Auditory signal enhancement and multisensory integration in cerebral cortex durin

描述（由申请人提供）：人类和其他哺乳动物能够识别和区分声音，即使被大量不相关的噪音所掩盖。虽然这一过程对动物来说往往毫不费力，但常见的环境噪声源严重干扰了自动语音处理器，并扭曲了助听器和假肢的输出。了解复杂的嘈杂声音如何在中央大脑区域处理，可以为如何应对这些持续的挑战提供重要的见解。本计画的目的是研究皮质对自然噪声听觉刺激的反应，以了解噪声信号的强健知觉的神经生理机制。最初的实验将研究在被动听力过程中神经表征中自然信号的自动增强。这些实验将特别关注挑战工程听觉处理系统的环境噪声。进一步的实验将研究当选择性注意指向听觉和多感官视听特征时，神经元机制如何促进这一过程。计算分析将用于理解单个神经元和神经群体所采用的算法，以增强重要信号的表示。除了揭示感觉处理的基本神经机制外，这些实验还将深入了解如何改善听力受损患者的声音处理器。助听器和假肢的好处往往受到常见环境噪声的限制，这些噪声会严重扭曲其输出。相比之下，听力正常的人类和其他哺乳动物非常擅长识别复杂的声音，即使在非常嘈杂的环境中。我们建议研究大脑如何处理嘈杂的声音，以了解这种显着能力的神经机制，并了解如何改善听力受损患者的声音处理器。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Humans and other mammals are able to recognize and discriminate sounds even when masked by substantial irrelevant noise. Although this process is often effortless for animals, common sources of environmental noise severely confound automatic speech processors and distort the output of hearing aids and prosthetics. Understanding how complex noisy sounds are processed in central brain areas can provide critical insights into how to address these ongoing challenges. The goal of this project is to study cortical responses to naturalistic noisy auditory stimuli in order to understand neurophysiological mechanisms for the robust perception of noisy signals. Initial experiments will study automatic enhancement of natural signals in neural representations during passive listening. These experiments will focus specifically on environmental noise that challenges engineered auditory processing systems. Further experiments will study how neuronal mechanisms facilitate this process when selective attention is directed to auditory and multisensory audio-visual features. Computational analysis will be used to understand the algorithms employed by single neurons and neural populations to enhance the representation of important signals. In addition to revealing basic neural mechanisms of sensory processing, these experiments will provide insight into how sound processors can be improved for hearing-impaired patients. The benefits of hearing aids and prosthetics are often limited by common environmental noise, which can severely distort their outputs. In contrast, normal-hearing humans and other mammals are exquisitely adept at recognizing complex sounds, even in very noisy conditions. We propose to study how the brain processes noisy sounds in order to understand the neural mechanisms underlying this remarkable ability and to learn how sound processors might be improved for hearing-impaired patients.