QUANTIFYING ACTIVE SENSING WITH NEAR INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY
Abstract
Echolocating animals effortlessly navigate, hunt, and interact with their environment, despitecluttered and noisy return signals." Blind expert human echolocators prove that this capacity doesnot depend exclusively on biological specializations unique to particular species. The ultimateobjective of this project is to understand how the brains of toothed whales (odontocetes) enablethese animals to effortlessly detect, locate, and identify objects through echolocation, and torelate these mechanisms to those allowing both odontocetes and humans to process sound ineveryday settings. Our team aims to develop near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRs) sensors andprocessing schemes to enable us to quantify the brain networks that build robust, invariantrepresentations of auditory objects in complex auditory scenes, and then test these in bothodontocetes and humans. We will use these sensors to study how specializations in the brain andassociated behavioral strategies allow odontocetes and humans use to hear (i.e., process acousticenergy emitte"d by sound sources) in complex, cluttered acoustic settings and how this relates tohow odontocetes echolocate.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 15, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912332
Entities
People
- Barbara Shinn-Cunningham
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy