Our team

Team
 
Team
Attila Andics (PI)

The key question that drives my research is how human communicative capacities and the underlying brain specializations evolved. I have been working with auditory neuroimaging for over twenty years, examining the neural mechanisms for voice and speech processing in multiple species. I coordinated the efforts that led to the first ever comparative dog-human fMRI and EEG studies. In 2017 I was awarded the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Lendület grant to establish the Neuroethology of Communication Lab, in 2020 also supported by an ERC Starting Grant. I am a consortium member of a MSCA-funded doctoral network on Voice Communication Sciences (2024-). Over the years my lab had 50+ members, many of whom received their own research grants, including ERC CoG and MSCA PD grants.

Postdoctoral researchers

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Marianna Boros
Team
Boglárka Morvai
About me
My work in the research group focuses on the neural processing of diverse auditory stimuli in both domesticated and hand-reared wild animals. I primarily use electroencephalography (EEG) to explore my research questions. I have expertise in statistical analysis and often assist my colleagues with data interpretation. Beyond these, I am also interested in behavioural ecology and evolution, since my doctoral studies centred on sex roles and the interplay between genetic and social environments.
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Anna Gábor

PhD students

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Kinga Surányi
About me
PhD topic: Tuned to humans? Voice identity processing in dogs
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Kinga G. Tóth
About me
My PhD research contributes to the understanding of human language evolution through investigating language related capacities in animals. I widened the scope of animal electroencephalography by examining the neural mechanisms of dog puppies, wolf puppies and wild boar piglets. In my experiments I challange the human-uniqueness of certain language related abilities by demonstrating that exposure to speech might lead to the emergence of human-analogue mechanisms even in evolutionary distant species.  Besides my research activities I am developing a smart device that creates a secure communication channel between a dog and a non-speaking owner.
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Asami Nakaimuki
About me
I am a PhD student from Japan. My research focuses on functional MRI studies in dogs, investigating the olfactory sensory system. Specifically, I study how their brain processes emotional and/or social information arising from odors, how different brain regions work together in this process, as well as the underlying olfactory functional connectivity network.
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Franceska Furik
About me
With a degree in ethology, I joined the Neuroethology of Communication Lab to study the neural mechanisms of intra- and interspecific interaction and communication using a non-invasive approach. Currently, my research focuses on identifying the neural correlates of dogs’ ability to (1) represent internal emotional states of humans and conspecifics, and (2) produce spontaneous and intentional vocalisations using EEG.
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Dorottya Rácz
About me
PhD topic: Investigating the origins of voice processing preferences in dog and human brains

BSc/MSc students

Team
Flavie Bensaali-Nemes
About me
I work in the Neuroethology of Communication Lab, studying animal behavior and communication. For my BSc thesis, I analyzed the acoustic features of human vocalizations directed at dogs in different positive and negative contexts. My current MSc research focuses on how intense human socialization affects wild boars’ ability to follow human-given cues.