Adeen Flinker, PhD

My undergraduate training was in Computer Science from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and I received a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley. I completed my post-doctoral research at New York University focusing on non-invasive and invasive measures of speech sounds and I joined the New York University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Neurology in 2017 where I hold appointments with NYU Neuroscience Institute, NYU Biomedical Engineering and NYU Cognition and Perception.

The lab's research focuses on the electrophysiology of language perception and production. I leverage behavioral, non-invasive and invasive electrophysiology in humans to tackle basic questions in how humans fluently perceive and produce of speech and language. While most human research methodologies are limited to non-invasive techniques such as EEG (Electroencephalography) and fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) the Flinker lab focuses on collaborative research with rare neurosurgical patients undergoing treatment for refractory epilepsy. These patients are implanted with intracranial electrodes placed directly on or in the surface of the brain for a one-week period in order to monitor and localize epileptic activity. While the electrode placement is driven solely by clinical necessity, during lulls in clinical care there is a unique opportunity to conduct cognitive tasks with patients in the hospital while Electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals are being collected directly from cortex. These neural signals provide an aggregate measure of neural excitability with combined temporal and spatial resolution. The focus of the research in the lab is to employ various experimental, machine learning and signal processing approaches to elucidate language networks based on neural signals recorded directly from human cortex. Our goal is to further our understanding of how the human cortex supports language perception and production while providing better tools for clinicians to map function prior to surgery. 

Current projects include: Brain computer interfaces to synthesis speech from neural signals, localization and prediction of eloquent language cortex, brain functional lateralization, speech processing across auditory and frontal cortices, brain network dynamics underlying language and hallucinations.