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In this article, I aim to clarify some of the ways in which the auditory dimension of the self is constituted through the mediation of technology. I show that by excluding our immediate surroundings with mobile personalized and private auditory technologies, we are increasingly laying down a personal, inner spatial grid of acoustic memories that get integrated into our narrative identity and co-constitutes the space of familiarity and belonging that gives us a sense of who we are. To do so, I first lay out a clear ontological ground. Next, I outline how the auditory dimension of the self is constituted and subsequently mediated technologically. Finally, I bring to bear Erving Goffman’s theatrical framework of performative self-constitution as a useful framework to illustrate how, on one hand, the culturally available repertoire on which the imagination draws to constitute the self has augmented thanks to the contributions of other people in distal spatiotemporal contexts; on the other, the reconfiguration of how we listen to the world and the other people in it entails muting or blocking out of other voices. This can stunt how we conceive of ourselves, producing an epistemic bubble involving a tunnel “vision” or echo-chamber effect. In addition, due to the coupling of bodily and cognitive structures with mobile, privatized auditory technologies that thereby become transparent in experience, others, by listening in on us, acquire the ability to privilege certain types of behavior while suppressing others. Thus, there is a danger that the individual autonomous agency so important to self-constitution can be compromised.

The debate over the metaphysics of sounds is about the nature of what we immediately auditorily perceive. There are good reasons to identify a sound with some kind of event. But what kind of event? I articulate and defend the broad event view of sounds, on which a sound is identified with a broad event that produces and shapes an acoustic wave. I show that other views that identify a sound with some kind of event face serious problems. In particular, Casati and Dokic’s (La philosophie du son, Editions Jacqueline Chambon, 1994) monadic event view fails to capture the full range of sounds, while O’Callaghan’s (Sounds: a philosophical theory, Oxford University Press, 2007; in: Nudds, O’Callaghan (eds) Sounds and perception: new philosophical essays, Oxford University Press, 2009; Oxford Stud Metaphys 5:247–270, 2010) relational event view identifies sounds with too narrow of an event, leading to problems capturing important differences between sounds and putting the perceiver at an unnecessary remove from the kind of broad events she typically cares about. The broad event view avoids these pitfalls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the recent literature on auditory experiences within automotive environments and discusses potential future research directions in this area. Forty-six papers obtained through the PRISMA protocol were selected from literature published over the past 15 years. The collected literature was categorized based on engine type, and a comparative analysis of research trends in the automotive industry was conducted, explicitly focusing on internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) and electric vehicles (EVs). A network analysis was performed utilizing the keywords of the papers to identify the predominant research topics. The analysis revealed research topics actively studied in existing ICV research but not covered in EV and newly emerging research topics in the EV field. The study proposes future research topics related to auditory experience design. It aims to provide insight into the design of auditory experiences in automobiles, particularly as the automotive paradigm expands to include electric and autonomous vehicles.

