ARI Guest Talk: 1 December 2022
Talk: Nathan Weisz: "Listening to speech: beyond hearing"
Date: 1 December 2022, 5pm
Location: Seminar Room (Ground floor), Acoustics Research Institute (ÖAW), Wohllebengasse 12-14, 1040 Wien
Abstract:
Making sense of speech crucially depends on our ability to transduce the underlying physical into neural signals, that the brain can process. Damages to hearing are thus detrimental to speech perception, and pose an increasing health challenge. However, how well individuals can listen to speech is highly variable, especially when conditions become challenging. This variability is not only driven by the hearing status of the individual. In my talk, I want to illustrate recent work by my lab showing how an individual’s disposition to engage in anticipatory auditory predictions modulates measures of neural speech tracking. Additionally, I will introduce new attempts by my lab to understand the link between visuo-motor processes and speech processing. In the discussion, I intend to synthesize the results into a framework that includes multiple “prediction routes“ to support listening and give an outlook on how it could improve our understanding of the relationship between hearing, ageing, and cognitive decline.