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Dr. Giovanni Di Liberto
Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Assistant Professor, Trinity Inst. of Neurosciences (TCIN)

Biography

Giovanni received his Bachelor's degree in Information Engineering in 2011 and his Master's degree in Computer Engineering in 2013, both from the University of Padova, Italy. After a period working on his thesis at University College Cork (UCC, Ireland), he joined Edmund Lalor's research lab in Trinity College Dublin where he pursued a PhD in auditory neuroscience in the School of Electronic & Electrical Engineering. He received his PhD in 2017 and he joined the Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs at École Normale Superieure (Paris) immediately after, under the supervision of Alain de Cheveigné and Shihab Shamma. He holds the title of Assistant Professor in Intelligent Systems in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin.

Giovanni's scientific interests centre on understanding the brain mechanisms underlying speech comprehension. In his work, he develops data analysis methods and applies them to brain data to identify the neural processes responsible for the transformation of a sensory stimulus into its abstract meaning. Brain electrical data is measured with either non-invasive (e.g., electroencephalography) or invasive (e.g., electrocorticography, ECoG) technologies. The first aspect of his research is methodological and has produced novel experimental and analysis frameworks to investigate cortical auditory processing. The second aspect of his research is to use such novel methods to test theories on auditory perception, such as the hierarchical processing of speech and predictive processing theories (e.g. predictive coding). Finally, the third part of his work is translational and involves the identification of solutions to utilise his novel methods in applied settings, for example as tools to develop brain-computer interfaces (COCOHA project) or as objective measures for the monitoring of language development and healthy ageing.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Peer-Reviewed Publications

HjortkjÊr, Jens and Wong, Daniel D.E. and Catania, Alessandro and MÀrcher-RÞrsted, Jonatan and Ceolini, Enea and Fuglsang, SÞren and Kiselev, Ilya and Liberto, Giovanni Di and Liu, Shih-Chii and Dau, Torsten and Slaney, Malcolm and de Cheveigné, Alain, Real-time control of a hearing instrument with EEG-based attention decoding, 2024, - Miscellaneous, 2024 DOI

Keshavarzi, Mahmoud and Di Liberto, Giovanni M and Gabrielczyk, Fiona and Wilson, Angela and Macfarlane, Annabel and Goswami, Usha, Atypical speech production of multisyllabic words and phrases by children with developmental dyslexia, Developmental science, 27, (1), 2024, pe13428 Journal Article, 2024 DOI

Tan, Sok Hui Jessica and Kalashnikova, Marina and Di Liberto, Giovanni M and Crosse, Michael J and Burnham, Denis, Seeing a Talking Face Matters: Gaze Behavior and the Auditory-Visual Speech Benefit in Adults' Cortical Tracking of Infant-directed Speech, Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 35, (11), 2023, p1741â€"1759 Journal Article, 2023 DOI

Carta S, Mangiacotti AMA, Valdes AL, Reilly RB, Franco F, Di Liberto GM., The impact of temporal synchronisation imprecision on TRF analyses., Journal of neuroscience methods, 385, 2023, p109765 Journal Article, 2023 DOI

Klimovich-Gray Anastasi, Di Liberto Giovann, Amoruso Luci, Barrena Ande, Agirre Enek, Molinaro Nicol, Increased top-down semantic processing in natural speech linked to better reading in dyslexia, NeuroImage, 273, 2023, p120072- Journal Article, 2023 DOI URL

Giovanni M. Di Liberto, Adam Attaheri, Giorgia Cantisani, Richard B. Reilly, Áine Ní Choisdealbha, Sinead Rocha, Perrine Brusini & Usha Goswami, Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life, Nature Communications, (14), 2023 Journal Article, 2023 URL

Jessica Tan SH, Kalashnikova M, Di Liberto GM, Crosse MJ, Burnham D., Seeing a talking face matters: The relationship between cortical tracking of continuous auditory-visual speech and gaze behaviour in infants, children and adults., NeuroImage, 256, 2022, p119217 Journal Article, 2022 DOI

Attaheri A, Panayiotou D, Phillips A, Ní Choisdealbha Á, Di Liberto GM, Rocha S, Brusini P, Mead N, Flanagan S, Olawole-Scott H, Goswami U., Cortical Tracking of Sung Speech in Adults vs Infants: A Developmental Analysis., Frontiers in neuroscience, 16, 2022, p842447 Journal Article, 2022 DOI

Di Liberto GM, Nie J, Yeaton J, Khalighinejad B, Shamma SA, Mesgarani N., Neural representation of linguistic feature hierarchy reflects second-language proficiency., NeuroImage, 227, 2021, p117586 Journal Article, 2021 DOI

Guilhem Marion and Giovanni M. Di Liberto and Shihab A. Shamma, The Music of Silence. Part I: Responses to Musical Imagery Encode Melodic Expectations and Acoustics, The Journal of Neuroscience, 2021, pJN--RM--0183--21 Journal Article, 2021 DOI

Broderick, M.P., Di Liberto, G.M., Anderson, A.J., Rofes, A., Lalor, E.C., Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing, Scientific Reports, 11, (1), 2021 Journal Article, 2021

