Project Details
Projekt
TRR 31: The Active Auditory System
Subject Area
Biology
Medicine
Medicine
Term
from 2005 to 2017
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 14945932
The aim of the Collaborative Research Centre of the University of Oldenburg, the University of Magdeburg and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology at Magdeburg is to understand the mechanisms underlying auditory stimulus selection under everyday real-life conditions in which we analyse acoustic scenes with ease and are able to separately listen to the sounds from one source in a mixture of sounds originating from various sources (e.g., as observed in the cocktail party effect). How this separate perception of sounds from one source (i.e., auditory object formation) in complex acoustic scenes is achieved by the auditory system is not yet well understood.
Auditory object formation and scene analysis are driven by two types of processes:
-- bottom-up processes in which the received physical signal drives the analysis of stimulus characteristics and
-- top-down processes in which the auditory system forms hypotheses based on the previous input that guide the subsequent stimulus evaluation.
The integrative approach of the contributing research groups investigates both the stimulus processing on the various levels of the auditory pathway as well as in the pathways that are activated in parallel in the auditory system and are specialised on different stimulus features. The mechanism of auditory object formation and scene analysis are studied by combining psychophysical and neurophysiological methods. This allows identification of the correlates between the neuronal representation of auditory objects and their perception. Models of processing in the auditory pathway allow the assessment of the validity and robustness of the proposed mechanisms.
The results of the various approaches in the study of auditory scene analysis will be used to develop signal processing algorithms that are optimised for segregating sound sources in complex acoustic scenes and promote the separate analysis of sounds from specific sources. The research will help to construct better interfaces for the interaction between humans and computers using speech commands as well as to develop better processing mechanisms for hearing aids and cochlear implants that will provide patients with an improved ability to communicate and participate in social life.
Auditory object formation and scene analysis are driven by two types of processes:
-- bottom-up processes in which the received physical signal drives the analysis of stimulus characteristics and
-- top-down processes in which the auditory system forms hypotheses based on the previous input that guide the subsequent stimulus evaluation.
The integrative approach of the contributing research groups investigates both the stimulus processing on the various levels of the auditory pathway as well as in the pathways that are activated in parallel in the auditory system and are specialised on different stimulus features. The mechanism of auditory object formation and scene analysis are studied by combining psychophysical and neurophysiological methods. This allows identification of the correlates between the neuronal representation of auditory objects and their perception. Models of processing in the auditory pathway allow the assessment of the validity and robustness of the proposed mechanisms.
The results of the various approaches in the study of auditory scene analysis will be used to develop signal processing algorithms that are optimised for segregating sound sources in complex acoustic scenes and promote the separate analysis of sounds from specific sources. The research will help to construct better interfaces for the interaction between humans and computers using speech commands as well as to develop better processing mechanisms for hearing aids and cochlear implants that will provide patients with an improved ability to communicate and participate in social life.
DFG Programme
CRC/Transregios
Completed projects
- A01 - Spatial auditory scene analysis in mammals (Project Head Klump, Georg M. )
- A02 - Funktionelle Organisation der periodotopen Karte im auditorischen Cortex sowie deren Bedeutung für dei Objekterkennung (Project Head Schulze, Holger )
- A03 - Interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes in cortical processing of frequency modulated signals (Project Head Ohl, Frank W. )
- A04 - Predictive mechanisms in active stream segregation and related tasks (Project Heads Brechmann, André ; Brosch, Ph.D., Michael ; Scheich, Henning )
- A05 - Physiology of Auditory Object Formation in the Bird Forebrain (Project Head Klump, Georg M. )
- A06 - Processing and recognition of the temporal pattern of acoustic signals in the auditory system (Project Head Heil, Peter )
- A07 - Temporospatial imaging of auditory selection and audio-visual integration during language comprehension (Project Head Münte, Thomas F. )
- A08 - Neural basis of audiovisual integration (Project Heads Heinze, Hans-Jochen ; Noesselt, Tömme )
- A09 - Neural mechanisms of top-down modulation of auditory brain activity in humans (Project Heads Herrmann, Christoph ; Zaehle, Ph.D., Tino )
- A10 - Auditory Memory and Sound Pattern Recognition in Songbirds (Project Head Langemann, Ulrike )
- A12 - Dopaminergic modulation of learning-dependent plasticity in auditory cortex (Project Heads Brechmann, André ; Thiel, Christiane M. )
- A13 - Functional anatomy of interhemispherie and thalamic interaction of the auditory cortex (Project Head Budinger, Ph.D., Eike )
- A14 - Evolution of sound localization in vertebrates: head size, sound frequency and neural phase-locking (Project Head Köppl, Christine )
- A15 - Cross-modal attentional entrainment in human auditory cortex (Project Head Debener, Stefan )
- A16 - Derivation of statistical modeling descriptions of neural audiovisual speech coding in the human brain (Project Head Rieger, Jochem )
- A17 - The role of cholinergic modulation in learning and active sensing (Project Heads Heinze, Hans-Jochen ; Kluge, Christian )
- A18 - Foreground-background organization of complex auditory scenes (Project Head Bendixen, Alexandra )
- B01 - Modeling speech processing in auditory scene analysis (Project Heads Brand, Thomas ; Ewert, Stephan ; Kollmeier, Birger )
- B02 - Models of sound source localization and source separation based on the statistics of monaural and binaural signal features (Project Head Hohmann, Volker )
- B03 - Psychoacoustical modelling of auditory perception in humans (Project Head Verhey, Jesko L. )
- B04 - Subjective dimensions of audiovisual object formation (Project Head Colonius, Hans )
- B05 - Complex auditory features for robust automatic speech recognition and for modeling human speech perception (Project Heads Kollmeier, Birger ; Meyer, Bernd T. )
- B06 - Model based source separation for auditory scene analysis (Project Heads Anemüller, Jörn ; Ewert, Stephan )
- B07 - Binaural cocktail-party processing: the role of perceptual organisation and release from masking (Project Head van de Par, Steven )
- C01 - Skalierbare Kompressionen von Audio- und Sprachsignalen basierend auf auditorischen Gütemaßen (Project Heads Kollmeier, Birger ; Mertins, Alfred )
- C02 - Komplexe auditorische Merkmale für die robuste automatische Spracherkennung und zur Modellierung der Sprachperzepti-on beim Menschen (Project Heads Kollmeier, Birger ; Mertins, Alfred )
- MGK - Integrated Research Training Group (Project Head Kollmeier, Birger )
- T01 - Speech-controlled automated matrix test (Knowledge Transfer Project) (Project Heads Kollmeier, Birger ; Meyer, Bernd T. )
- Z - Central Administrative Project (Project Head Klump, Georg M. )
Applicant Institution
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
Co-Applicant Institution
Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg
Participating Institution
Leibniz-Institut für Neurobiologie (LIN)
Spokesperson
Professor Dr. Georg M. Klump
