The Jones Lab · Cognitive Neuroscience · Waterloo, Ontario
We study how the brain adapts communication and cognition in a changing world.
From a voice correcting itself mid-word to a mind under strain: how the brain controls, perceives, and adapts how we communicate and think — in health, in disease, and as new technology reshapes both.
What we ask.
01 – 04How does the brain keep the voice under control?
Speaking and singing demand nonstop control — the brain monitoring its own voice and correcting slips before we ever notice them. We study it by altering the sound of a talker's own voice as they speak: the brain compensates within about 130 milliseconds, exposing the control system that is always at work. We have studied that control in clinical populations for many years, including Parkinson's disease.
What happens to a voice when the listener is a machine?
Children are growing up talking to voice assistants that don't listen the way people do. We study how children adapt their speech for these machines — and whether those speech habits follow them back into how they talk with people. It is the same feedback question, asked of a generation forming its conversational habits.
Why do we sometimes misread each other?
We read each other constantly — a feeling in a tone of voice, an intention in a glance. We study how the brain draws emotion and meaning from voices and faces: how that reading holds up in background noise or behind a mask, and how it differs between autistic and non-autistic perceivers.
How does cognition hold up when the brain is challenged?
Attention, memory, and perception shift with the demands we place on them. They waver under a hard task, a long day, a substance, or stress, and recover at different rates. We track that directly from brain signals: from cannabis's effects on the prefrontal cortex to estimating mental workload in real time, with implications for education and for safety-critical work.
How we measure the mind.
We listen to the brain and the voice with whatever instrument a question demands — often several at once. And because a result is only as good as the measurement behind it, we build and validate the methods themselves — from fNIRS analysis to the acoustics of the voice.
Take part in a study
Families with young children, the Waterloo community, people living with Parkinson's, and adults who use cannabis all help us see what the brain actually does. Studies usually take about an hour.
Volunteer →Train in the lab
Opportunities exist for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs to work on research that spans NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR.
Study with us →Work with us
We partner with clinical, community, education, and industry organizations — like Parkinson Society Southwestern Ontario — to put our methods to work on problems they actually face, with programs like Mitacs sharing the cost. Tell us what you're trying to solve.
Collaborate →