Onsets, Speech Rhythm, and a Theory of Auditory Saccades

Erik Edwards

UC San Francisco

Tuesday, August 18, 2015
12:30 p.m., Conference Room 5A

I have been working at ICSI on the 'COSMOS' project over the past year, where one goal is to decode natural speech from intracranial electrodes (ECoG) in neurosurgical patients from UCSF. This talk will first summarize some of the results from this project. Whereas we began by taking the traditional segmental view of ASR, it has become increasingly clear that we cannot ignore aspects usually associated with prosody.Thus, I recently devoted intense study to syllables, onsets and speech rhythm, and will present an overview of these topics along with preliminary conclusions regarding the computational and neural circuitry aspects. I find a parallel to circuitry of the visual saccade system, and suggest a 'theory of auditory saccades'. However, the talk should be in part a colloquial discussion of 'rhythm', in its several aspects, as interests the Speech Group.

Bio:

Undergrad at UCSD, majors in Neurobiology and Cognitive Neuroscience, research work with Scott Makeig in the Sejnowski group studying brain waves with ICA. Grad school at Cal in Psychology/Neuroscience, where I helped start the UCB/UCSF intracranial project and studied saccades, auditory system, and brain rhythms (advisor: Bob Knight). Postdocs at UW and UCSF, during which interval I have mostly studied auditory theory and signal and speech processing (advisors: Sri Nagarajan, Jeff Ojemann, Raj Rao, Les Atlas, Eddie Chang).