Josh H. McDermott
 Center for Neural Science
New York University
4 Washington Place, Rm 809
New York NY 10003-6603
212-992-8752 (phone)
212-995-4619 (fax)
jhm - at - cns - dot - nyu - dot - edu

Education and Work Experience

New York University
2009. Research Associate, Center for Neural Science & Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Advised by Eero Simoncelli.

University of Minnesota
2007-2008. Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology. Advised by Andrew Oxenham.

Nature Neuroscience
2006. Assistant Editor.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2001-2006. PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Advised by Edward Adelson.

Nature Neuroscience
2001. Assistant Editor.

University College London
1998-2000. MPhil in Computational Neuroscience. Advised by Geoff Hinton.

Harvard University
1994-1998. B.A. in Brain and Cognitive Science, summa cum laude. Advised by Nancy Kanwisher.

H-B Woodlawn Alternative Program, Arlington,VA
1991-94.

Awards and Honors

2008 - University of Minnesota Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award
2005 - Walle Nauta Award for Continued Dedication to Teaching
2004 - Walle Nauta Award for Continued Dedication to Teaching
2003 - Walle Nauta Award for Continued Dedication to Teaching
2002 - Angus McDonald Award for Undergraduate Teaching
2000 - NDSEG Graduate Fellowship
1998 - Marshall Scholarship
1998 - McDonnell Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience
1998 - HHMI Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (declined)
1998 - NSF Graduate Fellowship (declined)
1998 - Graduated Summa Cum Laude, Harvard
1997 - Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard
1997 - Barry Goldwater Science Scholarship
1995 - McDonnell Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience
1995 - Detur Book Prize

Research Interests

Papers

McDermott, J.H. (2009) The cocktail party problem. Current Biology, in press.

McDermott, J.H., Oxenham, A.J., & Simoncelli, E. (2009) Sound texture synthesis via filter statistics. Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, Mohonk NY. download pdf

McDermott, J.H. (2009) What can experiments reveal about the origins of music? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 164-168. download pdf

Micheyl, C., McDermott, J.H. & Oxenham, A.J. (2009) Sensory noise explains auditory frequency discrimination learning induced by training with identical stimuli. Perception & Psychophysics, 71, 5-7. download pdf

McDermott, J.H. & Oxenham, A.J. (2008) Music perception, pitch, and the auditory system. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18, 452-463. download pdf

McDermott, J.H., Lehr, A.J., Oxenham, A.J. (2008) Is relative pitch specific to pitch? Psychological Science, 19 (12), 1263-1271. download pdf

McDermott, J.H., Oxenham, A.J. (2008). Spectral completion of partially masked sounds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (15), 5939-5944. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0711291105. download pdf

McDermott, J., Hauser, M.D. (2007). Nonhuman primates prefer slow tempos but dislike music overall. Cognition, 104, 654-668. download pdf

McDermott, J., Hauser, M.D. (2005). The origins of music: Innateness, uniqueness, and evolution. Music Perception, 23, 29-59. download pdf

McDermott, J. (2004). Psychophysics with junctions in real images. Perception, 33: 1101-1127. download pdf

McDermott, J., Adelson, E.H. (2004). Motion perception and mid-level vision. In The Cognitive Neurosciences, 3rd edition (ed. by Gazzaniga). MIT Press. download pdf

McDermott, J., Adelson, E. H. (2004). The geometry of the occluding contour and its effect on motion interpretation. Journal of Vision, 4(10), 944-954, http://journalofvision.org/4/10/9/, doi:10.1167/4.10.9. download pdf

McDermott, J., Adelson, E. H. (2004). Junctions and cost functions in motion interpretation. Journal of Vision, 4(7), 552-563, http://journalofvision.org/4/7/3/ , doi:10.1167/4.7.3. download pdf

McDermott, J., Hauser, M.D. (2004). Are consonant intervals music to their ears? Spontaneous acoustic preferences in a nonhuman primate. Cognition, 94, B11-B21. download pdf 

Hauser, M.D., McDermott, J. (2003). The evolution of the music faculty: a comparative perspective. Nature Neuroscience, 6: 663-668. download pdf

Mazer, J. A., Vinje, W. E., McDermott, J., Schiller, P. H., Gallant, J. L. (2002). Spatial frequency and orientation tuning dynamics in area V1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99 1645-1650. download pdf

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. (2001). Beyond junctions: Nonlocal form contraints on motion interpretation. Perception, 30: 905-923. download pdf

Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., Chun, M. (1997). The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for the Perception of Faces. Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 4302-4311. download pdf

Kanwisher, N., Chun, M., McDermott, J., Ledden, P. (1996). Functional Imaging of Human Visual Recognition. Cognitive Brain Research. 5: 55-67.

Commentaries and Book Reviews

McDermott, J.H. (2009). Why are we annoyed by the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard? Scientific American Mind, September 2009. 

McDermott, J.H. (2008). The evolution of music. Nature, 453, 287-288. download pdf

McDermott, J.H. (2008). Review of "Music, Language, and the Brain" by A.D. Patel, Oxford University Press. Nature Neuroscience, 11, 377. download pdf

McDermott, J.H. (2008). Meeting Report - Fourth Meeting of Neurosciences and Music, Montreal, 2008. Empirical Musicology Review, 3, 3, 173-174. 

McDermott, J., Hauser, M.D. (2006). Thoughts on an empirical approach to the evolutionary origins of music. Music Perception, 24, 111-116. download pdf

McDermott, J. (2002) Review of "Probabilistic models of the brain" (Eds. R. Rao, B Olshausen, and M. Lewicki), MIT Press. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 829.