Male songbirds of many species sing local song dialects that are restricted to defined geographical areas. In most tests of responses to local versus foreign dialects, males respond more aggressively to songs from their own dialect, presumably because local males represent more of a threat to their success. We asked how hearing foreign songs during development and territory establishment affects discrimination of the local dialect in wild Savannah sparrows, Passerculus sandwichensis. After foreign songs had been heard from loudspeakers in the study area in at least two consecutive breeding seasons, males reduced the intensity of their responses to the local version of the population-specific buzz segment of the song. Four years after the foreign songs were last broadcast on the study area, males again responded more aggressively to the local version of the buzz. As for the basis of these responses, we found no evidence that birds discriminated among dialects by comparing them to their own songs. However, auditory experience with a foreign song, whether during song development (from speaker-simulated song tutors) or during the current breeding season (from neighbours' songs), reduced the intensity of birds' responses to the local buzz type. Both familiarity, in the form of auditory experience with a song type, and homogeneity, when a song type is sung by all or nearly all of the population, appear to contribute to heightened aggressive responses to a local song dialect. • We studied discrimination of local vs foreign dialects in wild Savannah sparrows. • Responses to the local dialect were weaker when the population's songs were diverse. • Responses to the local dialect increased with dialect homogeneity. • A male's own song type did not influence his responses to local and foreign songs. • Auditory experience during development and adulthood affected dialect discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst arguing for sounds as repeatable objects does not seem suitable to our auditory experience, considering them as events can then help us understand some of their main features. In this sense, sounds are events happening to material objects; they have a beginning and an end; they are ephemeral entities that we cannot grasp as ordinary objects. Nevertheless, supporters of event theory usually focus on the autonomous status that sounds manifest from the things in the world. Conversely, when we hear sounds, we hear what and where they are sounding even in those theories that I will call detached-sound theories; in hearing them we hear how different materials create different sounds. Within the different positions of the event theory to pure-event or acousmatic proposal, the importance and role that the material has in the creation of diverse sounds does not always seem to be recognized. In this paper, I therefore aim to show how the materiality of resonating bodies and objects is given in all forms of auditory experience, not until analyzed the differences between object and event accounts in the philosophy of sound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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I argue that chimericity is a property that we typically experience when listening to multi-instrumental music. It is the property of hearing as a unified whole a melody or a harmony that does not belong to any single sound source but instead consists of the assembling of melodic or harmonic fragments coming from different sources. Chimericity is not reducible to the low-level audible properties of pitch and loudness; it is cognized at the perceptual level thanks to the auditory mechanism of primitive grouping. My aim is to show that chimericity is a perceptual property, one that we can genuinely hear. In developing this view, I engage with the debate within the philosophy of sense perception between rich vs thin views of the content of perceptual experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities struggle to balance vitality and livability, and noise is at the center of many of these debates. Preconceived ideas on the sonic expectations and needs of groups of city users can be misleading, particularly in entertainment districts such as the Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal (CA). We investigated what life was like in QDS for its year-round users during the 2019 festival season (the last before the COVID-19 pandemic), building on insights from residents, workers and visitors collected through online surveys. Respondents described an overall positive view of their district marked by a diversity of experiences and frustrations, with subtle intragroup differences between residents and workers. Age was an important variable framing these experiences, but unexpectedly, older respondents enjoyed their life in QDS just as much as younger users. Dissatisfaction with residing or working in QDS was rarely geared toward the frequency or loudness of festivals, but rather to other everyday life situations. Emergent from the data, we argued for the development of soundscape personas to refer to typologies of users whose experiences differ in terms of sonic priorities and evaluations. Our findings could inform strategies for organizing large events in urban areas, maintaining an awareness of diversity of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inherited from Romantic metaphysics, the musical ineffable is a contested category; denoting something in musical experience that largely escapes verbal articulation, it also leads to diverse philosophical assessments of its validity as an analytic category. Its contested status, however, can be given clearer, historically embedded contours if it is related to Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic register of the Real across historically changing modes of media-technological reproducibility. This connection gives us new insights into the interface between sensuous immediacy, verbal articulation, and sonic media characteristic of the auditory imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How we perceive and learn about our environment is influenced by our prior experiences and existing representations of the world. Top-down cognitive processes, such as attention and expectations, can alter how we process sensory stimuli, both within a modality (e.g., effects of auditory experience on auditory perception), as well as across modalities (e.g., effects of visual feedback on sound localization). Here, we demonstrate that experience with different types of auditory input (spoken words vs. environmental sounds) modulates how humans remember concurrently-presented visual objects. Participants viewed a series of line drawings (e.g., picture of a cat) displayed in one of four quadrants while listening to a word or sound that was congruent (e.g., “cat” or ), incongruent (e.g., “motorcycle” or ), or neutral (e.g., a meaningless pseudoword or a tonal beep) relative to the picture. Following the encoding phase, participants were presented with the original drawings plus new drawings and asked to indicate whether each one was “old” or “new.” If a drawing was designated as “old,” participants then reported where it had been displayed. We find that words and sounds both elicit more accurate memory for what objects were previously seen, but only congruent environmental sounds enhance memory for where objects were positioned – this, despite the fact that the auditory stimuli were not meaningful spatial cues of the objects’ locations on the screen. Given that during real-world listening conditions, environmental sounds, but not words, reliably originate from the location of their referents, listening to sounds may attune the visual dorsal pathway to facilitate attention and memory for objects’ locations. We propose that audio-visual associations in the environment and in our previous experience jointly contribute to visual memory, strengthening visual memory through exposure to auditory input.