Giovanni M. Di Liberto and Michele Barsotti and Giovanni Vecchiato and Jonas Ambeck-Madsen and Maria Del Vecchio and Pietro Avanzini and Luca Ascari, Robust anticipation of continuous steering actions from electroencephalographic data during simulated driving, Scientific Reports, 11, (1), 2021 Journal Article, 2021 DOI

Giovanni M. Di Liberto and Guilhem Marion and Shihab A. Shamma, The music of silence. Part II: Music Listening Induces Imagery Responses, The Journal of Neuroscience, 2021, pJN--RM--0184--21 Journal Article, 2021 DOI

O'Sullivan, A.E., Crosse, M.J., Di Liberto, G.M., de Cheveigné, A., Lalor, E.C., Neurophysiological indices of audiovisual speech processing reveal a hierarchy of multisensory integration effects, Journal of Neuroscience, 41, (23), 2021, p4991-5003 Journal Article, 2021

Jonas Ambeck-Madsen, Andrea Bellotti, Giovanni M Di Liberto, Luca Ascari, Alessia Colucciello, 'Computer-implemented method, data-processing device, non-invasive brain-computer interface system and non-transitory computer readable medium', US Patent Office, US20210365115A1, 2021 Patent, 2021 URL

Giovanni Di Liberto, Accurate Decoding of Imagined and Heard Melodies, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 15, 2021 Journal Article, 2021 DOI

Di Liberto, Giovanni M and Marion, Guilhem and Shamma, Shihab A, The Music of Silence: Part II: Music Listening Induces Imagery Responses, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 41, (35), 2021, p7449â€"7460 Journal Article, 2021 DOI

Aisling E. O"Sullivan, Michael J. Crosse, Giovanni M. Di Liberto, Alain de Cheveigné, Edmund C. Lalor, Neurophysiological indices of audiovisual speech integration are enhanced at the phonetic level for speech in noise, 2020 Journal Article, 2020

Di Liberto, G.M., Pelofi, C., Bianco, R., Patel, P., Mehta, A.D., Herrero, J.L., de Cheveigné, A., Shamma, S., Mesgarani, N., Cortical encoding of melodic expectations in human temporal cortex, eLife, 9, 2020 Journal Article, 2020

Di Liberto, G.M., Pelofi, C., Shamma, S., de Cheveigné, A., Musical expertise enhances the cortical tracking of the acoustic envelope during naturalistic music listening, Acoustical Science and Technology, 41, (1), 2020, p361-364 Journal Article, 2020

de Cheveigné, A., Di Liberto, G.M., Arzounian, D., Wong, D.D.E., Hjortkjær, J., Fuglsang, S., Parra, L.C., Multiway canonical correlation analysis of brain data, NeuroImage, 186, 2019, p728-740 Journal Article, 2019

Di Liberto, G.M., Wong, D., Melnik, G.A., de Cheveigné, A., Low-frequency cortical responses to natural speech reflect probabilistic phonotactics, NeuroImage, 196, 2019, p237-247 Journal Article, 2019

Di Liberto, G.M. and Peter, V. and Kalashnikova, M. and Goswami, U. and Burnham, D. and Lalor, E.C., Atypical cortical entrainment to speech in the right hemisphere underpins phonemic deficits in dyslexia, NeuroImage, 175, 2018, p70-79 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

Di Liberto, G.M., Wong, D., Melnik, G.A., de Cheveigné, A., Cortical responses to natural speech reflect probabilistic phonotactics, bioRxiv, 2018 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

Broderick, M.P. and Anderson, A.J. and Di Liberto, G.M. and Crosse, M.J. and Lalor, E.C., Electrophysiological Correlates of Semantic Dissimilarity Reflect the Comprehension of Natural, Narrative Speech, Current Biology, 28, (5), 2018, p803-809.e3 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

de Cheveigné, A. and Wong, D.E. and Di Liberto, G.M. and HjortkjÊr, J. and Slaney, M. and Lalor, E., Decoding the auditory brain with canonical component analysis, NeuroImage, 172, 2018, p206-216 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

Di Liberto, G.M. and Lalor, E.C. and Millman, R.E., Causal cortical dynamics of a predictive enhancement of speech intelligibility, NeuroImage, 166, 2018, p247-258 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

Kalashnikova, M. and Peter, V. and Di Liberto, G.M. and Lalor, E.C. and Burnham, D., Infant-directed speech facilitates seven-month-old infants†cortical tracking of speech, Scientific Reports, 8, (1), 2018 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

Di Liberto, G.M. and Crosse, M.J. and Lalor, E.C., Cortical measures of phoneme-level speech encoding correlate with the perceived clarity of natural speech, eNeuro, 5, (2), 2018 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

Di Liberto, G.M. and Lalor, E.C., Indexing cortical entrainment to natural speech at the phonemic level: Methodological considerations for applied research, Hearing Research, 348, 2017, p70-77 Journal Article, 2017 DOI

