# Multiscale modeling of the cocktail party problem

> **NIH NIH U01** · JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $443,470

## Abstract

Project summary
 At every instant of our lives, a cacophony of sounds impinges on our ears and challenges our brain to make
sense of the complex acoustic environment in which we live – a phenomenon referred to as the cocktail party
problem (CPP). Up till now, efforts to understand this phenomenon focused on the role of acoustic cues in
shaping sensory encoding of auditory objects in the brain. Yet, listening is not the same as hearing. It engages
both sensory and cognitive processes to enable the brain to adapt its computational primitives and neural
encoding to the changing soundscape and shifting demands to attend to various sounds in the scene. The current
proposal puts forth an adaptive theory of auditory perception which integrates the role of both sensory
mechanisms and cognitive control in a unified multiscale theory that combines neural processes at the level of
single neurons, neural populations and across brain areas. Central to this hypothesis is the role of rapid neural
plasticity that reshapes brain responses to acoustic stimuli according to the statistical structure of the
soundscape, guided by feedback mechanisms from memory and attention. The research plan translates this
hypothesis into a unified multiscale model employing a distributed inference architecture (Aim 1). This scheme
employs hierarchical dynamical systems that track the statistical structure of the stimulus at different resolutions
and time-scales, and adapt their responses based on both memory and attentional priors. This architecture is
used as springboard to predict the interaction between sensory and cognitive mechanisms at play during the
CPP. It also affords a general solution to the scene analysis problem that will be interfaced with existing sound
technologies (e.g. speech recognition, medical diagnosis, target tracking and surveillance). This computational
effort is informed and validated with empirical data (Aim 2) from experiments in human subjects, using
psychoacoustics and EEG; as well as single-unit electrophysiology in behaving ferrets. The experiments shed
light of neural processes underlying the CPP using rich stimuli that manipulate the statistical structure as well as
attentional focus of subjects (humans/animals). The final integrated theory is refined in perceptual studies in
young and aging adults whose perception is highly challenged by complex listening soundscapes (Aim 3). This
effort generates testable predictions about failures in auditory perception in multisource environments especially
in aging adults and pinpoints possible malfunctions due to sensory or cognitive factors. By shedding light on the
functional principles and neural underpinnings underlying the sensory and cognitive interaction during the CPP,
the research will have a big impact on our understanding of auditory perception in cluttered scenes. In addition,
it has direct relevance to health and wellbeing, particularly for improving communication aids for the sensory
impaired ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10434784
- **Project number:** 5U01AG058532-05
- **Recipient organization:** JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Mounya Elhilali
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $443,470
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2024-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10434784

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10434784, Multiscale modeling of the cocktail party problem (5U01AG058532-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10434784. Licensed CC0.

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