How we perceive and learn about our environment is influenced by our prior experiences and existing representations of the world. Top-down cognitive processes, such as attention and expectations, can alter how we process sensory stimuli, both within a modality (e.g., effects of auditory experience on auditory perception), as well as across modalities (e.g., effects of visual feedback on sound localization). Here, we demonstrate that experience with different types of auditory input (spoken words vs. environmental sounds) modulates how humans remember concurrently-presented visual objects. Participants viewed a series of line drawings (e.g., picture of a cat) displayed in one of four quadrants while listening to a word or sound that was congruent (e.g., "cat" or ), incongruent (e.g., "motorcycle" or ), or neutral (e.g., a meaningless pseudoword or a tonal beep) relative to the picture. Following the encoding phase, participants were presented with the original drawings plus new drawings and asked to indicate whether each one was "old" or "new." If a drawing was designated as "old," participants then reported where it had been displayed. We find that words and sounds both elicit more accurate memory for what objects were previously seen, but only congruent environmental sounds enhance memory for where objects were positioned – this, despite the fact that the auditory stimuli were not meaningful spatial cues of the objects' locations on the screen. Given that during real-world listening conditions, environmental sounds, but not words, reliably originate from the location of their referents, listening to sounds may attune the visual dorsal pathway to facilitate attention and memory for objects' locations. We propose that audio-visual associations in the environment and in our previous experience jointly contribute to visual memory, strengthening visual memory through exposure to auditory input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Songbirds learn to sing much as humans learn to speak. In zebra finches, one of the premier songbird models, males learn to sing for later courtship through a multistep learning process during the developmental period. They first listen to and memorize the song of a tutor (normally their father) during the sensory learning period. Then, in the subsequent sensory-motor learning phase (with large overlap), they match their vocalizations to the memorized tutor song via auditory feedback and develop their own unique songs, which they maintain throughout their lives. Previous studies have suggested that memories of tutor songs are shaped in the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) of the brain, which is analogous to the mammalian higher auditory cortex. Isolation during development, which extends the sensory learning period in males, alters song preference in adult females, and NCM inactivation decreases song preference. However, the development of neurophysiological properties of neurons in this area and the effect of isolation on these neurons have not yet been explained. Here, we performed whole-cell patch-clamp recording on NCM neurons from juvenile zebra finches during the sensory learning period, 20, 40, or 60 days post-hatching (DPH) and examined their neurophysiological properties. In contrast to previous reports in adult NCM neurons, the majority of NCM neurons of juvenile zebra finches showed spontaneous firing with or without burst firing patterns, and the percentage of neurons that fired increased in the middle of the sensory learning period (40 DPH) and then decreased at the end (60 DPH) in both males and females. We further found that auditory isolation from tutor songs alters developmental changes in the proportions of firing neurons both in males and females, and also changes those of burst neurons differently between males that sing and females that do not. Taken together, these findings suggest that NCM neurons develop their neurophysiological properties depending on auditory experiences during the sensory song learning period, which underlies memory formation for song learning in males and song discrimination in females.

