ARI Guest Talk: 12th June 2023

Matthew Joseph Goupell, Professor at the University of Maryland, USA, will give a talk on "Rethinking interaural time difference encoding: Dominant channel theory".

Humans are incredibly sensitive to interaural time differences (ITDs) at low frequencies (<1500 Hz), and these frequency-specific cues carry most of the information that is used in horizontal-plane sound localization. This talk will discuss new investigations concerning the problems that occur with ITD encoding for cochlear-implant users and why they cannot achieve the incredible ITD sensitivity that occurs in acoustic hearing. It will also discuss new studies in acoustic-hearing individuals that have data that have caused us to rethink the basic binaural models that are concerned with how low-frequency ITDs are encoded.

Matthew Goupell is a professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at the University of Maryland. He received a B.S. in physics and mathematics at Hope College in Holland, MI (2001) and a Ph.D. in physics at Michigan State University (2005). He spent three years as a post-doc at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Austria and two years as a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin – Madison researching auditory perception and spatial hearing in bilateral cochlear-implant users. His current research focuses on binaural hearing, the effects of aging on temporal processing, and cochlear implants by combining human psychoacoustical with objective measurements (computed-tomography scans, electrophysiological measurements).