About the project
This project will investigate how humans perceive object properties and their environment through sound, focusing on single impact sounds. The project will explore implications for audio-visual integration, gamification, speech perception, and auditory scene analysis. It will also examine the fundamental mechanisms of auditory perception and how we interpret simple sounds to understand our surroundings.
This exciting PhD project will explore the fascinating world of auditory perception, focusing on how humans extract information about objects and their environment solely from the sounds they produce. We will delve into the perception of single impact sounds, which are surprisingly rich in information and can reveal details about an object's material, size, shape, and even its motion.
This research has far-reaching implications for several fields:
- audio-visual integration: By understanding how the brain processes auditory information, we can develop more sophisticated models of how the senses interact to create a unified perception of the world. This knowledge can be applied to enhance virtual reality experiences, improve human-computer interaction, and develop assistive technologies for people with sensory impairments
- gamification: Imagine video games where the sounds of footsteps, collisions, and breaking objects are so realistic that they provide crucial cues for gameplay and enhance immersion. This project will contribute to the development of such realistic soundscapes by deepening our understanding of how basic auditory cues are processed
- speech perception: Single impact sounds can be considered the fundamental building blocks of voiced sounds in human speech. By investigating how we perceive these simple sounds, we can gain valuable insights into the complex mechanisms underlying speech perception and language processing. This knowledge could lead to improved speech recognition systems and interventions for speech and hearing impairments
- auditory scene analysis: This project will contribute to a deeper understanding of how the brain constructs a representation of the auditory world from a stream of sounds. By focusing on the perception of single impact sounds, we can isolate and study the basic mechanisms of auditory scene analysis, leading to a better understanding of how we perceive our environment
This project will involve a combination of psychoacoustic experiments, computational modelling, and potentially neuroimaging techniques. You will design and conduct experiments to investigate how listeners perceive different properties of objects based on impact sounds. You will also develop computational models to simulate and predict human perception, and potentially use neuroimaging to explore the neural correlates of auditory object perception.