Songbirds learn to sing much as humans learn to speak. In zebra finches, one of the premier songbird models, males learn to sing for later courtship through a multistep learning process during the developmental period. They first listen to and memorize the song of a tutor (normally their father) during the sensory learning period. Then, in the subsequent sensory-motor learning phase (with large overlap), they match their vocalizations to the memorized tutor song via auditory feedback and develop their own unique songs, which they maintain throughout their lives. Previous studies have suggested that memories of tutor songs are shaped in the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) of the brain, which is analogous to the mammalian higher auditory cortex. Isolation during development, which extends the sensory learning period in males, alters song preference in adult females, and NCM inactivation decreases song preference. However, the development of neurophysiological properties of neurons in this area and the effect of isolation on these neurons have not yet been explained. Here, we performed whole-cell patch-clamp recording on NCM neurons from juvenile zebra finches during the sensory learning period, 20, 40, or 60 days post-hatching (DPH) and examined their neurophysiological properties. In contrast to previous reports in adult NCM neurons, the majority of NCM neurons of juvenile zebra finches showed spontaneous firing with or without burst firing patterns, and the percentage of neurons that fired increased in the middle of the sensory learning period (40 DPH) and then decreased at the end (60 DPH) in both males and females. We further found that auditory isolation from tutor songs alters developmental changes in the proportions of firing neurons both in males and females, and also changes those of burst neurons differently between males that sing and females that do not. Taken together, these findings suggest that NCM neurons develop their neurophysiological properties depending on auditory experiences during the sensory song learning period, which underlies memory formation for song learning in males and song discrimination in females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies three claims that feature prominently in recent discussions concerning the experience of silence: (i) that experiences of silence are the most "negative" of perceptions, (ii) that we do not hear silences because those silences cause our experiences of silence, and (iii) that to hear silence is to hear a temporal region devoid of sound. The principal proponents of this approach are Phillips and Soteriou, and here I present a series of objections to common elements of their attempts to place these three claims within an account of experience of silence. The final section of the paper returns to the first of the three claims and argues that, in fact, there is no good reason to accept it as initially formulated. However, when properly formulated, the claim ceases to offer support for Phillips's and Soteriou's approach to experience of silence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sound input critically influences the development and maintenance of neuronal circuits in the mammalian brain throughout life. We investigate the structural and functional plasticity of auditory neurons in response to various auditory experiences during development, adulthood, and aging. Using electrophysiology, computer simulation, and immunohistochemistry, we study the structural plasticity of the axon initial segment (AIS) in the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) from the auditory brainstem of the mice (either sex), in different ages and auditory environments. The structure and spatial location of the AIS of MNTB neurons depend on their functional topographic location along the tonotopic axis, aligning high- to low-frequency sound-responding neurons (HF or LF neurons). HF neurons dramatically undergo structural remodeling of the AIS throughout life. The AIS progressively shortens during development, is stabilized in adulthood, and becomes longer in aging. Sound inputs are critically associated with setting and maintaining AIS plasticity and tonotopy at various ages. Sound stimulation increases the excitability of auditory neurons. Computer simulation shows that modification of the AIS length, location, and diameter can affect firing properties of MNTB neurons in the developing brainstem. The adaptive capability of axonal structure in response to various auditory experiences at different ages suggests that sound input is important for the development and maintenance of the structural and functional properties of the auditory brain throughout life.

Sound input critically influences the development and maintenance of neuronal circuits in the mammalian brain throughout life. We investigate the structural and functional plasticity of auditory neurons in response to various auditory experiences during development, adulthood, and aging. Using electrophysiology, computer simulation, and immunohistochemistry, we study the structural plasticity of the axon initial segment (AIS) in the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) from the auditory brainstem of the mice (either sex), in different ages and auditory environments. The structure and spatial location of the AIS of MNTB neurons depend on their functional topographic location along the tonotopic axis, aligning high- to low-frequency sound-responding neurons (HF or LF neurons). HF neurons dramatically undergo structural remodeling of the AIS throughout life. The AIS progressively shortens during development, is stabilized in adulthood, and becomes longer in aging. Sound inputs are critically associated with setting and maintaining AIS plasticity and tonotopy at various ages. Sound stimulation increases the excitability of auditory neurons. Computer simulation shows that modification of the AIS length, location, and diameter can affect firing properties of MNTB neurons in the developing brainstem. The adaptive capability of axonal structure in response to various auditory experiences at different ages suggests that sound input is important for the development and maintenance of the structural and functional properties of the auditory brain throughout life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In birds and higher mammals, auditory experience during development is critical to discriminate sound patterns in adulthood. However, the neural and molecular nature of this acquired ability remains elusive. In fruit flies, acoustic perception has been thought to be innate. Here we report, surprisingly, that auditory experience of a species-specific courtship song in developing Drosophila shapes adult song perception and resultant sexual behavior. Preferences in the song-response behaviors of both males and females were tuned by social acoustic exposure during development. We examined the molecular and cellular determinants of this social acoustic learning and found that GABA signaling acting on the GABAA receptor Rdl in the pC1 neurons, the integration node for courtship stimuli, regulated auditory tuning and sexual behavior. These findings demonstrate that maturation of auditory perception in flies is unexpectedly plastic and is acquired socially, providing a model to investigate how song learning regulates mating preference in insects.

