The Neural Basis of Listening

Neurons in certain regions of your brain process sound. They allow you to follow the grand themes of a symphony or understand one person speaking in a room full of conversations. Yet your brain receives only one fluctuating input signal from each ear. And if you lose one ear, you will still perceive a world of discrete, separate sound sources.

Our brains process sound even when we are asleep. Traditionally, studies of neural responses to sound have been in the passive or unconscious brain. But hearing is more important when we are actually listening, and this has been traditionally measured by behavioural responses to sound: e.g. pressing buttons in response to sounds. Passive hearing and active listening are two different modes of processing. If we want to understand hearing and the effects of diseases, we must understand how neurons process sound when we are actually listening.

This research develops computer models of neural processing and tests them by employing state of the art technology to record neural activity whilst simultaneously recording behavioural responses to sound. Thus we aim to understand how neurons process sound when we are actually listening;, the effects of attention, learning, and how we cope with deafness.

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