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Natural Auditory SCEnes in Humans and Machines: Establishing the Neural Computations of Everyday Hearing

Project description

Looking at the brain to understand everyday sounds

Environments like offices and metros are filled with sounds that influence our awareness and perception of the surroundings. Understanding how our brains interpret these sounds presents a challenge, particularly for individuals with hearing impairments. The ERC-funded NASCE project aims to establish the Semantic Segmentation Hypothesis (SSH) to advance our understanding of real-world auditory scene analysis (ASA). SSH suggests that semantic representations play a role in ASA, shifting the focus from acoustic processing to understanding everyday sounds. The project explores how the brain creates and uses semantic representations of sound sources, and how these representations interact with acoustic processing to aid in the recognition of different sounds. The project seeks to explore brain dynamics to understand auditory perception.

Objective

In an office, on a metro, or at home, diverse sounds may be surrounding you: a computer fan, footsteps and indistinct chatter, distant cars, the train slowing down. These sounds shape our environmental awareness, even when visual cues are absent. Despite its ecological relevance, understanding how our brain parses the acoustic scene into semantic objects remains a major scientific challenge. Moreover, individuals with hearing impairments, including those relying on hearing aids or cochlear implants, face challenges, both auditory and cognitive, in environments with multiple sound sources. The NASCE project aims to mechanistically comprehend real-world auditory scene analysis (ASA) through a novel framework: the Semantic Segmentation Hypothesis (SSH). The SSH posits that semantic representations drive real-world ASA, shifting the focus from early acoustic processing to the semantic analysis of everyday sounds. It addresses fundamental questions, such as: How does the brain create semantic sound source representations? How do they interact with acoustic processing, and aid our ability to recognize sounds in a scene? NASCE integrates cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and AI methods. Employing neuroimaging and behavioral paradigms, we aim to reveal how the brain dynamically represents auditory scenes across brain regions for relevant listening tasks. Using deep neural networks and ontologies, we aim to construct neuroscientifically grounded computational models simulating cerebral and behavioral responses under the same scenes and tasks as in the experiments. Finally, with advanced analytical methods we will consolidate behavioral, computational, and neuroscientific insights and establish SSH as a groundbreaking theory of ASA. NASCE promotes a paradigm shift, fundamentally reshaping our comprehension of ecological hearing. Moreover, it paves the way for the applications in machine hearing of computational models that mimic human auditory cognition.

Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-ERC-SYG - HORIZON ERC Synergy Grants

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2024-SyG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 5 077 960,00
Address
MINDERBROEDERSBERG 4
6200 MD Maastricht
Netherlands

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Region
Zuid-Nederland Limburg (NL) Zuid-Limburg
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 5 077 960,00

Beneficiaries (2)

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