Writing Response #6:   Audition in Brains & Machines

The following paper is required reading for the week of October 26th:

McDermott, J. H., Simoncelli, E. P. (2011) Sound Texture Perception via Statistics of the Auditory Periphery: Evidence from Sound Synthesis, Neuron, 71, 926-940. (Document includes optional supplemental material.)

In advance of Wednesday's presentation and discussion of this reading, you should submit a response to the following question:

McDermott and Simoncelli present a model of auditory processing in the human system, captured in Figure 1 of their paper, which includes filters, or channels, tuned for sound frequencies and their modulations over time. They propose that simple statistics of the signals generated by individual channels, as well as correlations between channels, capture salient aspects of sound textures that may be used in texture recognition by human listeners. Drawing on more than one of the perceptual experiments described in the paper, describe how synthesized sounds were used to establish the importance of both single-channel statistics (labeled M in the model shown in Figure 1) and correlations between channels (labeled C, C1, and C2 in the model) for sound texture recognition. What empirical evidence suggests that this set of proposed statistics may not be adequate to represent all sound textures?

You should write at most one page (500 words) in response to this question. In addition, you should also submit a question of your own, related to the reading. This writing assignment is due on Tuesday, October 27 at midnight and should be submitted to the 9.523 course site on stellar using your private account: https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/9/fa15/9.523/. If you have a problem with submitting to stellar, please send your response to Ellen Hildreth at ehildreth@wellesley.edu.