Pathway to Independence Award, Independent

人类和其他哺乳动物能够识别和辨别声音，即使当声音被掩蔽时 大量不相关的噪音。尽管这一过程对动物来说通常是毫不费力的，但常见的来源 环境噪声严重扰乱了自动语音处理器，并使输出失真 助听器和假肢。了解复杂的嘈杂声音是如何在中央脑中处理的 大脑区域可以为如何应对这些持续的挑战提供关键的见解。的目标是 本项目旨在研究大脑皮层对自然噪声听觉刺激的反应，以便了解 强健感知噪声信号的神经生理学机制。初步实验将 研究被动听音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设计的环境噪声。 听觉处理系统。进一步的实验将研究神经元机制如何促进 当选择性注意时，这个过程被引导到听觉和多感官视听特征上。 计算分析将被用来理解单个神经元和 神经种群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，这些实验将提供对如何 声音处理器可以为听力受损的患者改进。

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.