Auditory signal enhancement and multisensory integration in cerebral cortex durin

描述(申请人提供)：人类和其他哺乳动物能够识别和辨别声音，即使在基本无关的噪音掩盖下也是如此。尽管这一过程对动物来说往往是毫不费力的，但常见的环境噪声源严重扰乱了自动语音处理器，并扭曲了助听器和假肢的输出。了解复杂的嘈杂声音是如何在大脑中央区域处理的，可以为如何应对这些持续的挑战提供关键的见解。该项目的目标是研究大脑皮层对自然噪声听觉刺激的反应，以了解对噪声信号的稳健感知的神经生理学机制。最初的实验将研究被动倾听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。计算分析将被用来理解单个神经元和神经群体用来增强重要信号表示的算法。除了揭示感觉处理的基本神经机制外，这些实验还将为听力受损患者提供如何改进声音处理器的洞察力。助听器和假肢的益处往往受到常见环境噪声的限制，这可能会严重扭曲它们的输出。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也是如此。我们建议研究大脑如何处理嘈杂的声音，以了解这种非凡能力背后的神经机制，并了解如何为听力受损患者改进声音处理器。

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.