Israel Nelken: The highs and lows of the auditory system

Neuroaesthetics | Symposium


Symposium im ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie,
22.-24. November 2012
In Kooperation und mit Unterstützung der Gemeinnützigen
Hertie-Stiftung.


Sounds are vibrations in the ambient air, but sounds are also
perceptual entities that I will call, for lack of better
terminology, auditory objects.
The relationships between sounds and the resulting auditory
objects are indirect: auditory objects are synthesized in the
auditory system through a long and complicated sequence of
processes which are only partially understood, which are largely
pre-attentive, but which may be experience-dependent. It is
natural to assume that once these auditory objects are created,
their inter-relationships are processed to uncover the
organization of the sound stream. I will show that, surprisingly,
the synthesis of auditory objects is to a large extent preceded
by pre-attentive processes that organize auditory objects in
time, creating complex expectations and detecting their
fulfillment or violation. These are universal processes that seem
to be present in all vertebrates. Such processes are engaged in
humans when listening to music, so that in as much as music is
organized sound, brains (including the human brain) extract
organization before they construct sounds.


After undergraduate studies of mathematics and physics (B.Sc.
1982, Hebrew
University), Prof. Dr. Israel Nelken turned neurobiologist (M.Sc.
1985, Ph.D.
1991, Hebrew University; postdoctoral studies at Johns Hopkins
University,
Baltimore, MD, USA), specializing in the auditory system. Since
1994 Nelken is on the faculty of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, Israel (full professor since 2008). He received the
Katz prize in 2000 and the Michael Bruno prize in 2008. His
research centers on the coding of natural and naturalistic scenes
in the central auditory system, using methods that span the range
from single-neuron recordings in animal models to recordings of
evoked potentials in humans.