Download or read book Plasticity and Signal Representation in the Auditory System written by Josef Syka and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-11-22 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The symposium that has provided the basis for this book, "Plasticity of the Central Auditory System and Processing of Complex Acoustic Signals" was held in Prague on July 7-10, 2003. This is the fourth in a series of seminal meetings summarizing the state of development of auditory system neuroscience that has been organized in that great world city. Books that have resulted from these meetings represent important benchmarks for auditory neuroscience over the past 25 years. A 1980 meeting, "Neuronal Mechanisms of Hearing" hosted the most distinguished hearing researchers focusing on underlying brain processes from this era. It resulted in a highly influential and widely subscribed and cited proceedings co-edited by professor Lindsay Aitkin. The subject of the 1987 meeting was the "Auditory Pathway - Structure and Function". It again resulted in another important update of hearing science research in a widely referenced book - edited by the late Bruce Masterton. While the original plan was to hold a meeting summarizing the state of auditory system neuroscience every 7 years, historical events connected with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and return of freedom to Czechoslovakia resulted in an unavoidable delay of what was planned to be a 1994 meeting. It wasn't until 1996 that we were able to meet for the third time in Prague, at that time to review "Acoustical Signal Processing in the Central Auditory System".

Download or read book Plasticity and Signal Representation in the Auditory System written by Josef Syka and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The symposium that has provided the basis for this book, "Plasticity of the Central Auditory System and Processing of Complex Acoustic Signals" was held in Prague on July 7-10, 2003. This is the fourth in a series of seminal meetings summarizing the state of development of auditory system neuroscience that has been organized in that great world city. Books that have resulted from these meetings represent important benchmarks for auditory neuroscience over the past 25 years. A 1980 meeting, "Neuronal Mechanisms of Hearing" hosted the most distinguished hearing researchers focusing on underlying brain processes from this era. It resulted in a highly influential and widely subscribed and cited proceedings co-edited by professor Lindsay Aitkin. The subject of the 1987 meeting was the "Auditory Pathway - Structure and Function". It again resulted in another important update of hearing science research in a widely referenced book - edited by the late Bruce Masterton. While the original plan was to hold a meeting summarizing the state of auditory system neuroscience every 7 years, historical events connected with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and return of freedom to Czechoslovakia resulted in an unavoidable delay of what was planned to be a 1994 meeting. It wasn't until 1996 that we were able to meet for the third time in Prague, at that time to review "Acoustical Signal Processing in the Central Auditory System".

Download or read book Plasticity of the Auditory System written by Thomas N. Parks and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The auditory system has a remarkable ability to adjust to an ever-changing environment. The six review chapters that comprise Plasticity of the Central Auditory System cover a spectrum of issues concerning this ability to adapt, defined by the widely applicable term "plasticity". With chapters focusing on the development of the cochlear nucleus, the mammalian superior olivary complex, plasticity in binaural hearing, plasticity in the auditory cortex, neural plasticity in bird songs, and plasticity in the insect auditory system, this volume represents much of the most current research in this field. The volume is thorough enough to stand alone, but is closely related a previous SHAR volume, Development of the Auditory System (Volume 9) by Rubel, Popper, and Fay. The book fully addresses the difficulties, challenges, and complexities of this topic as it applies to the auditory development of a wide variety of species.

