Seminars in Hearing Research

Date: Thursday, October 3, 2024

Location: Nelson Hall, Room 1215

Time: 12:00-1:00pm

Speaker: Srivatsun Sadagopan, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh.

Title: Auditory cortical computations for robust vocalization recognition.

Abstract:  Ethologically important sounds such as human speech and animal vocalizations are typically produced with tremendous between-subject and inter-trial variability. These sounds are also encountered in highly variable listening environments. A central function of auditory processing is to generalize over this variability and group sounds that carry distinct behavioral meanings into discrete categories. In this talk, I will describe a theoretical model of how such categorization can be achieved in the case of animal vocalizations. Using guinea pigs performing vocalization categorization tasks as an animal model, I will present electrophysiological and behavioral experiments that validate the model. I will then propose a framework for modeling attentional enhancement of sound category representations and describe ongoing experiments to test model predictions using large-scale neural recordings in behaving animals. In summary, these theoretical and experimental results will propose a biologically interpretable hierarchical model of auditory processing in which early acoustic representations are transformed into downstream goal-directed representations that support specific behaviors.

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The working schedule is available here: https://purdue.edu/TPAN/hearing/shrp_schedule

The titles and abstracts of the talks will be added here: https://purdue.edu/TPAN/hearing/shrp_abstracts