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Language Science Lecture Series: Laurel Carney

Laurel Carney

Humanities Center Rm D

What can the auditory models teach us about speech? Letting nonlinear physiological models have a say

This talk will describe ongoing collaborative studies between the Carney lab (BME) and the McDonough lab (Linguistics). We have explored the role of auditory response properties, especially including nonlinear properties of the auditory system, in neural coding of speech sounds, including vowels and fricatives. These studies have included computational modeling of neural responses to speech in quiet and in noise backgrounds, physiological recordings in the midbrain, and testing of human listeners with normal hearing and sensorineural hearing loss. Most recently, we have asked how nonlinear auditory properties may shape the “vowel space,” the cross-linguistic pattern of vowels based on spectral-peak (formant) frequencies.