Download or read book Periodic Sound Encoding in the Human Auditory System written by Emily Coffey and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The human auditory system is made up of a network of processing centres in the brainstem, thalamus, and cortex, which in turn interact with higher-level functions and the sensory and motor systems. Although the coordinated activity of the entire ensemble is responsible for human auditory perception and behaviour, it has been suggested that the fidelity with which important features of sound are encoded and processed in early auditory areas may place limitations on system performance on auditory tasks. In this thesis, we address a set of research questions within the theme of relationships between early sound encoding and higher-level cognitive function, and their respective neural correlates. Throughout these studies, our primary focus is on temporal encoding of periodic sound, as measured using the frequency following response (FFR), an evoked response that has typically been studied using electroencephalography (EEG) and has been related to individual differences in perception and pathology of the auditory system, is malleable to musical and linguistic training, and can be modulated by top-down factors like attention. This dissertation comprises four studies. In the first study, we recorded FFR using magnetoencephalography (MEG) for the first time and used source modelling to clarify its generators. In addition to confirming sources in brainstem nuclei and thalamus, we found a right-lateralized contribution to the FFR from the auditory cortex, which proved to be behaviourally relevant as it was significantly related to musicianship and fine pitch discrimination skills. In the second study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to validate the neural correlates of FFR encoding strength in the cortex and dissociate the right-lateralized FFR-sensitive area from a left-lateralized area of auditory cortex that is sensitive to onset latency. These findings corroborate theories of hemispheric specialization in auditory signal processing. In the third study, we turned our attention to individual differences in periodic sound representation as measured with EEG-FFR and examined their relation to pitch perception and pitch computation. We found that FFR-f0 strength was related to a bias towards perceiving the missing fundamental, which was in turn related to measures of musicianship, and showed that pitch perception mode can be brought under voluntary control, which also affects the FFR-f0 strength in a top-down fashion. In the fourth study, we examined individual differences in periodicity encoding as they relate to speech-in-noise perception abilities, a task for which pitch cues are important and that is thought to be enhanced by music training. We presented further evidence of a musician advantage to a current debate, and added spatial information available via MEG distributed source modelling to show that speech-in-noise performance is correlated with FFR strength in both subcortical and cortical structures. In the experimental work presented in this thesis, we made several contributions to fundamental auditory neuroscience and its methods by clarifying the neural origins of a commonly studied measure of fine periodic encoding, its behavioural meaning, and sources of individual variability. We explored its relationship to long-term training, and to cortical function and structure, using EEG, MEG, fMRI, and diffusion-weighted imaging. We also took several steps towards elucidating if and how better quality periodic sound encoding might result in better behavioural performance on complex tasks, particularly speech-in-noise perception. Together, this work improves our understanding of individual differences in periodic sound representation and how it influences complex behaviour. The conclusions in turn may inform strategies for optimizing and remediating faulty auditory system components, via training." --

Download or read book The Frequency Following Response written by Nina Kraus and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-09 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume will cover a variety of topics, including child language development; hearing loss; listening in noise; statistical learning; poverty; auditory processing disorder; cochlear neuropathy; attention; and aging. It will appeal broadly to auditory scientists—and in fact, any scientist interested in the biology of human communication and learning. The range of the book highlights the interdisciplinary series of questions that are pursued using the auditory frequency-following response and will accordingly attract a wide and diverse readership, while remaining a lasting resource for the field.

Download or read book The Human Auditory Cortex written by David Poeppel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a complex and dynamically changing acoustic environment. To this end, the auditory cortex of humans has developed the ability to process a remarkable amount of diverse acoustic information with apparent ease. In fact, a phylogenetic comparison of auditory systems reveals that human auditory association cortex in particular has undergone extensive changes relative to that of other species, although our knowledge of this remains incomplete. In contrast to other senses, human auditory cortex receives input that is highly pre-processed in a number of sub-cortical structures; this suggests that even primary auditory cortex already performs quite complex analyses. At the same time, much of the functional role of the various sub-areas in human auditory cortex is still relatively unknown, and a more sophisticated understanding is only now emerging through the use of contemporary electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques. The integration of results across the various techniques signify a new era in our knowledge of how human auditory cortex forms basis for auditory experience. This volume on human auditory cortex will have two major parts. In Part A, the principal methodologies currently used to investigate human auditory cortex will be discussed. Each chapter will first outline how the methodology is used in auditory neuroscience, highlighting the challenges of obtaining data from human auditory cortex; second, each methods chapter will provide two or (at most) three brief examples of how it has been used to generate a major result about auditory processing. In Part B, the central questions for auditory processing in human auditory cortex are covered. Each chapter can draw on all the methods introduced in Part A but will focus on a major computational challenge the system has to solve. This volume will constitute an important contemporary reference work on human auditory cortex. Arguably, this will be the first and most focused book on this critical neurological structure. The combination of different methodological and experimental approaches as well as a diverse range of aspects of human auditory perception ensures that this volume will inspire novel insights and spurn future research.