The extent to which auditory experience can shape general auditory perceptual abilities is still under constant debate. Some studies show that specific auditory expertise may have a general effect on auditory perceptual abilities, while others show a more limited influence, exhibited only in a relatively narrow range associated with the area of expertise. The current study addresses this issue by examining experience-dependent enhancement in perceptual abilities in the auditory domain. Three experiments were performed. In the first experiment, 12 pop and rock musicians and 15 non-musicians were tested in frequency discrimination (DLF), intensity discrimination, spectrum discrimination (DLS), and time discrimination (DLT). Results showed significant superiority of the musician group only for the DLF and DLT tasks, illuminating enhanced perceptual skills in the key features of pop music, in which miniscule changes in amplitude and spectrum are not critical to performance. The next two experiments attempted to differentiate between generalization and specificity in the influence of auditory experience, by comparing subgroups of specialists. First, seven guitar players and eight percussionists were tested in the DLF and DLT tasks that were found superior for musicians. Results showed superior abilities on the DLF task for guitar players, though no difference between the groups in DLT, demonstrating some dependency of auditory learning on the specific area of expertise. Subsequently, a third experiment was conducted, testing a possible influence of vowel density in native language on auditory perceptual abilities. Ten native speakers of German (a language characterized by a dense vowel system of 14 vowels), and 10 native speakers of Hebrew (characterized by a sparse vowel system of five vowels), were tested in a formant discrimination task. This is the linguistic equivalent of a DLS task. Results showed that German speakers had superior formant discrimination, demonstrating highly specific effects for auditory linguistic experience as well. Overall, results suggest that auditory superiority is associated with the specific auditory exposure.

In this paper I will argue that the gender properties expressed by human voices are part of auditory phenomenology. I will support this claim by investigating auditory adaptational effects on such properties and contrasting auditory experiences, before and after the adaptational effects take place. In light of this investigation, I will conclude that auditory experience is not limited to low-level properties. Perception appears to be much more informative about the auditory landscape than is commonly thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AMPA glutamate receptor complexes with fast kinetics conferred by subunits like GluA3 and GluA4 are essential for temporal precision of synaptic transmission. The specific role of GluA3 in auditory processing and experience related changes in the auditory brainstem remain unknown. We investigated the role of the GluA3 in auditory processing by using wild type (WT) and GluA3 knockout (GluA3-KO) mice. We recorded auditory brainstem responses (ABR) to assess auditory function and used electron microscopy to evaluate the ultrastructure of the auditory nerve synapse on bushy cells (AN-BC synapse). Since labeling for GluA3 subunit increases on auditory nerve synapses within the cochlear nucleus in response to transient sound reduction, we investigated the role of GluA3 in experience-dependent changes in auditory processing. We induced transient sound reduction by plugging one ear and evaluated ABR threshold and peak amplitude recovery for up to 60 days after ear plug removal in WT and GluA3-KO mice. We found that the deletion of GluA3 leads to impaired auditory signaling that is reflected in decreased ABR peak amplitudes, an increased latency of peak 2, early onset hearing loss and reduced numbers and sizes of postsynaptic densities (PSDs) of AN-BC synapses. Additionally, the lack of GluA3 hampers ABR threshold recovery after transient ear plugging. We conclude that GluA3 is required for normal auditory signaling, normal ultrastructure of AN-BC synapses in the cochlear nucleus and normal experience-dependent changes in auditory processing after transient sound reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observation of other people’s actions recruits a network of areas including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG). These regions have been shown to be activated through both visual and auditory inputs. Intriguingly, previous studies found no engagement of IFG and IPL for deaf participants during nonlinguistic action observation, leading to the proposal that auditory experience or sign language usage might shape the functionality of these areas. To understand which variables induce plastic changes in areas recruited during the processing of other people’s actions, we examined the effects of tasks (action understanding and passive viewing) and effectors (arm actions vs. leg actions), as well as sign language experience in a group of 12 congenitally deaf signers and 13 hearing participants. In Experiment 1, we found a stronger activation during an action recognition task in comparison to a low-level visual control task in IFG, IPL and pMTG in both deaf signers and hearing individuals, but no effect of auditory or sign language experience. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of the first experiment using a passive viewing task. Together, our results provide robust evidence demonstrating that the response obtained in IFG, IPL, and pMTG during action recognition and passive viewing is not affected by auditory or sign language experience, adding further support for the supra-modal nature of these regions.

