Auditory Cortex at the Cocktail Party: Some Studies of Spatial Hearing

Grand Rounds – Sponsored by the Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery

Featuring John Middlebrooks, Ph.D.
Professor, Otolaryngology and Biomedical Engineering
Medicine School and College of Engineering
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Location: Herklotz Conference Room, Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (3rd floor of building #506)

Questions can be directed to Abby Copeland at acopelan@uci.edu or 949.824.9107

Abstract:
Spatial hearing permits us to identify the locations of sound sources and to isolate sounds of interest from the confusion of competing sounds. I will consider some evolving views of how the locations of sounds are written in patterns of cortical activity, will show that these patterns vary on a time scale of minutes depending on an animal’s listening state, and will present some preliminary psychophysical and physiological results on spatial release from informational masking and spatial stream segregation.