What is the role of consciousness in auditory perception?

István Winkler

On Tuesday 15 November 2011 prof. dr István Winkler (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) will give the monthly CSCA lecture in Amsterdam. He is visiting the Music Cognition Group for two days.

Winkler will talk about his recent research in auditory perception and its role and functioning in the newborn brain. He will argue that the representation of a sound organization in the brain is a coalition of auditory regularity representations producing compatible predictions for the continuation of the sound input. Competition between alternative sound organizations relies on comparing the regularity representations on how reliably they predict incoming sounds and how much together they explain from the total variance of the acoustic input. Results obtained in perceptual studies using the auditory streaming paradigm will be interpreted in support of the hypothesis that regularity representations underlie auditory stream segregation.

Furthermore, Winkler will argue that the same regularity representations are involved in the deviance-detection process reflected by the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potential (ERP).

Finally, based on the hypothesized link between auditory scene analysis and deviance detection, Winkler will propose a functional model of sound organization and discuss how it can be implemented in a computational model.

For more information (time and location), see the CSCA website.

Näätänen R, Kujala T, & Winkler I (2011). Auditory processing that leads to conscious perception: a unique window to central auditory processing opened by the mismatch negativity and related responses. Psychophysiology, 48 (1), 4-22 PMID: 20880261.

Winkler I, Denham SL, & Nelken I (2009). Modeling the auditory scene: predictive regularity representations and perceptual objects. Trends in cognitive sciences, 13 (12), 532-40 PMID: 19828357