This paper explores the balance between performative and exploratory actions in soundscape composition through a consideration of the author’s fixed media composition,Resounding Reverie.Soundscape composition, particularly in this case, is characterised as an embodied practice expressing both performative and exploratory practices. The creative processes used in makingResounding Reverieshow that through embodied interaction with a particular acoustic space, and using audio technologies and attendant gestures as prosthetic practices, the composer initiated exploratory actions that both expressed his habitus and made room for new acoustic discoveries through exploratory ‘groping’ to establish a form of contact with the affordances of this nexus of ‘aural architecture’, technology, and agency. An mp3 recording ofResounding Reveriemay be found at the following link:https://andrewczink.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/t1_resounding-reverie_mp3.mp3 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The works of the Japanese composer and sound artist Miki Yui are known to represent an extremely evocative displacement of aural perspective, as we first struggle to hear the sounds and then struggle to determine what is ‘music’ and what is incidental. Her works operate on the very threshold of audibility, and under normal listening conditions her ‘small sounds’ often appear inaudible or hard to get a hold of. The ambient noise of the surrounding environment helps to reinforce the blurring boundaries between what in fact constitutes the work and what is more commonly referred to as interference. This article will discuss how Yui’s works represent a challenge for the listener in the context of the gallery space, as well as question the artist’s claim that silence and ambient small sounds produce a more attentive and peaceful state of mind.

For a theory of the relation between late-nineteenth-century technology and perceptual experience, one could use as a starting-point Karl Marx's proposition that the human senses have a history. One could also draw on the theory of perceptual abstraction and sensory autonomization implicit in the writings of Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Paul Virilio, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, and Michel Chion. As this essay suggests, however, one would do equally well to begin with Marcel Proust. Indeed, in a central episode in the third volume of A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927), Proust offers a psychology of technological change that may be grasped as a theory in its own right. More specifically, it is a theory of how the emergence of technologies for transmitting sound such as the telephone paves the way for a new matrix of perception, in which not only sound but also vision turn into abstract and autonomous phenomena. As a result, the perceptual habits of the eye and the ear begin to function separately, each independent of the other. In addition, the autonomization of the ear is inherent in that of the eye, and vice versa. The essay also considers the importance of the telephone in Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Development of auditory function can be affected by environment and experience. In this study, we investigated whether the NMDA receptor mediates the plasticity of auditory spatial representation during development of the rat auditory cortex. We found that early auditory experience significantly increased the auditory spatial sensitivity of A1 neurons and induced training-dependent plasticity. Implantation of Elvax-APV in the auditory cortex gradually reduced the auditory spatial sensitivity of A1 neurons and blocked the auditory spatial plasticity induced by early auditory experience. These results indicate that the NMDA receptor has a key role in experience-dependent plasticity of auditory cortical circuits immediately after birth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