Download or read book Auditory Spectral Processing written by Manuel S. Malmierca and published by Gulf Professional Publishing. This book was released on 2005-11-23 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All natural auditory signals, including human speech and animal communication signals, are spectrally and temporally complex, that is, they contain multiple frequencies and their frequency composition, or spectrum, varies over time. The ability of hearers to identify and localize these signals depends on analysis of their spectral composition. For the overwhelming majority of human listeners spoken language is the major means of social communication, and this communication therefore depends on spectral analysis. Spectral analysis begins in the cochlea, but is then elaborated at various stages along the auditory pathways in the brain that lead from the cochlea to the cerebral cortex. The broad purpose of Auditory Spectral Processing is to provide a comprehensive account of the way in which spectral information is processed in the brain and the way in which this information is used by listeners to identify and localize sounds. Examines spectral processing mechanisms at different levels along the auditory neuraxis, from the cochlear nucleus to the cortex Reviews in detail psychophysical and neurophysiological evidence on the way in which spectral information is processed within and across frequency channels Presents information on the nature of the spectral information required for speech and music perception Examines a series of issues that relate to the role of spectral analysis in higher order/cognitive aspects of hearing and in clinical and applied contexts

Download or read book Neural Correlates of Auditory Cognition written by Yale E. Cohen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-10-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hearing and communication present a variety of challenges to the nervous system. To be heard and understood, a communication signal must be transformed from a time-varying acoustic waveform to a perceptual representation to an even more abstract representation that integrates memory stores with semantic/referential information. Finally, this complex, abstract representation must be interpreted to form categorical decisions that guide behavior. Did I hear the stimulus? From where and whom did it come? What does it tell me? How can I use this information to plan an action? All of these issues and questions underlie auditory cognition. Since the early 1990s, there has been a re-birth of studies that test the neural correlates of auditory cognition with a unique emphasis on the use of awake, behaving animals as model. Continuing today, how and where in the brain neural correlates of auditory cognition are formed is an intensive and active area of research. Importantly, our understanding of the role that the cortex plays in hearing has the potential to impact the next generation of cochlear- and brainstem-auditory implants and consequently help those with hearing impairments. Thus, it is timely to produce a volume that brings together this exciting literature on the neural correlates of auditory cognition. This volume compliments and extends many recent SHAR volumes such as Sound Source Localization (2005) Auditory Perception of Sound Sources (2007), and Human Auditory Cortex (2010). For example, in many of these volumes, similar issues are discussed such as auditory-object identification and perception with different emphases: in Auditory Perception of Sound Sources, authors discuss the underlying psychophysics/behavior, whereas in the Human Auditory Cortex, fMRI data are presented. The unique contribution of the proposed volume is that the authors will integrate both of these factors to highlight the neural correlates of cognition/behavior. Moreover, unlike other these other volumes, the neurophysiological data will emphasize the exquisite spatial and temporal resolution of single-neuron [as opposed to more coarse fMRI or MEG data] responses in order to reveal the elegant representations and computations used by the nervous system.

Download or read book The Auditory Cortex written by Jeffery A. Winer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-12-02 with total page 711 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been substantial progress in understanding the contributions of the auditory forebrain to hearing, sound localization, communication, emotive behavior, and cognition. The Auditory Cortex covers the latest knowledge about the auditory forebrain, including the auditory cortex as well as the medial geniculate body in the thalamus. This book will cover all important aspects of the auditory forebrain organization and function, integrating the auditory thalamus and cortex into a smooth, coherent whole. Volume One covers basic auditory neuroscience. It complements The Auditory Cortex, Volume 2: Integrative Neuroscience, which takes a more applied/clinical perspective.

Download or read book Representational Plasticity During Task Performance and Learning in the Avian Auditory Cortex written by Daniel Philip Knudsen and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brain's representation of the auditory world is not static, but changes based on an animal's history and current goals. We explored experience-dependent changes in both behavioral and neural representations of behaviorally relevant auditory stimuli in the caudal a secondary auditory fore brainregion, in European starlings. To accomplish this, we first designed and built a system that facilitated simultaneous neural and behavioral recording, allowing--for the first time--neural responses to be recorded while birds performed auditory-mediated operant tasks. We found that when birds were engaged in an auditory task, neurons had more information in their stimulus-driven firing rates about the task-relevant stimulus classes than when birds were not engaged in the task. We also trained birds to quickly learn novel stimulus classifications and showed that neural responses change over the course of learning. For most neurons, stimulus-driven neural responses decreased with learning, and they did so most strongly for the newly learned stimuli. We suggest that these effects may be due in part to stimulus-specific adaptation, and its modulation by behavioral state. We also observed the formation of task-dependent firing rate modulation with learning. These results highlight the plasticity of the avian auditory system, and further our understanding of the way that nervous systems adapt to the changing environment and behavioral goals of an organism.

