Neural concomitant of vowel segregation
Claude Alain
(University of Toronto/Rotman Institute)

During normal listening, speech perception is often complicated by the presence of other sound sources (e.g., voices), which can be simultaneously active. Thus, to follow a conversation listener must therefore distinguish acoustic elements that belong to each of the individual voices. This presentation will include a brief overview of the acoustic cues that are important for auditory scene analysis in general, and for segregating simultaneous sources in particular. I will outline the theoretical framework that has guided our research over the past number of years, and will present a number of experiments that have tested and refined this framework. Specific findings concerning the sequence of cognitive and neural processes underlying concurrent sound segregation will be presented, with particular emphasis on the separation of speech sounds.

Relevant material:

Alain, C., Arnott, S. R., and Picton, T. W. (2001). Bottom-up and top-down influences on auditory scene analysis: evidence from event-related brain potentials. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform, 27(5), 1072-1089.

Alain, C., Schuler, B. M., and McDonald, K. L. (2002). Neural activity associated with distinguishing concurrent auditory objects. J Acoust Soc Am, 111(2), 990-995.

Alain, C., McDonald, K. L., Ostroff, J. M., and Schneider, B. (2001). Age-related changes in detecting a mistuned harmonic. J Acoust Soc Am, 109(5 Pt 1). 2211-2216.