What can be the status of sound in film? Is sound always dependent on image in film? Or is it possible to give sound a more autonomous status? If yes, what are the consequences for the workflow? In the 1980s and early 1990s two opposing propositions about the relation of the audible and the visible in film were presented. For Michel Chion the auditory field is completely a function of what appears on screen and for Gilles Deleuze the externality of the visual image as uniquely framed has been replaced by the interstice between two framings, the visual and the sound. Introducing the auditory field as multi-layered, dynamic, experienced and embodied, the author proposes a phenomenological approach of the audio-visual that moves towards a different understanding of the filmic experience, which has its roots in a phenomenology of auditory experience. In the practice-based research project, Surrounded, the author explored together with sound designer and sound mixer Griet Van Reeth, how the creative process of film-making can start from the auditory field, including inner sound and a heautonomy of the auditory field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The culture of major cities in Western developed nations has a long-standing dominantly visual bias. While 'design' is expected in the visual arena of architecture and urban planning, it is not a common feature of our soundscape. The urban soundscape is generally a by-product of other human activities and so may be alienating us from our environment. Our relationship to the environment has become dysfunctional. Unlike the visual domain, auditory experience is fundamentally haptic and brings us into close contact with our environment. We 'feel' our environment and our place in it through hearing. Research in the cognitive neurosciences shows that the environment is a continuing influence on the development of our brains throughout our lives. By designing our soundscape and engaging in attentive listening we may enable ourselves to develop a healthy relationship with our environment: one that is more conducive to making genuine, considered decisions about environmental policies and that may motivate us to make the personal and economic adjustments necessary to successful implementation of such policies. Through sonographic analyses of both natural and urban soundscapes, the alienating nature of the urban soundscape is demonstrated. Features of natural soundscapes will be examined in relation to their applicability to urban sound design of public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is devoted to the description of the experience associated with listening to a sound. In the first part, we describe the method we used to gather descriptions of auditory experience and to analyse these descriptions. This work of explicitation and analysis has enabled us to identify a threefold generic structure of this experience, depending on whether the attention of the subject is directed towards (1) the event which is at the source of the sound, (2) the sound in itself considered independently from its source, (3) the felt sound. In the second part of the article, we describe this structure. The third part is devoted to a discussion of these results and the paths they open up in various fields of theoretical and applied research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous auditory experience modifies the sensitivity of the auditory cortex to the afferent activity of the auditory pathways and may influence the threshold (T) and comfort (C) levels in patients receiving a cochlear implant (CI). Literature data on this particular topic is very scarce. This study aimed to evaluate the differences in T/C-levels between pre- and postlingually implanted cochlear implant patients. Retrospective case review in a quaternary otologic referral centre was performed. Data on the T/C-levels have been collected in 90 consecutive CI patients divided into 2 groups. Group 1 comprised 16 prelingually deaf children implanted between 8 months and 10 years of age. Group 2 comprised 74 postlingually deaf adults (average age of 62 years). All patients were users of the Nucleus 24RECA (Freedom, Contour Advance-of-Stylet electrode) cochlear implant. All measurements were performed at the fifth implant programming session at 4–6 months after surgery, when stable T/C thresholds have already been obtained. The behavioural C-levels present important and statistically significant differences between the pre- and postlingually implanted patients for all electrode contacts that could reach 30 CL. For the T-levels the observed differences were smaller and statistically insignificant for most electrode contacts. The previous auditory experience (pre- or postlingual deafness) seems to be an independent parameter influencing the T/C-levels in patients receiving a CI. Together with the electrode contact impedance and the contact position in the electrode array it can explain up to 37% of the variability in the definition of the C-levels. The fact that the stabilised C-levels measured 4–6 months postoperatively can be up to 30 CL higher in the prelingually deaf patients than in the postlingual ones results also in a much higher dynamic range observed in prelingual subjects. Therefore implant programming of the prelingual patients should be very cautious in order to avoid the risk of overstimulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]