EP #16 | What do Auditory Illusions Reveal about the Brain? | Daniel Pressnitzer

About this episode

The episode explores how auditory illusions reveal the brain's mechanisms for interpreting sound.

We rarely stop to think about how we make sense of the sounds around us — how we find voices in a noisy room, or why two people can hear completely different things in the same audio clip. Today’s guest explores the hidden mechanisms behind these experiences: how the brain turns raw sound into meaning, how we learn the regularities of the soundscape around us, and why people sometimes hear the world so differently. Today’s guest is the person to answer these questions, or at least some of them… Daniel Pressnitzer. Originally trained in engineering, he went on to complete a Master's degree in acoustics, signal processing, and computer science in Paris. He earned his PhD at Ircam, where he studied auditory perception, focusing on musical consonance and dissonance. He then spent several years in the UK conducting postdoctoral research at the Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing in Cambridge. In 2000, he returned to France to join the CNRS as a researcher. Now a Director of Research at CNRS, he is also a founding member and the current head of the Audition team at the École normale supérieure. His research bridges acoustics, perception, and cognition, using carefully crafted…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jay Richardson, Tanay Katiyar

Guest: Daniel Pressnitzer

Topics covered

• auditory illusions
• brain perception
• sound interpretation
• acoustics
• cognition
• auditory perception

Keywords

• auditory illusions
• brain
• perception
• acoustics
• cognition
• soundscape
• musical consonance
• dissonance

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CNRS, École normale supérieure, Ircam, Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing

Places: France, UK, Cambridge, Paris

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