Dr. Nicholas A. Lesica

• Auditory Processing

• Techniques for nonlinear system identification

• Population coding of natural sounds
  

Population Coding of natural sounds

The past decades have seen great advances in our understanding of how sounds are represented in the activity of neurons in the brain, and models have been developed

that can successfully reproduce the neuronal activity evoked by simple sounds typically used in studies of auditory processing, such as tones. However, when tested with

more complex sounds such as human speech, these models often fall short, and recent studies suggest that auditory processing of complex sounds can only be understood

by observing the neuronal activity evoked by these sounds directly. In my research, I take advantage of recent advances in experimental technology to observe the activity

in populations of neurons during the presentation of natural sounds.

Hopefully, the results of these experiments can be used to develop more advanced models of auditory processing that can reproduce the neuronal activity evoked by

complex sounds.