Dr. Tavabi is a research scientist working with Dr. Patricia Kuhl on studies of speech and language neuroscience in infants. He earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at the Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignal Analysis in Muesnter Germany with Dr. Christo Pantev. Dr. Tavabi's research interests focus on the neurobiological basis of speech and auditory language. His research employs magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure brain activity involved in phonological and/or semantic processing. Before coming to the Institute, Dr. Tavabi was a post-doctoral fellow at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia where he used MEG to study abnormal brain function during spoken word recognition in children with Autism. In his current work, he is looking at cortical networks underlying spoken word recognition in typically developing infants in order to develop diagnostic measures of the various language impairments encountered by children suffering from autism. Dr. Tavabi's tenure at I-LABS is funded by a generous donation awarded through the Bezo's Family Foundation.
Tavabi K., Embick D., Roberts T.P.L. Word repetition priming-induced oscillations in auditory cortex: a magnetoencephalography study. NeuroReport 2011
Tavabi K., Embick D., Roberts T.P.L. Spectral-temporal analysis of cortical oscillations during lexical processing. NeuroReport 2011; 22(10): 474-8.
Roberts T.P.L., Cannon K.M., Tavabi K., Blaskey L., Khan S.Y., Monroe J.F., Qasmieh S., Levy S.E., Edgar J.C. Auditory Magnetic Mismatch Field Latency: A Biomarker for Language Impairment in Autism. Biological Psychiatry 2011; 70(3): 263-9.
Tavabi K, Elling L, Dobel C, Pantev C, Zwitserlood P. Effects of place of articulation changes on auditory neural activity: a magnetoencephalography study. PloS one 2009; 4: e4452
Tavabi K, Obleser J, Dobel C, Pantev C. Auditory evoked fields differentially encode speech features: an MEG investigation of the P50m and N100m time courses during syllable processing. The European journal of neuroscience 2007; 25: 3155-3162
Villablanca JR, Schmanke TD, Crutcher HA, Sung AC, Tavabi K. The growth of the feline brain from fetal into adult life: II. A morphometric study of subcortical nuclei. Developmental Brain Research 2000; 122: 21-33.