Ad Hoc Reviewing

Cognition, Cognitive Science, Current Biology, JASA, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Vision, Music Perception, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, NIPS, PNAS, Trends in Cognitive Science

Conference Abstracts

McDermott, J.H., Lehr, A.J., Oxenham, A.J. Exploring consonance using individual differences. Acoustical Society of America, Spring Meeting. (2009).

McDermott, J.H., Keebler, M.V., Micheyl, C., Oxenham, A.J. Is pitch interval perception special? Acoustical Society of America, Spring Meeting. (2009).

McDermott, J.H., Oxenham, A.J. Learning sources from mixtures. Association for Research in Otolaryngology, Annual Meeting, (2009).

McDermott, J.H., Lehr, A.J., Oxenham, A.J. Is relative pitch specific to pitch? The Neurosciences and Music - III. (2008)

McDermott, J.H., Simoncelli, E., Oxenham, A. Sound texture perception via synthesis. Association for Research in Otolaryngology, Annual Meeting, (2008).

McDermott, J., Oxenham, A. Spectral completion of partially masked sounds. Auditory Perception, Cognition, and Action Meeting (2007).

McDermott, J., Oxenham, A. Mechanisms of melody recognition. Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting (2007).

McDermott, J. Probing the evolutionary origins of music perception . International Workshop on the Biology and Genetics of Music (2007).

McDermott, J. Probing the evolutionary origins of music perception. 2005 Neurosciences and Music Meeting (2005).

McDermott, J., Adelson, E.H. Genericity and junctions in motion interpretation. 2003 Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting (2003).

McDermott, J. Psychophysics of junctions in real images. 2002 Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, p. 50 (2002).

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. Genericity, not junctions: Insights from occluded crosses. 2001 European Conference on Visual Perception, Perception (supp), 30, p. 98. (2001).

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. The computation of occlusion for motion perception. Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology, 2000, Inv. Opth. and Vis. Sci. (supp), 41, p. S544. (2000) .

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. The computation of occlusion for motion perception. 1999 European Conference on Visual Perception, Perception (supp), 28, p. 80. (1999).

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. Amodal completion and depth segregation in motion integration. Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology Annual Meeting, 1999, Inv. Opth. and Vis. Sci. (supp), 40, p. S390. (1999).

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. What makes a good T-junction?. 1998 European Conference on Visual Perception, Perception (supp), 27, p. 40. (1998).

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. Two modes of interaction in the analysis of motion and occlusion. Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology Annual Meeting, 1998, Inv. Opth. and Vis. Sci. (supp), 39, p. S462. (1998).

McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., Adelson, E.H. Surface perception and motion integration. Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology Annual Meeting, 1997, Inv. Opth. and Vis. Sci. (supp), 38, p. S237. (1997).

McDermott, J. (1996, April). Sleep induced changes in auditory processing: An fMRI study. 3rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA.

McDermott, J. (1996, April) Speech processing in non-REM sleep. Tucson II: Towards a Science of Consciousness, Tucson, AZ.

Teaching

9.35, Sensation and Perception, Spring 2006
Co-taught course with E. Adelson. Lectured on early and mid-level vision, attention, audition.
9.35, Sensation and Perception, Spring 2005
Co-taught course with E. Adelson and R. Rosenholtz. Lectured on early and mid-level vision, attention, audition.
9.35, Sensation and Perception, Spring 2004
Co-taught course with E. Adelson. Lectured on early and mid-level vision, attention, audition, touch.
9.35, Sensation and Perception, Spring 2003
Co-taught course with E. Adelson and B. Anderson. Lectured on early and mid-level vision, attention, audition.
9.35, Sensation and Perception, Spring 2002
TA'd and gave lectures on audition.

Talks

2009
Music Technology Group, NYU
Hearing Research Group, Johns Hopkins University
Hearing Research Center, Boston University
Psychology Department, NYU
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT
Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University
Philoctes Center, New York (invited panelist)
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany
Max Planck Institute for Human and Cognitive Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

2008
Music Department, University of Minnesota
Cafe Scientifique, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Gordon Conference on Sensory Coding and the Natural Environment, Lucca, Italy
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester
Association for Research in Otolaryngology, Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London

2007
McMaster Insitute for Music and Mind Annual Workshop, Hamilton, Ontario
Auditory Perception, Cognition, and Action Meeting, Long Beach
International Workshop on the Biology and Genetics of Music, Bologna, Italy
2006
University of Minnesota Psychology Department
UC Berkeley Psychology Department
Knight Journalism Fellows, MIT
Stanford Psychology Department
Music and Mind Symposium, Harvard
Sconfinata Mente, Rome, Italy
2005
MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cog Lunch
Neurosciences and Music Conference, Leipzig, Germany
2003
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London
Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, Lake Tahoe
2002
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, Sarasota
MGH NMR Center, Brain Mapping Seminar
2001
Stanford Psychology Department
Harvard Vision Sciences Seminar
MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cog Lunch
European Conference on Visual Perception, Kusadasi, Turkey
2000
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London
Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology Annual Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale
1999
NYU Center for Neural Science
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London
Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology Annual Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale
1998
European Conference on Visual Perception, Oxford, UK
Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology Annual Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale
Harvard Psychology Department Cognition, Brain, and Behavior Proseminar
1997
Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology Annual Meeting, Ft. Lauderdale
Harvard Psychology Department Cognition, Brain, and Behavior Proseminar

 

Back to Home Page

Information here was last updated September 2009.