Keywords: hearing, computational auditory processing models, high-field fMRI

“Computational Neuroimaging of Real-Life Listening”

Hearing has a crucial role in our life, guiding our behavior and helping us to decide how to react to occurring events. This thesis investigates the perception of real-life sounds and scenes by combining computational models of auditory processing and high-field fMRI.  Results reveal the neural computations by which the brain derives higher-level semantic information (e.g. category) from the sounds and how the brain uses this information to process and distinguish concurrent sounds. The findings provide a relevant step forward to understanding the fundamental computations underlying human hearing and inspiring novel computational algorithms and architectures for artificial hearing.