Santani Teng

Associate Scientist

Ph.D., Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
M.A., Psychology University of California, Davis
B.A., Psychology, University of California, Davis

Participate in our studies! Visit Teng Lab Experiment Participation for details.

Hello! I’m an Associate Scientist at Smith-Kettlewell, where I investigate auditory spatial perception, haptics, echolocation, and assisted mobility in sighted and blind persons. Previously, I completed my Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and postdoctoral work at MIT, where I remain affiliated.

 

(H/h)

Teng Lab
Contact Information:

Email: santani@ski.org


2318 Fillmore St

San Francisco, CA 94115

Links:
Older site with more detail

Publications

Thumbnail graphic of brain responses during echolocation, from scholarly publication García-Lázaro and Teng, 2025

Garcia Lazaro, G. H. & Teng, S. (2025). Neural and behavioral correlates of evidence accumulation in human click-based echolocation. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.30.673202

García-Lázaro, H. G., & Teng, S. . (2025). Novel Stimuli to Benchmark and Train Echolocation Skills. The Journal on Technology & Persons With Disabilities, 13. 20.500.12680/b2774511d (Original work published 2025)

García-Lázaro, H. G., & Teng, S. . (2024). Sensory and perceptual decisional processes underlying the perception of reverberant auditory environments. ENeuro. 10.1523/ENEURO.0122-24.2024 (Original work published 2024)

Haupt, M. ., Graumann, M. ., Teng, S. ., Kaltenbach, C. ., & Cichy, R. M. (2024). The transformation of sensory to perceptual braille letter representations in the visually deprived brain. BioRxiv. 10.1101/2024.02.12.579923 (Original work published 2024)

Teng, S. ., Danforth, C. ., Paternoster, N. ., Ezeana, M. ., & Puri, A. . (2024). Object recognition via echoes: Quantifying the crossmodal transfer of three-dimensional shape information between echolocation, vision, and haptics. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 18. 10.3389/fnins.2024.1288635 (Original work published 2024)

Reynolds, I. ., & Teng, S. . (2024). Design and optimization of assistive ultrasonic echolocation. The Journal on Technology & Persons With Disabilities, 12. 20.500.12680/vq27zw052 (Original work published 2024)

Haupt, M. ., Graumann, M. ., Teng, S. ., Kaltenbach, C. ., & Cichy, R. M. (2024). The transformation of sensory to perceptual braille letter representations in the visually deprived brain. ELife, 13. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.98148 (Original work published 2024)

García-Lázaro, H. G., & Teng, S. . (2024). Sensory and perceptual decisional processes underlying the perception of reverberant auditory environments. ENeuro. 10.1523/ENEURO.0122-24.2024 (Original work published 2024)

Teng, S. ., Cichy, R. M., Pantazis, D. ., & Oliva, A. . (2024). Touch to text: Spatiotemporal evolution of braille letter representations in blind readers. BioRxiv. 10.1101/2024.10.30.620429 (Original work published 2024)

Lowe, M. X., Mohsenzadeh, Y. ., Lahner, B. ., Charest, I. ., Oliva, A. ., & Teng, S. . (2022). Cochlea to categories: The spatiotemporal dynamics of semantic auditory representations. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 38(7-8), 468-489. 10.1080/02643294.2022.2085085 (Original work published 2022)

Lowe, M. X., Mohsenzadeh, Y. ., Lahner, B. ., Charest, I. ., Oliva, A. ., & Teng, S. . (2020). Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Sound Representations Reveal a Hierarchical Progression of Category Selectivity. BioRxiv. 10.1101/2020.06.12.149120 (Original work published 2020)

Murty, A. R., Teng, S. ., Beeler, D. ., Mynick, A. ., Oliva, A. ., & Kanwisher, N. . (2020). Visual Experience is not Necessary for the Development of Face Selectivity in the Lateral Fusiform Gyrus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 10.1073/pnas.2004607117 (Original work published 2020)

Dixon, A., Martinez, J., Mukhtar, A., Pettingill, M., Teng, S., & Puri, A. (2025). Echoic-haptic object recognition: The role of object properties in human active echolocation. Arkansas INBRE 2025, Fayetteville, AR, United States.

