The Speech Motor Neuroscience Group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison inviting applications for an NIH-funded postdoctoral research position in the field of speech motor control and speech motor neuroscience. Details found under the “postdoctoral researchers” tab blab.wisc.edu/join-the-lab/

Attending many great talks at #ESSD2025 in Athens, and a great opportunity to present our work on using the compartmental tongue theory to reshape how we quantify tongue movement in swallowing.

Happy World Octopus Day. Here's a recent paper demonstrating octopuses have a sense of body ownership similar to mamals and rodents. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Temporal integration in human auditory cortex is predominantly yoked to absolute time www.nature.com/articles/s41... There's a difference between integrating across absolute time & structure (say) phonemes. Do cortical computations reflect time or structure? Results showed time-yoked computations ⏱️

Co-registered EMA and ultrasound. From top left: Ultrasound with tongue contour, Ultrasound keypoints, 3D head with EMA sensors, , Spectrogram, Glossogram showing vocal tract constrictions in red cavities in blue, waveform. Movie created by AAA app. Use settings to hear audio.

Yup.

🚨 Open PhD Position – Grenoble, France 🚨 Join us at GIPSA-lab to explore how Speech Language Models can learn like children: through physical and social interaction. Think AI, robots, development 🧠🤖🎙️ Fully funded (3 yrs) • @cnrs.fr / @ugrenoblealpes.bsky.social Details 👉 tinyurl.com/bde988b3

x.com/i/status/195... Video of Prof Takayuki Arai with his vocal tract models at #Interspeech2025 Love this analogue demonstration.

We're thrilled to introduce ATHENA: Automatically Tracking Hands Expertly with No Annotations – our open-source, Python-based toolbox for 3D markerless hand tracking! Paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10....

Really? github.com/HKUDS/DeepCode www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRgm... Paper2Code: Convert research papers into working implementations Text2Web: Generate frontend applications from descriptions Text2Backend: Create scalable backend systems automatically Auto Code Validation: Guaranteed working code

Royal Society of Edinburgh workshop this September run by drjoanma.bsky.social from Queen Margaret University. rse.org.uk/event/swallo...

The work coming out of the Person lab is a must-read for me. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... This new paper shows that cerebellar output neurons encode both predictive and corrective movements, mechanistically linking feedforward and feedback control.

Although I no longer subscribe to the Equilibrium Point Hypothesis as currently formulated, this proposal is intriguing. Almanzor et al. (2025). Self-organising bio-inspired reflex circuits for robust motor coordination in artificial musculoskeletal systems. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

"we discovered a naturally occurring PC population suppression during mouse reaching movements that scaled with the velocity of outreach and occurred shortly before the transition to the decelerative phase of movement." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A new article by @maria-cairney.bsky.social, @drjoannecleland.bsky.social and colleagues reporting promising results in a trial on using #ultrasound biofeedback #speechtherapy for children with #cleft palate ± lip. #SLT #openaccess tinyurl.com/3jnamh7e

Glossogram with dark red indicating constriction and blue diagonal (tongue compartment contracted) demonstrating peristaltic transfer of water bolus from oral-pharyngeal. This is easiest to explain as sequential extension of neuromuscular compartments of the tongue.

Not sure what these 50Hz pulses are doing but would be interested to know if 37Hz pulses had a different effect. journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Boston Speech Motor Control Symposium (BSMCS) June 12-13. Hybrid conference with in-person and virtual presentations. Abstract submission deadline very soon (28th March). sites.bu.edu/stepplab/upc...

Using two GoPro cameras, videos were recorded with 5.3K resolution (5312 x 2988) at 60 Hz resulting in estimated lip distance measures accurate to RMSE of 0.3mm. Caution though, that RMSE scores sometimes hide failures to track rarer information carrying movements. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Superior auricular muscle exhibits increased activity during effortful listening, suggesting that ear wiggling muscles are engaged not only reflexively but potentially as part of an attentional effort mechanism, especially in challenging auditory environments. www.frontiersin.org/news/2025/01...

How did I not know this? All avian tongues have a bony cartilaginous structure. A hyoid linkage consisting of articulated paraglossal, basihyal, urohyal, ceratobranchial and epibranchial. Johnston, N. E. (2014). The avian tongue. Golden Gate Audubon Society, San Francisco, CA, Access Oct, 15, 2016.

Ito et al (2025) A collicular map for touch-guided tongue control. Nature, 1-9. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... They observe that lick aiming by mice does not require activity in tongue sensory, premotor and motor cortices, but instead is dependent on a lateral region of the superior colliculus.

Inoue et al "A kinematically reasonable mechanism of tongue forward protrusion considering hyoid bone movements." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Rightly points out that the role of the hyoid in speech is underinvestigated but the model and method used here is flawed and many questions remain.

The authors interpret activity of individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of the basal ganglia as encoding syllable sequence order( as well as phoneme identity) during a speech production task. journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10....

Sleep apnoea device deployed clinically in UK. I presume it stimulates branches of hypoglossal nerve controlling posterior compartments of genioglossus muscle.https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/13/new-tongue-stimulating-implant-offers-hope-to-millions-with-sleep-apnoea-in-uk-first

How do families with kids with #cleft feel about a pilot #RCT comparing #ultrasound and standard care? TLDR- they love the interventions, they don't mind the extra assessments or the randomisation...but travelling to the hospital is a major burden. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Submissions now open for the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) conference 2025 -now open! logoth.upatras.gr/en/icpla2025/ #phonetics

Just published. Special issue: : Select Papers From the 8th International Conference on Speech Motor Control pubs.asha.org/toc/jslhr/67...

Turned my recent paper into a podcast. Very American in style but very convincing. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/x3tze...

Always worth virtually attending Boston Speech Motor Control Symposium (BSMCS), which next year will be held on June 12-13. sites.bu.edu/stepplab/upc...

Not sure how reliable this review is. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1... It tables ultrasound sample rate as 10MHz and cost per session as £500 (it's actually less than £1 for consumables such as gel and wipes if you don't factor in the researcher's time).

Tongues come in many shapes and sizes and yet we are still able to speak and swallow. A testament to the fine level of shape and positional control made possible by a correspondingly fine neuromuscular structure. www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2024/8/...

Tongues come in many shapes and sizes and yet we are still able to speak and swallow. A testament to the fine level of shape and positional control made possible by a correspondingly fine neuromuscular structure. www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2024/8/...

Just published, 'The compartmental Tongue' describes a more refined and functionally relevant lingual anatomy to teach to students. It is accompanied by 3D visual teaching aids. pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/20 sketchfab.com/ArticulateIn... github.com/articulatein...

A brief history of neuromusculoskeletal biomechanics.

A little re-post from a year ago to lead off in this place.