O'Sullivan, A.E. and Crosse, M.J. and Di Liberto, G.M. and Lalor, E.C., Visual cortical entrainment to motion and categorical speech features during silent lipreading, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, (679), 2017 Journal Article, 2017 DOI TARA - Full Text

Di Liberto, G., Kadioglu, S., Leo, K., Malitsky, Y., DASH: Dynamic approach for switching heuristics, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 9892 LNCS, 2016, p886 Journal Article, 2016

Di Liberto, G., Kadioglu, S., Leo, K., Malitsky, Y., DASH: Dynamic approach for switching heuristics, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 9892 LNCS, 2016, p886 Journal Article, 2016

Di Liberto, G.M. and Lalor, E.C., Isolating neural indices of continuous speech processing at the phonetic level, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 894, 2016, p337-345 Journal Article, 2016 DOI

Crosse, M.J. and Di Liberto, G.M. and Lalor, E.C., Eye can hear clearly now: Inverse effectiveness in natural audiovisual speech processing relies on long-term crossmodal temporal integration, Journal of Neuroscience, 36, (38), 2016, p9888-9895 Journal Article, 2016 DOI

Crosse, M.J. and Di Liberto, G.M. and Bednar, A. and Lalor, E.C., The multivariate temporal response function (mTRF) toolbox: A MATLAB toolbox for relating neural signals to continuous stimuli, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, (NOV2016), 2016 Journal Article, 2016 DOI

Di Liberto GM, O'Sullivan JA, Lalor EC, Low-Frequency Cortical Entrainment to Speech Reflects Phoneme-Level Processing., Current biology : CB, 25, (19), 2015, p2457-65 Journal Article, 2015

Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications

Carta Sara, Alickovic Emina, Zaar Johannes, Lopez Valdes Aleiandro, Di Liberto Giovanni, Cortical over-representation of phonetic onsets of ignored speech in hearing impaired individuals, 2023, - Miscellaneous, 2023 DOI URL

Attaheri, A., Choisdealbha, Á.N., Di Liberto, G.M., Rocha, S., Brusini, P., Mead, N., Olawole-Scott, H., Boutris, P., Gibbon, S., Williams, I., Grey, C., Flanagan, S., Goswami, U., Delta- And theta-band cortical tracking and phase-amplitude coupling to sung speech by infants, bioRxiv, 2020 Journal Article, 2020

Wong, D.D.E., Di Liberto, G.M., de Cheveigné, A., Accurate Modeling of Brain Responses to Speech, bioRxiv, 2018 Journal Article, 2018

Research Expertise

Keywords

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; Audio-visual speech processing; COGNITIVE AGEING; COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT; COGNITIVE DECLINE; COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT; Cognitive science; Computational Linguistics; ECoG; EEG; MACHINE LEARNING; MEG; MUSIC PERCEPTION; Neural coding of complex stimuli, spatial transformations, speech perception; Perception; signal processing and machine learning; Speech Processing

Recognition

Representations

Guest editor in Frontiers in Neuroscience

Reviewer for the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference 2019

Associate Editor for IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine

Awards and Honours

IRC postgraduate scholarship (John O'Doherty) Sept 2023 - Aug 2027

Special commendation - IRC Best young research of the year award 2022 2022

William Demant Foundation + SFI/CRT-AI - "Investigating the hierarchical neural mechanisms of attention switching" (€165,000) Sept 2022 - Aug 2026

IRC ULYSSES Scheme, Joint project with Yves Boubenec's team, ENS Paris (€2,500) Sept 2022 - Dec 2023

Research Boost Programme, Trinity College Dublin (€22,104) 2021

William Demant Foundation Grant (supporting one MSc-by-research student), €13,383 2021

Dunhill Medical Trust Research Project Grant, PI: Prof. Fabia Franco, Middlesex University, £299,202 (Co-PI's portion: €8,576) 2021-2023

. IRC ULYSSES Scheme, "Joint prediction of audio and brain signals", €5000 2015

Irish Research Council, Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, €96,000 2013-2017

Invited Young Lecturer - Universal Acoustical Communication Symposium, Sendai (Japan), ¥200,000 2018

Travel grant - Neuroscience Ireland, travel award to the Society for Neuroscience meeting, €300 2016

Best oral presentation award, 3rd prize - Cognitive Science Arena, Brixen (Italy) 2016

Travel grant - Guarantors of Brain, travel award to visit Dr. Rebecca Millman at York Neuroimaging Centre, University of York (UK), £350 2016

Best oral presentation award, 1st prize - Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Winter Symposium 2015

Scholarship, 20th Jelinek Summer Workshop in Speech and Language Technology, University of Washington Visiting International Student Internship Training Program. $14,500 2015

Best poster presentation award - Young Neuroscientists Symposium, Dublin. 2014

Luciano Iglesias foundation award for graduate students in computer engineering, €1,000 2013

Memberships

Member of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology

Member of ALBA network (The ALBA Declaration on Equity and Inclusion is a resource for concrete, positive, evidence-based actions that individuals and organizations at any level can take to promote equity and inclusivity) 2023