Download or read book The Technology of Binaural Understanding written by Jens Blauert and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sound, devoid of meaning, would not matter to us. It is the information sound conveys that helps the brain to understand its environment. Sound and its underlying meaning are always associated with time and space. There is no sound without spatial properties, and the brain always organizes this information within a temporal–spatial framework. This book is devoted to understanding the importance of meaning for spatial and related further aspects of hearing, including cross-modal inference. People, when exposed to acoustic stimuli, do not react directly to what they hear but rather to what they hear means to them. This semiotic maxim may not always apply, for instance, when the reactions are reflexive. But, where it does apply, it poses a major challenge to the builders of models of the auditory system. Take, for example, an auditory model that is meant to be implemented on a robotic agent for autonomous search-&-rescue actions. Or think of a system that can perform judgments on the sound quality of multimedia-reproduction systems. It becomes immediately clear that such a system needs • Cognitive capabilities, including substantial inherent knowledge • The ability to integrate information across different sensory modalities To realize these functions, the auditory system provides a pair of sensory organs, the two ears, and the means to perform adequate preprocessing of the signals provided by the ears. This is realized in the subcortical parts of the auditory system. In the title of a prior book, the term Binaural Listening is used to indicate a focus on sub-cortical functions. Psychoacoustics and auditory signal processing contribute substantially to this area. The preprocessed signals are then forwarded to the cortical parts of the auditory system where, among other things, recognition, classification, localization, scene analysis, assignment of meaning, quality assessment, and action planning take place. Also, information from different sensory modalities is integrated at this level. Between sub-cortical and cortical regions of the auditory system, numerous feedback loops exist that ultimately support the high complexity and plasticity of the auditory system. The current book concentrates on these cognitive functions. Instead of processing signals, processing symbols is now the predominant modeling task. Substantial contributions to the field draw upon the knowledge acquired by cognitive psychology. The keyword Binaural Understanding in the book title characterizes this shift. Both books, The Technology of Binaural Listening and the current one, have been stimulated and supported by AABBA, an open research group devoted to the development and application of models of binaural hearing. The current book is dedicated to technologies that help explain, facilitate, apply, and support various aspects of binaural understanding. It is organized into five parts, each containing three to six chapters in order to provide a comprehensive overview of this emerging area. Each chapter was thoroughly reviewed by at least two anonymous, external experts. The first part deals with the psychophysical and physiological effects of Forming and Interpreting Aural Objects as well as the underlying models. The fundamental concepts of reflexive and reflective auditory feedback are introduced. Mechanisms of binaural attention and attention switching are covered—as well as how auditory Gestalt rules facilitate binaural understanding. A general blackboard architecture is introduced as an example of how machines can learn to form and interpret aural objects to simulate human cognitive listening. The second part, Configuring and Understanding Aural Space, focuses on the human understanding of complex three-dimensional environments—covering the psychological and biological fundamentals of auditory space formation. This part further addresses the human mechanisms used to process information and interact in complex reverberant environments, such as concert halls and forests, and additionally examines how the auditory system can learn to understand and adapt to these environments. The third part is dedicated to Processing Cross-Modal Inference and highlights the fundamental human mechanisms used to integrate auditory cues with cues from other modalities to localize and form perceptual objects. This part also provides a general framework for understanding how complex multimodal scenes can be simulated and rendered. The fourth part, Evaluating Aural-scene Quality and Speech Understanding, focuses on the object-forming aspects of binaural listening and understanding. It addresses cognitive mechanisms involved in both the understanding of speech and the processing of nonverbal information such as Sound Quality and Quality-of- Experience. The aesthetic judgment of rooms is also discussed in this context. Models that simulate underlying human processes and performance are covered in addition to techniques for rendering virtual environments that can then be used to test these models. The fifth part deals with the Application of Cognitive Mechanisms to Audio Technology. It highlights how cognitive mechanisms can be utilized to create spatial auditory illusions using binaural and other 3D-audio technologies. Further, it covers how cognitive binaural technologies can be applied to improve human performance in auditory displays and to develop new auditory technologies for interactive robots. The book concludes with the application of cognitive binaural technologies to the next generation of hearing aids.

