The Complexities of Auditory Crossmodal Plasticity with Dr. Butler

Jan 9

Who is Dr. Butler?

As a Western University alumni, Dr. Butler started off as a hopeful undergrad student pursuing the idea of becoming a physiologist. Specifically, his interest was in the physiology of the senses, a concept that captivated him due to a course taught by the late Dr. Tutis Vilis (also a very knowledgeable and respected researcher you should read up on!). He then spent his graduate years at the National Institute of Audiology at Western, in their newly established research stream of Hearing Science studies. Setting his sights on greater opportunities, Dr Butler then went to McMaster University to complete his PhD looking at infantile auditory behaviour. He investigated how infants come to understand the way we understand what is our environment, focusing on stream segregation and pitch perception which are both important concepts for grouping sound information. This path of research led to his postdoc studies and eventually the main concept of his research today, which consists mostly of exploring early onset hearing loss and understanding how our auditory system is set up.

What kind of research has Dr. Butler done?

Dr. Butler’s lab, called the Neuroplasticity In Sensory Systems Lab (NISSL) focuses on atypical sensory development. In the words of Dr. Butler, typical development is how our systems that give rise to our perception of the world develop properly to allow the brain to make accurate estimations of what is occurring in our environment. There are many ways in which these can be disrupted, and the NISSL is interested in studying the effects of these disruptions on behaviour and perception. Their main area of focus is on the structural and functional implications of early onset hearing loss, and how cochlear implantations may benefit those impacted by this impairment. However, recently they have begun branching into other areas such as how hearing impairments impact real life listening in various settings, including the classroom. Misophonia is also an emerging topic in this lab, with the study of how triggers can induce atypical emotional and physiological responses (how hearing a certain noise might make an individual see specific colours).

Dr Butler’s past work centred on the idea of crossmodal plasticity, which is the concept that areas of the brain that are considered to be part of one process can take on other roles in the absence of that process. For example, individuals who lose their hearing early on may have an area of the brain that typically focuses on auditory motion that translates into an area that is instead sensitive to visual motion. This plasticity suggests that areas like the auditory cortex gather information from all sensory systems, instead of just their respective systems. This patch of cortex then weighs all the sensory information and picks the most important one to use in further computations (in the case of the auditory cortex, auditory information is used). Thus, if the area receives no input from its preferred sense, the same computations can be used to process information arriving from other sensory systems. The concept of reweighting has received more attention in recent years, with various papers from the NISSL using certain tactics to decipher if this is a viable theory for crossmodal plasticity. Studies involving individuals with cochlear implants have looked at how they balance the use of visual and auditory speech cues. The McGurk effect has also been employed to understand how the brain weighs visual and auditory information in speech, as well as how manipulation of the information can allow for different variations of this effect. Reweighting has also been investigated by comparing how individuals with cochlear implants vs. typically developed individuals react to temporal offset, which is when the auditory tract is ahead or behind the visual tract (like a TV show with bad voice syncing).

Overcoming setbacks in research

While investigating the origins of crossmodal plasticity in early onset hearing loss, there was one major problem that seemed to present itself to Dr. Butler. It was commonly believed that there were physical differences in neuronal connections between the auditory and visual cortices in individuals with early onset hearing loss, which resulted in crossmodal plasticity. However, after spending 5 years on detailed anatomical studies to search for these differences, Dr. Butler found no conclusive evidence for this theory. Rather than being discouraged, this lack of evidence compelled him to explore a new research route to determine what else could be going on instead of a structural change. By using a setback to propel further research, Dr. Butler shows that all research outcomes are useful even if they don’t fit your predictions.

Study Tips and Tricks

As a former student who has gone through his academic career to become an educator, professor, and leader of a lab, there are certain tips that Dr. Butler has graciously provided us! For students that are just getting into things and are struggling to studying for university content, it’s important to treat education like a 9-5 job sometimes. Spending 7-8 hours a week on each course significantly reduces the workload near the end of the semester and prevents the dreadful cramming sessions preparing for finals. Furthermore, during these study periods, students often misunderstand how well they understand a concept. Reading through the textbook does not mean that you understand it. Dr. Butler also suggested writing multiple choice questions for yourself, with 1 right answer and 3 good “foil” answers. If you can understand what makes an answer right, and what makes foil answers wrong, it means that you have a good grasp on the concept. Another easy method is to “teach” the concepts to someone else, or even ask what if questions to one another in order to deepen the understanding of a certain topic.

Research Papers are sooo hard to read...

Another big struggle for undergrads is also reading research papers, but Dr Butler has given some insight on how to dissect these mind numbing papers. First off, the method to reading research papers depends on what you need out of them and where you are in your academic careers. For profs or graduate students who have extensive knowledge in the field, skipping straight to the results and double backing to the methods is often the best way to find out what was found and how it was found. These areas focus more on finding what is new methodologically or what was found in terms of the topic of interest. For undergrad students, the introduction and discussion are much more useful while the methods and results sections might be confusing or even not that helpful. The introduction gives a brief overview of what the author thinks is relevant in the literature (what motivated the paper) while the discussion explains the results in the context of the existing research (what did we learn and what is the big picture effect). These two sections allow students to understand the overarching ideas of the paper without getting bogged down in methods and results that you do not or might not need to understand in excruciating detail.

How to Look for Research

Engaging with profs and other members of the faculty can be an intimidating and seemingly difficult task to get started with. However, these people are doing the work that you’ll be reading about in textbooks in a couple years, and most importantly, they’re often more than happy to talk about their research with you. Seeking out research opportunities can happen by talking to profs or even by taking independent study courses (courses where you work at a lab and get research experience). On the other hand, if you’re looking to approach a prof out of the blue, cold emailing is often the best option. Be warned however, that you may need to email a couple times before getting a response, because emails will often get lost in the crowd and may be ignored unintentionally. These emails are still the best way to get your foot in the door, although if you have a class with the prof you would like to talk to, it’s always best to talk to them in person. When writing an email, it’s important to express what you want (learn about what the prof does, volunteer at their lab etc.) and why they should treat your email as different from anyone else. If you don’t get a response, send a follow up email after a couple days and make sure to keep yourself on the radar. If you are graced with an opportunity to work at the lab make sure that you have the time and space for it in your schedule. Planning a 5-10 hour commitment per week is common, and important if you want to create a meaningful connection for both parties.

Communicating Your Findings

This is a common problem that even Dr Butler acknowledges is difficult for researchers to do. An important aspect of communicating findings is to establish a similar line of thought to the general community before honing in on a research topic. This often entails identifying what kind of projects will benefit the community most, which leads to increased interest and more impactful research. Another important point is that communicating findings to a general audience is very different compared to writing scientific papers like we are used to. There is a lot of scientific jargon that may be boring and confusing for individuals who have no prior or foundational knowledge in what is being said. In order to reach the general population, we need to take the information to where people are already reading it. This means that certain sources like CBC morning radio, or outreach talks in local libraries are better in sharing information than scientific papers or conferences. Dr. Butler also has a blog on his website that shares some interesting lab findings or some perturbing issues that he sees in psychological academia. He uses this as an outlet to pass on advice to individuals and to prompt them to think more about certain issues he sees in the field of psychology.

Helpful Resources:

More on Dr. Tutis Vilis: https://www.schulich.uwo.ca/about/news/2023/february/in_memoriam_dr_titus_vilis.html