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harmaapalkki


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Research


Current objectives

Visual evaluation of HRTFs

Computational assessment of HRTFs

Perceptual evaluation of HRTFs

Induction of spatial hearing
to audiovisual speech


Cortical processing of 3-D sound

Multimodal spatial hearing

Our spatial hearing ability is truly multimodal, i.e., applies strongly the information / cues obtained from other senses than audition as well. To prove these, there are numerous practical cases (e.g., motional cues, visual dominance, bone-conduction) as well as scientific studies to prove this. In a typical spatial hearing experiment only the sense of hearing is under test and the influences of the other senses are suppressed by the experimental design, which is not the natural functioning of (directional) hearing.

There is quite little research on multimodal experiments applying virtual 3-D sounds that allow the full control of natural-like soundscapes represented over headphones. So far HRTFs have been investigated mostly unimodally applying only the sense of audition, except for the case of motional cues obtained via dynamic head tracking. This has been due to the technical difficulties, complexity and lack of cross-modal knowledge.

Given the opportunity, I would like continue my research on multimodal interactions in spatial hearing, applying 3-D sound (based on measured / modeled HRTFs).

Neurobehavioral research on spatial hearing

Although our pioneering paper on human cortical representation of virtual auditory space revealed fundamental issues, I think there are many issues to be investigated in the cortical processing. The modern cortical measurement techniques, such as EEG, MEG, fMRI, TMS and PET, gain significantly from using natural (three-dimensional) sound stimuli based on HRTFs. However, the 3-D sound production requires high quality equipment (such as KAR Audio stimulators) and expertise on the stimulus generation. Having already over five years of experience on the matter, I would like continue collaboration work on this topic matter.