James W. Lewis

James W. Lewis is a Professor and Vice-Chair for Education at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, holding dual appointments in the Department of Neuroscience and the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. His research focuses on understanding how the human brain processes auditory information, particularly in relation to multisensory integration and natural sound recognition.

• PhD, California Institute of Technology

Dr. Lewis's research explores the neural mechanisms underlying auditory object perception, with particular interest in how the brain categorizes and processes different types of natural sounds. His work employs functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate cortical networks responsible for recognizing sounds produced by humans, animals, mechanical devices, and environmental sources. He has made significant contributions to understanding the fourfold cortical dissociation for representing different categories of action sounds, demonstrating how distinct brain regions process human, animal, mechanical, and environmental sounds.

His recent publications reveal a consistent focus on auditory neuroscience with increasing attention to clinical applications in autism spectrum disorder and medical education innovation. A notable trend is his exploration of how high-level perceptual attributes like concreteness, effectuality, and spatial scale influence cortical processing of natural sounds, advancing models of grounded cognition for acoustic knowledge representation.

Dr. Lewis leads a research program utilizing 3 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging at the Center for Advanced Imaging at WVU. His lab employs a full-scale simulation-MRI scanner to train children for neuroimaging studies, particularly those with autism spectrum disorder. The team investigates how the brain processes auditory information in both typical development and neurodevelopmental conditions, with findings having implications for biologically inspired hearing aid algorithms.