E.A.R.S. is a monthly auditory seminar series with the focus on central auditory processing and circuits. Please pre-register (for free) and tune in via Crowdcast (enter your email to receive the link for the talk): https://www.crowdcast.io/e/ears/10

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Speakers:

Dr. Laurel Carney (University of Rochester):  “Neural Representations of Stimulus Envelopes: What’s Inside?”

Most studies of envelope processing have focused on either the wideband stimulus envelope, or on the envelopes of a linear filterbank representing the auditory periphery. This talk will introduce the transformation of stimulus envelope that occur from the auditory periphery through the auditory midbrain. Nonlinear transduction of sensory receptor cells in the cochlear, together with nonlinear cochlear amplification, result in significant distortion (or enhancement) of stimulus features related to the envelopes of complex sounds. Consideration of the neural representation of stimulus envelope features provides a different insight for considerations of psychophysical sensitivity to this aspect of complex sounds.

Dr. Aravind Parthasarathy (University of Pittsburgh): “A cross-species approach for studying markers and mechanisms of speech intelligibility”

Optimal speech-in-noise intelligibility results from interactions between bottom-up neural coding of sensory information and top-down influences of effortful listening. This talk will discuss the neural encoding of various temporal elements in speech and their effects on speech perception by using a cross-species approach with auditory evoked potentials as the translational bridge.