Headshot of Michael Barkasi.

Welcome!

I’m a staff scientist for Oviedo Lab, an electrophysiology lab in the department of neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis. There I model auditory-cortex responses in mice to squeaks. Before that I was a lecturer in the department of philosophy and the philosophy-neuroscience-psychology program at WUSTL and a postdoctoral visitor with Harris Lab at York University studying the integration of auditory, proprioceptive, and visual feedback in the control of movement. I’m also an associate member of the Centre for Philosophy of Memory, researching the role of memory in perception and the phenomenology of episodic memory. I previously worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Network for Sensory Research in the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto. I completed my Ph.D. in philosophy at Rice University (Houston, Texas).


Computational Neuroscience

My work focuses on three projects: (1) Estimating network recurrence in the auditory cortex via measurements of exponential decay constants in excitatory neuron spike autocorrelation, (2) Developing nonlinear mixed-effects models of gene transcript density across the cortex using spatial transcriptomics data, and (3) dynamic firing-rate models of auditory frequency sweep direction based on novel observed biology in the auditory cortex.


Previous Work

Movement Sonification

Before my transition to neuroscience I did behavioral psychology experiments on how auditory feedback can augment, replace, and enrich natural proprioception, improving motor learning and motor control in fast, skilled movements. This work involved developing ultra fast wearable embedded sensor systems for movement sonification. I worked with the Cortex M4 and ESP32, developed bare-metal digital sound synthesis techniques (two-timer pulse-width modulation, based off a class-D amplifier), used inertial sensors, designed bespoke PCB feathers (KiCad), and 3D printed enclosures (FreeCAD).

As part of this sonification work I wrote motion processing algorithms for both real-time processing in embedded hardware (C++) and for post-processing (R). This work involved motion detection and segmentation, coordinate transformations, input integration, path comparisons (error estimation), and time-warping (both post-processing dynamic time-warping and real-time online warping estimates).

Self-portrait of Ernst Mach demonstrating the first-person perspective.

Phenomenal Consciousness

In addition to my empirical stuff, I also do interdisciplinary research on how we subjectively experience the world. I’m particularly interested in how memory and sensory perception interact to afford consciousness of the past and present. Most of my work focuses on experiencing what’s not there (memories, dreams, hallucinations, VR), the feelings of presence and pastness, and the neural correlates of consciousness.

You might check out this piece and this piece I wrote on presence and digital fluency, or this paper, on how perception involves experience of the past. The paper was one of two runners-up for the essay prize at the Centre for Philosophy of Memory. I summarize the idea in a blog post.


Coding and Modelling Samples

Interested in chatting about human perception or movement sonification?