Narayan Sankaran

Dr. Narayan Sankaran is a cognitive neuroscientist who heads the Auditory Neuroscience and Perception Lab at USF. His research seeks a mechanistic account of how the human brain enables music perception - a hallmark of human culture. Such insight informs our understanding of brain function and has the potential to unlock music-based interventions for treating mood, anxiety, and neurological disorders. To do this work, he takes an multidisciplinary approach, combining human neurophysiological measurements with machine-learning, computational modeling, psychophysics and behavior.

In addition to his scientific research program, Dr. Sankaran examines the ethical and societal implications of emerging neurotechnologies like brain computer interfaces. He has spoken about this work at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin.

Dr. Sankaran joined the Neuroscience Department following postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of Neurological Surgery at UCSF and the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public at UC Berkeley.

• Auditory neuroscience
• Computational modeling
• Music
• Human electrophysiology

• Music and speech encoding
• Auditory cortex
• Brain-computer interfaces
• Neuroethics

• University of Sydney, PhD in Neuroscience, 2018
• University of California, Berkeley, BA in Physics (Music minor)

• Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience, Department of Neurosurgery, University of California San Francisco, 2018 - 2022
• Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public, University of California Berkeley, 2022 - 2023
• Lecturer in Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 2023

• Civic Science Fellowship, Rita Allen Foundation, 2023, 2024
• Berkelhammer Postdoctoral Award, University of California San Francisco, 2020
• University of Sydney Postgraduate Research Award, 2014

• Narayan Sankaran, Matthew Leonard, Frederic Theunissen, & Edward Chang (2024). Encoding of melody in the human auditory cortex. Science Advances. 10, eadk0010. 

• Narayan Sankaran, David Moses, Winston Chiong, and Edward Chang (2023). Recommendations for promoting user agency in the design of speech neuroprostheses. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 17: 1298129

• Narayan Sankaran, Thomas Carlson, & William Forde Thompson (2020). The rapid emergence of musical pitch structure in human cortex. Journal of Neuroscience.

• Narayan Sankaran, William Forde Thompson, Simon Carlile, & Thomas Carlson (2018). Decoding the dynamic representation of musical pitch from human brain activity. Scientific Reports. 

• Narayan Sankaran, Jayaganesh Swaminathan, Christophe Micheyl, Sridhar Kalluri, & Simon Carlile (2018). Tracking the dynamic representation of consonants from auditory periphery to cortex. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.