Hearing Seminars
CCRMA hosts a weekly Hearing seminar (aka Music 319). All areas related to perception are discussed, but the group emphasizes topics that will help us understand how the auditory system works. Speakers are drawn from the group and visitors to the Stanford area. Most attendees are graduate students, faculty, or local researchers interested in psychology, music, engineering, neurophysiology, and linguistics. Stanford students can (optionally) receive credit to attend, by enrolling in Music 319 "Research Seminar on Computational Models of Sound Perception." Meetings are usually from 10:30AM to 12:20 (or so, depending on questions) on Friday mornings in the CCRMA Seminar Room.
The current schedule is announced via a mailing list. To subscribe yourself to the mailing list, please visit https://cm-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/hearing-seminar If you have any questions, please contact Malcolm Slaney at hearing-seminar-admin@ccrma.stanford.edu.
Upcoming Hearing Seminars
Laura Gwilliams on Decoding the Semantics of Audio in the Brain
Date:Fri, 10/06/2023 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarProf. Laura Gwilliams has just arrived at Stanford and is doing some wonderful work on decoding the brain's response to semantic stimuli. More details to follow.
FREEOpen to the PublicJosh McDermott (MIT) on Auditory Brain Models
Date:Thu, 10/12/2023 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarSpecial seminar on a Thursday morning.
Details to follow.FREEOpen to the PublicKarlheinz Brandenberg - Spatial Sound - HRTFs vs. Room Reverb
Date:Fri, 10/20/2023 - 1:30pm - 3:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarAre HTRFs or matching the room reverb more important for hearing spatial sound? Karlheinz Brandenburg and his colleagues will lead the discussion, illustrated with new data.
Note special time.FREEOpen to the PublicRobotic Hearing Systems for Autonomous Vehicles
Date:Fri, 10/27/2023 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarXuan Zhong will discuss the issues in building Robotic Hearing Systems for Autonomous Vehicles.
Details to follow.
FREEOpen to the Public
Recent Hearing Seminars
Shaikat Hossain - Improving sound coding for cochlear implant users
Date:Fri, 02/17/2023 - 10:30am - 12:10pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarCochlear implants (CI) are amazing if all you care about is speech. They convert audio into electrical impulses which are fed into a user's cochlea. Young users can learn spoken language using only a CI. But cochlear implants are really lousy in complicated audio environments, and at representing music. One of the problems is that they large encode the overall speech spectrum, but ignore the details (like timing) that are important for understanding the world around us. What can we do better?
Can we provide better electrical stimuli so CI users can enjoy music and they can understand speech in noise?
Who: Shaikat Hossain
What: Improving sound coding for cochlear implant users
When: Friday February 17th at 10:30AMFREEOpen to the PublicImmersive Audio - How much quality is necessary?
Date:Fri, 02/10/2023 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA BallroomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarHow do we create an immersive audio environment? What is immersive audio? How good does the audio need to be for augmented reality? How do we judge its quality?
FREEOpen to the PublicAudio Quality - How Much is Necessary?
Date:Fri, 02/03/2023 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Stage (Top floor)Event Type:Hearing SeminarHow much do you worry about audio quality? Do you ever have high-enough quality? Does anybody care about audio quality? What is audio quality?
I'm very happy to announce a special Hearing Seminar on audio quality. Join us for a panel of distinguished audio experts who will talk about how they perceive audio, when is the quality high enough, and how do we define quality. Come be part of the discussion.FREEOpen to the PublicMalcolm Slaney on Connecting auditory, visual and motor signals
Date:Fri, 01/20/2023 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarWe start the Winter 2023 quarter with one last talk in the “What I did during my pandemic” series.
Last summer I helped lead the auditory, visual and motor group at the Telluride Neuromorphic Engineering Cognition Workshop. This is a rather intense 3 week long workshop investigating different projects at the intersection of neurophysiology, engineering and biology. It’s a lot of fun. (And the reason for more all-nighters than any other part of my career.)
This year the audio group looked at the connections between the auditory, motor and visual systems, using computer vision and brain decoding. Within this broad effort the work divided into two sub projects: violin and decoding.FREEOpen to the PublicGopal Anumanchipalli (UCB) - Neural computations in Humans for Speech
Date:Fri, 11/18/2022 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarPerhaps the holy grail of auditory neuroscience is understanding how our brains process speech. I’m happy that Prof. Gopala Anumanchipalli (UC Berkeley) is coming to the Hearing Seminar this week to talk about his latest decoding work. Gopala and his colleagues at UCSF have done some of the most amazing brain decoding work using ECoG (Electrocorticography) to measure brain activity using electrode arrays on the surface of human brains. Gopala’s earlier work looked at directly decoding speech from these recordings placed directly on the surface of the cortex.
FREEOpen to the PublicTakako Fujioka - What I did during the pandemic
Date:Fri, 11/11/2022 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarProf. Takako Fujioka continues the Hearing Seminar series “What I did during my pandemic” with an update on her work on understanding the dynamics of ensembles and improvisation.
This is starting to be a theme: How do we take apart and analyze dynamic systems? In Prof. Fujioka's case, two or more players have their own goals and timing, but must cooperate for the greater good.Open to the PublicVikash Glija (UCSD) - Connecting auditory and motor systems
Date:Fri, 11/04/2022 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing Seminar
At this week’s CCRMA Hearing Seminar Prof. Vikash Gilja (UCSD) will be talking about neural prothesis, building a brain-computer interface to control a bird’s voice. I met Vikash earlier this year and was impressed with his energy, knowledge and scientific curiosity. His work with the motor system and with neural BCI are both amazing. Groups such as Neuralink have suggested that we can use electrodes implanted in the brain to directly control the outside world.FREEOpen to the PublicDick Lyon on Modeling Nonlinear Mechanics in Normal (and Impaired) Cochleas – Whose Data Should We Ignore?
Date:Fri, 10/28/2022 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Seminar RoomEvent Type:Hearing SeminarCochlear mechanics is hard, and there are lots of ways to look at the problem. Dick Lyon has been studying cochlear mechanics for as long as I have known him, and recently delivered a keynote at biannual Mechanics of the Hearing meeting summarizing his view of what data makes sense. He'll bring his overview to CCRMA.
Who: Richard F. Lyon (Google)
What: Modeling Nonlinear Mechanics in Normal (and Impaired) Cochleas – Whose Data Should We Ignore?
Why: The cochlea starts all hearing processes.
AbstractFREEOpen to the PublicStefania Serafin - Multisensory experiences for hearing rehabilitation
Date:Fri, 10/21/2022 - 11:50am - 12:20pmLocation:CCRMA Stage (Upstairs)Event Type:Hearing Seminar
Our eyes and our ears are pretty good at working together. But what can touch add to our perception? We can certainly *feel* the bass from loud music. And braille is a good way to convey language. Can touch add to the information conveyed by audio? Most importantly how do we get the information from the two modalities to fuse?I’m very happy that Prof. Stefania Serafin is returning to CCRMA to talk about her work using haptic (touch) information to convey more information to users that are profoundly hard of hearing.FREEOpen to the PublicDavid Huron - A Theory of the Musically Sublime
Date:Fri, 10/14/2022 - 10:30am - 12:00pmLocation:CCRMA Courtyard (outdoors)Event Type:Hearing SeminarProf. David Huron has made a career of studying our reactions to music. In his latest work he describes the musical features that drive strong fear responses, and why this is pleasureable.
ABSTRACT:FREEOpen to the Public