Download or read book Advanced Brain Neuroimaging Topics in Health and Disease written by Dorina Papageorgiou and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2014-05-31 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brain is the most complex computational device we know, consisting of highly interacting and redundant networks of areas, supporting specific brain functions. The rules by which these areas organize themselves to perform specific computations have only now started to be uncovered. Advances in non-invasive neuroimaging technologies have revolutionized our understanding of the functional anatomy of cortical circuits in health and disease states, which is the focus of this book. The first section of this book focuses on methodological issues, such as combining functional MRI technology with other brain imaging modalities. The second section examines the application of brain neuroimaging to understand cognitive, visual, auditory, motor and decision-making networks, as well as neurological diseases. The use of non-invasive neuroimaging technologies will continue to stimulate an exponential growth in understanding basic brain processes, largely as a result of sustained advances in neuroimaging methods and applications.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Auditory Science The Auditory Brain written by David R. Moore and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 1: The Ear (edited by Paul Fuchs) Volume 2: The Auditory Brain (edited by Alan Palmer and Adrian Rees) Volume 3: Hearing (edited by Chris Plack) Auditory science is one of the fastest growing areas of biomedical research. There are now around 10,000 researchers in auditory science, and ten times that number working in allied professions. This growth is attributable to several major developments: Research on the inner ear has shown that elaborate systems of mechanical, transduction and neural processes serve to improve sensitivity, sharpen frequency tuning, and modulate response of the ear to sound. Most recently, the molecular machinery underlying these phenomena has been explored and described in detail. The development, maintenance, and repair of the ear are also subjects of contemporary interest at the molecular level, as is the genetics of hearing disorders due to cochlear malfunctions.

Download or read book The Auditory Cortex written by Peter Heil and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005-05-06 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding human hearing is not only a scientific challenge but also a problem of growing social and political importance, given the steadily increasing numbers of people with hearing deficits or even deafness. This book is about the highest level of hearing in humans and other mammals. It brings together studies of both humans and animals thereby giving a more profound understanding of the concepts, approaches, techniques, and knowledge of the auditory cortex. All of the most up-to-date procedures of non-invasive imaging are employed in the research that is described.

Download or read book Inhibitory Synaptic Plasticity written by Melanie A. Woodin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume will explore the most recent findings on cellular mechanisms of inhibitory plasticity and its functional role in shaping neuronal circuits, their rewiring in response to experience, drug addiction and in neuropathology. Inhibitory Synaptic Plasticity will be of particular interest to neuroscientists and neurophysiologists.

Download or read book Elementary Signal Detection Theory written by Thomas D. Wickens and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-10-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Signal detection theory, as developed in electrical engineering and based on statistical decision theory, was first applied to human sensory discrimination about 40 years ago. The theory's intent was to explain how humans discriminate and how we might use reliable measures to quantify this ability. An interesting finding of this work is that decisions are involved even in the simplest of discrimination tasks--say, determining whether or not a sound has been heard (a yes-no decision). Detection theory has been applied to a host of varied problems (for example, measuring the accuracy of diagnostic systems, survey research, reliability of lie detection tests) and extends far beyond the detection of signals. This book is a primer on signal detection theory, useful for both undergraduates and graduate students.

Download or read book The Inferior Colliculus written by Jeffery A. Winer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-12-05 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Connecting the auditory brain stem to sensory, motor, and limbic systems, the inferior colliculus is a critical midbrain station for auditory processing. Winer and Schreiner's The Inferior Colliculus, a critical, comprehensive reference, presents the current knowledge of the inferior colliculus from a variety of perspectives, including anatomical, physiological, developmental, neurochemical, biophysical, neuroethological and clinical vantage points. Written by leading researchers in the field, the book is an ideal introduction to the inferior colliculus and central auditory processing for clinicians, otolaryngologists, graduate and postgraduate research workers in the auditory and other sensory-motor systems.