Event
Ph.D. Research Proposal Exam: Kelsey Dutta
Thursday, September 24, 2020
10:00 a.m.
zoom https://umd.zoom.us/j/4648673771
Maria Hoo
301 405 3681
mch@umd.edu
ANNOUNCEMENT: Ph.D. Research Proposal Exam
Name: Kelsey Dutta
Committee:
Professor Shihab Shamma (Chair)
Professor Jonathan Simon
Professor Behtash Babadi
Date/time: Thursday, September 24, 2020 10am
Location: zoom https://umd.zoom.us/j/4648673771
Title: Perceptual Binding and Temporal Coherence in the Auditory Cortex
Abstract: Auditory streaming and perceptual binding are functions performed by the auditory brain rapidly and without conscious effort. They are fundamental for how we analyze and understand the sound environment including the perception of speech and ability to attend to one speaker while ignoring background noise. Recent work has suggested that temporal coherence of frequency components is a key cue which causes the brain to group those channels together and form an auditory stream corresponding to a single sound source. Coherent frequency inputs will lead to coherent neuronal firing, and we hypothesize that such neurons will demonstrate reciprocal enhancement of firing rate or suppression of responses to incoherent channels. This proposal examines neuronal activity from the auditory cortex of ferrets in order to better understand the role of temporal coherence in formation of auditory streams. One experiment examines the role of temporal coherence on stream formation in a selective attention task paradigm, and the other uses a stochastic figure-ground stimulus to examine neural correlates of a perceptual “pop-out” effect during passive listening.