Event:

The ability to hear out a sound source against a background of competing sounds is critical to the survival of many species, and essential for human communication. Nevertheless, brain mechanisms contributing to such ‘cocktail-party’ listening remain poorly understood. In particular, it remains unclear how the auditory brain is able to extract reliable spatial information direct from the source, when competing sounds and reflections dominate all but the earliest moments of the sound wave reaching each ear. Using a range of techniques –from patch-clamp recordings in brain slices to human psychophysics and brain imaging - I will demonstrate how the biophysical properties of neurons in the early auditory brain are critical to cocktail-party listening. I will also discuss these data in the context of the challenges facing therapies such as bilateral cochlear implantation that seek to provide/restore spatial hearing in the profoundly deaf.