Nina Kraus

About

Nina Kraus directs the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, where she studies the auditory system and its underlying brain mechanisms. Her research explores how musical input influences abilities such as reading and language learning, as well as how conditions like autism, aging, and HIV affect sound processing. Kraus's work has recently focused on the auditory aspects of concussion, supported by a five-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study concussion in Northwestern's Division I athletes across multiple sports. Kraus earned a PhD in neuroscience from Northwestern University. Her lifelong interest in sound was inspired by her childhood experiences listening to her mother play piano and the multilingual voices of her European-born parents, which shaped her dedication to understanding how we process sound in everyday communication.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Computer Science
• Audiology
• Cognitive psychology
• Biology
• Genetics
• Internal medicine
• Immunology

Selected publications

• Sex differences in auditory processing vary across estrous cycle

  Scientific Reports · 2021 · 25 citations

  In humans, females process a sound's harmonics more robustly than males. As estrogen regulates auditory plasticity in a sex-specific manner in seasonally breeding animals, estrogen signaling is one hypothesized mechanism for this difference in humans. To investigate whether sex differences in harmonic encoding vary similarly across the reproductive cycle of mammals, we recorded frequency-following responses (FFRs) to a complex sound in male and female rats. Female FFRs were collected during both…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Auditory neurophysiology reveals central nervous system dysfunction in HIV-infected individuals

  Clinical Neurophysiology · 2020 · 19 citations

  DOI

• Auditory Processing Differences in Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

  Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 2020 · 18 citations

  = 18). Auditory processing measures were hypothesized to relate to language development in children with ASD. Results The current study found limited differences in auditory processing measures between the two groups. No relationships were found between auditory processing measures and language development measures. Conclusions Future research is necessary to characterize auditory processing in toddlers with ASD. Longitudinal approaches should be considered when studying auditory processing in c…

  DOI

• Neural Processing of Speech Sounds in ASD and First-Degree Relatives

  Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders · 2022-06-07 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access

  Efficient neural encoding of sound plays a critical role in speech and language, and when impaired, may have reverberating effects on communication skills. This study investigated disruptions to neural processing of temporal and spectral properties of speech in individuals with ASD and their parents and found evidence of inefficient temporal encoding of speech sounds in both groups. The ASD group further demonstrated less robust neural representation of spectral properties of speech sounds. Asso…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multi-Voiced Music Bypasses Attentional Limitations in the Brain

  Frontiers in Neuroscience · 2021 · 9 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Attentional limits make it difficult to comprehend concurrent speech streams. However, multiple musical streams are processed comparatively easily. Coherence may be a key difference between music and stimuli like speech, which does not rely on the integration of multiple streams for comprehension. The musical organization between melodies in a composition may provide a cognitive scaffold to overcome attentional limitations when perceiving multiple lines of music concurrently. We investigated how…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• A preschool biomarker for literacy

  NIH · $1.8M · 2012–2018

• SGER: Generalization of musical experience to listening to speech in noise

  NSF · $198k · 2008–2010

• NIH Grant R01DC000264

  NIH · $543k · 1995

Frequent coauthors

• Trent Nicol

  Northwestern University

  137 shared

• Travis White‐Schwoch

  Northwestern University

  110 shared

• Steven G. Zecker

  Northwestern University

  91 shared

• Erika Skoe

  University of Connecticut

  77 shared

• Catherine M. Warrier

  Northwestern University

  73 shared

• Therese McGee

  70 shared

• Samira Anderson

  University of Maryland, College Park

  69 shared

• Sumitrajit Dhar

  Federated Co-operatives (Canada)

  65 shared

Awards & honors

• Five-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological…

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