, and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).    

Ph.D. Students

Özgen Demirkaplan

Özgen Demirkaplan is a doctoral student in Neuroscience at Memorial University. She completed her BA in Philosophy at Bilkent University and MSc in Cognitive Science at the Middle East Technical University. For her Masters she studied voice familiarity effect on auditory distance perception. Her research interests include cognitive aspects of auditory and speech perception.

Jennifer Beynon-Martinec

Jennifer Beynon-Martinec is  a doctoral candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies in Music, Medicine and Education at Memorial University. She has been a clinician, adjudicator, choral conductor and vocal pedagogue for over fifteen years in both Canada and Europe. Recently, she was awarded the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, from the  Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for her PhD work. 

Laura Howell

Laura Howell is a doctoral student in Linguistics at Memorial University, working with the CAANLab on a comprehensive paper for her doctoral program. Her research interests include: Sociolinguistics; Language Variation and Change; Dialect Contact; Newfoundland English.

Undergraduate Students

Emily Alexander

Emily is a fourth year Bachelor of Science (Honours) student majoring in Psychology at Memorial University. She is currently conducting an auditory EEG study as part of her honours thesis in the CAANLab. Her research examines the impact of formal and non-formal music training on auditory processing.

Bethany Power

Bethany completed an honours degree in psychology and is currently a medical student at Memorial University. She completed her honours thesis in the CAANLab and  was awarded an undergraduate summer research scholarship, for her project examining the impact of dialect on speech-in-noise perception.

Emily Bolt

Emily completed an honours degree in psychology, and is currently a medical student at Memorial University.  Her undergraduate project examined the interaction between age of death and mode of death on the perceived social value of the deceased. She is currently working on a project investigating the impact of aging on neural entrainment to musical rhythm, and was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Award for this project.

Former Students

Olivier Dussault (2014-16; NSERC summer research student, Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal)

Marianne Bissonnette (2015; Research assistant, Université de Montréal)

Giulia Castelletti (2014-15; Graduate exchange student, University of Trento)

Merwin Olthof (2014-15; Graduate exchange student, University of Amsterdam)

Camille Rivard (2013-14; Research assistant, Université de Montréal)