Background
Although our sense of hearing has long been the subject of
intensive scientific inquiry, computational methods have only
recently been applied to this intellectual domain with the degree
of sophistication and systematic development required for
achieving significant gains in scientific understanding. The
complexity of the physiological and anatomical substrates of
auditory function, in concert with the highly mathematical nature
of hearing's physical bases, provide an ideal scientific
application for the newly emergent techniques pertaining to
scientific visualization and auralization.
Further progress in hearing science requires the sort of
computational techniques now being developed at various sites
around the world (but concentrated, at present, in the United
States and the United Kingdom) for modeling and visualization of
complex auditory phenomena. The design of future-generation
hearing prostheses, speech recognition systems and audio
technologies all vitally depend on such methodology and the
understanding resulting from its intelligent application.
The Advanced Study Institute (ASI) will bring together leading
pioneers in the emerging field of computational hearing to
present their perspectives on the application of computational
methods to various domains of auditory research.
The ASI will survey the traditional domains of hearing research,
including anatomy, physiology, psychoacoustics, speech and music,
but from a largely computational perspective. Several topics,
such as auditory scene analysis, speech recognition and auditory
processing under adverse acoustic conditions are inherently
computational in nature. Other subjects, such as the physiology
of the auditory periphery, have witnessed a significant amount of
computational effort over the past decade and a half. The goal is
to provide a coherent and comprehensive perspective on hearing
that is integrated with state-of-the-art computational modeling
and visualization techniques that can serve as the basis for a
new generation of auditory research.
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