Overview of Robin, a wearable echolocation device designed to aid navigation and perception for people who are blind or have low vision. A mannequin wears the headset, which emits ultrasound pulses toward a chair, records the reflected echoes, and slows them down for playback in audible frequencies. A web app lets users customize the signal parameters.

Bhattacharyya, P., Tam, R., Reynolds, I., Orsmond, P., & Teng, S. (2025). Optimizing Signal Parameters to Enhance Echoacoustic Perception in Humans. Durham, UK.

Bhattacharyya, P. ., Tam, R. ., Orsmond, P. ., Hicks, S. ., & Teng, S. . (2025). Time-resolved EEG decoding of neural text representations during naturalistic braille reading. Boston, MA.

Krasovskaya, S. ., Coughlan, J. ., & Teng, S. . (2025). A Kalman Filter model of echo-guided head movement. Durham, UK.

García-Lázaro, H. G., & Teng, S. . (2025). Auditory masking release indexes human click-based echolocation performance. Boston, MA.

Bhattacharyya, P. ., Tam, R. ., Reynolds, I. ., Orsmond, P. ., & Teng, S. . (2025). Optimizing Signal Parameters to Enhance Echoacoustic Perception of Objects and Scenes in Humans. Durham, UK.

Krasovskaya, S. ., Coughlan, J. ., Patel, A. ., & Teng, S. . (2025). Modeling target search in blind echolocators using a Kalman Filter with realistic exploratory behavior simulations. Boston, MA.

García-Lázaro, H. G., & Teng, S. . (2025). The role of motor control in echolocation performance: self-initiated vs. passive listening for object spatial localization. Durham, UK. Retrieved from https://imrf2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/30

Teng, S. . (2024). Integrating across hands in bimanual braille reading. Reno, NV.

Teng, S. ., Cichy, R. M., Pantazis, D. ., & Oliva, A. . (2024). Distinct tactile and visual brain responses to alphabetic letters converge to shared representations in blind and sighted readers. St. Pete Beach, Florida, USA.

Teng, S. . (2024). Acoustic glimpses: The accumulation of perceptual information in blind echolocators. St. Pete Beach, Florida, USA.

Patel, A. ., Fusco, G. ., & Teng, S. . (2024). Sensorimotor dynamics of echoacoustic target acquisition in blind humans. St. Pete Beach, Florida, USA.

Teng, S. ., & Fusco, G. . (2019). Modeling echo-target acquisition in blind humans. Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. Presented at the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. Berlin, Germany: Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. (Original work published 2019)

Lin, N.-C. ., Liu, S.-H. ., Huang, Y.-W. ., Su, Y.-S. ., Lu, C.-L. ., Hsu, W.-T. ., … Wang, H.- cheng . (2019). Toward an open platform of blind navigation via interactions with autonomous robots. ACM SIGCHI Conference. Presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference.

Lowe, M. X., Teng, S. ., Mohsenzadeh, Y. ., Charest, I. ., Pantazis, D. ., & Oliva, A. . (2018). Temporal dynamics underlying sound discrimination in the human brain. Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. Presented at the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. 10.32470/CCN.2018.1090-0 (Original work published 2018)

Teng, S. ., Sommer, V. ., Cichy, R. M., Pantazis, D. ., & Oliva, A. . (2018). Auditory letter-name processing elicits crossmodal representations in blind listeners. Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. Presented at the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. 10.32470/CCN.2018.1236-0

Wang, H.- cheng ., Katzschmann, R. K., Teng, S. ., Araki, B. ., Giarré, L. ., & Rus, D. . (2017). Enabling independent navigation for visually impaired people through a wearable vision-based feedback system. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 6533–6540.

Teng, S. ., Cichy, R. M., Pantazis, D. ., & Oliva, A. . (2017). The evolution of tactile letter representations in blind braille readers. Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. Presented at the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. Retrieved from https://ccneuro.org/2017/abstracts/abstract_3000316.pdf

Projects

Labs

  • Teng Lab
    Teng Lab
    Principal Investigator:
    Participate in our studies! Visit Teng Lab Experiment Participation for details. Welcome to the Cognition, Action, and Neural Dynamics Laboratory We aim to better understand how people perceive, interact with, and...
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Centers

  • Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center
    Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center
    The Center's research goal is to develop and apply new scientific knowledge and practical, cost-effective devices to better understand and address the real-world problems of blind, visually impaired, and deaf-blind...
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Trainees