Multi-modal cue integration for auditory spatial location by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.

敏锐的空间感是使世界显得自然、真实的和连贯的关键。听力正常的人可以在测量空间感的实验任务中表现得非常好-某人的“空间听力”。然而，听力障碍通常会损害空间听觉，只留下听觉空间的贫乏印象。助听器对空间听觉几乎没有帮助。更糟糕的是，它们往往会增加更多的问题。但是，尽管经过数十年的研究，空间听觉科学仍然没有解决，特别是对于同时发生多个声音的复杂情况，或者理解损伤或辅助的影响。本节目将帮助解答这些困惑。拥有敏锐的空间听觉，对倾听有两个整体的好处。两者都利用了这样一个事实，即在日常收听中，声源几乎总是在不同的物理位置。首先，它允许声源在它们真正所在的位置被感知。第二，它允许声音由于处于不同位置而被分离。这两者共同赋予听觉世界一种真实感，并有助于识别、识别或理解声音。这些减少了在忙碌、嘈杂的情况下听力的“混乱”：如果没有任何空间听力，所有的东西都很可能被听到。由于声源的方向和距离有多个线索，情况变得复杂。一个是时间：来自左侧声源的声音到达右耳的时间比到达左耳的时间晚几分之一秒，因为它必须绕着头部再传播大约50 cm。另一个是强度：当你的头部投射出声学“阴影”时，声音的强度会降低。然而，尽管有这些多重线索，我们通常会听到一个声音的位置，而不是很多。此外，我们所看到的会影响我们听到声音的位置--一个著名的例子就是腹语效应。总的来说，产生对听觉空间的准确感知的问题类似于解决多个重叠声音、时间延迟和功率差异的三维拼图。不知何故，我们的感知系统无缝地、毫不费力地解决了把所有碎片正确组合在一起的难题。在这个节目中，我们将使用尖端的听觉实验来回答两个关键问题。首先，在复杂的、动态的、多声音的、视听的听觉环境中，听觉系统是如何将多个线索与位置联系起来的？第二，听力障碍和辅助听力如何影响这一点？我们希望，在这个项目中获得的见解将有助于我们更好地了解空间听力在真实的日常听力中的工作原理，并将有助于告知未来助听器的设计如何改善空间听力

A sharp sense of space is essential to making the world appear natural, real and joined-up. People with normal hearing can do exceptionally well in experimental tasks that measure the sense of space - someone's "spatial hearing". Yet hearing impairment generally worsens spatial hearing, leaving only an impoverished impression of auditory space. Hearing aids hardly ever help spatial hearing. Worse, they can often add further problems. But despite decades of research the science of spatial hearing is still not solved, especially for complex situations with multiple sounds happening simultaneously or in understanding the effects of impairment or aiding. This programme will help answer these puzzles.There are two overall benefits to listening from having acute spatial hearing. Both take advantage of that fact that in everyday listening sound sources are almost always in distinct physical locations. First, it allows sound sources to be perceived in the locations that they really are. Second, it allows sounds to be separated by virtue of being in different positions. These two together give a sense of realism to the auditory world and help identifying, recognizing or understanding sounds. These reduce the "clutter" of hearing in busy, noisy situations: without any spatial hearing at all, everything would be more likely to be heard together as a jumble. The situation is complicated by there being multiple cues to the direction and distance of a sound source. One is time: the sound from a source to the left will arrive a fraction of a second later at the right ear compared to the left as it has to travel some 50 cm further around the head. Another is intensity: the sound is less powerful as your head casts an acoustic "shadow". Yet despite these multiple cues we generally hear one location for a sound, not many. Further, what we see can affect where we hear a sound -- a famous example of this is the ventriloquist effect. The problem of generating accurate perceptions of auditory space is, overall, akin to solving a three-dimensional jigsaw of multiple overlapping sounds, time delays, and power differences. Somehow our perceptual systems seamlessly and apparently effortlessly solves the puzzle of putting all the pieces together properly. In this programme, we will use cutting-edge auditory experiments to answer two key questions. First, how does the auditory system join the multiple cues to location in complex, dynamic, multi-sound, audio-visual listening situations? Second, how does hearing impairment and aided listening affect this? We expect that the insights gained in this programme will help us to understand better how spatial hearing works in real, everyday listening, and will help inform how future hearing aids might be designed to improve spatial hearing