Neal F. Viemeister Professor N264 Elliott, (612) 625-4024 nfv@umn.edu Education Ph.D., 1970, Indiana University

Statement of Interests

The general interest area of my research group is auditory psychophysics and perception. Our research seeks to determine the basic properties of hearing, to describe them using quantitative models, and to relate them to physiology. An example is our work on dynamic processes. It is well-known that dynamic changes in the amplitude and frequency of sound are crucially important in auditory perception. Our experiments ask basic questions, such as how well we can detect and discriminate these dynamic changes. How should we refine the model we have proposed to account for these data? To what extent is are the dynamic properties we observe determined by processing in the auditory periphery, i.e., if we did experiments similar to our psychophysical experiments but using responses from the auditory nerve, how would the results compare?

Although most of our research is concerned with normal hearing, we also have a long-standing interest in the effects of hearing loss. The general goal is to better understand the perceptual consequences of hearing loss and thereby to provide a solid basis for the design of auditory prosthetic devices. This research, like most of our research, is multi-disciplinary and involves collaborations with faculty and students in Otolaryngology, Communication Disorders, Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience, and Electrical Engineering.

Selected Publications

Viemeister, N.F., Rickert, M., Law, M., & Stellmack, M. (2002). Psychophysical and physiological aspects of auditory temporal processing. In L. Tranebjaerg, J. Christensen-Dalgard, T. Andersen, & T. Poulsen (Eds.), Genetics and the function of the auditory system (pp. 273-291). Holmens Trykkeri, Denmark.

Wojtczak, M., Donaldson, G., & Viemeister, N.F. (2003). Intensity discrimination and increment detection in cochlear-implant users. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 396-407.

Wojtczak, M., & Viemeister, N.F. (2003). Supratheshold effects of adaptation produced by amplitude modulation. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 114, 991-997.