Hearing science, or the study of how the auditory system functions and responds to sound in humans and other animals, is a topic that has been studied using modern scientific methods for nearly 200 years. The current approaches to hearing science are highly multidisciplinary, integrating acoustics with many fields, such as psychology, biology, engineering, computer science, statistics, and audiology. The study of the encoding and perception of simple and complex sounds means that there is considerable overlap with other technical areas of the Acoustical Society of America, including architectural, speech, music, and animal bioacoustics. Hearing scientists are also concerned with hearing disorders, vibrotactile and vestibular sensation, the interaction of hearing with other sensory modalities, development, and aging, as well as learning and plasticity effects in auditory function. This talk will highlight (1) the various brain areas involved in auditory processing and (2) the technological innovations in hearing aids and cochlear implants that have made sound processing available to many people who, for most of human history, would have been either completely deaf or would have had only minimal awareness of sound.

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