21/06/2024 Seminar by Etienne Thoret

Friday June 21, 2024, at 14:30, Henri Gastaut meeting room

Etienne Thoret (Banco Team, INT)

Rethinking hearing without Fourier’s hold

Abstract: For over 50 years, hearing has been modeled within the framework of the Fourier transform. This approach is based on the hypothesis that a signal can be decomposed into a sum of monochromatic signals. Fundamental knowledge and technological advancements in hearing aids are founded on the idea that the auditory periphery functions act as a Fourier spectrum analyzer, with nonlinearities added afterward to align with behavioral and neural data. In this presentation, I will first demonstrate the significant limitations of Fourier-based models in accounting for the adaptivity, sparsity, and nonlinear aspects of hearing. Subsequently, I will introduce a framework based on signal-driven envelope interpolation, which overcomes many of these limitations and offers a new perspective on understanding auditory coding.