Talk

Simon Kirby University of Edinburgh   All known languages are made up of statistically coherent sequences - words - whose frequency distribution follows a power law known as a Zipfian distribution. Despite the ubiquity of these features across languages their origins are poorly understood. In this talk, I will argue that they arise because they facilitate learning […]

Dr. Bhareth Chandrasekaran Abstract: My program of research uses a systems neuroscience approach to study the computations, maturational constraints, and plasticity underlying behaviorally relevant auditory signals like speech. Speech signals are multidimensional, acoustically variable, and temporally ephemeral. A significant computational challenge in speech perception (and more broadly, audition) is categorization, that is, mapping continuous, multidimensional, […]