Auditory Ecology: Losing and restoring auditory contact with nature – AUDIECO

Urban life increases the separation of humans with nature. However, green and blue spaces within cities and preserved nature areas still offer the opportunity to city-dwellers to experience nature, in particular their “soundscapes”, that is complex arrangements of biological and geophysical sounds. Several studies indicate that biodiversity and water, two important factors shaping soundscapes, determine the amount of well-being and so-called restorative effects associated with the auditory experience of natural soundscapes for humans. The population in developed countries ages and tends to develop hearing loss associated with ageing. Thus, for hearing-impaired (HI) persons visiting natural places or living in rural areas, quality of life and health should depend on accurate perception of soundscapes and the appropriate emotional response associated with this perceptual experience.
The goal of this program is to characterize – for the first time – the impact of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) on auditory perception and emotional responses to natural and urban soundscapes, and the possibility to restore perception and emotional responses via hearing aids. This program in auditory ecology aims to: (i) better understand the sensory mechanisms involved in auditory perception and emotional response to natural and urban soundscapes and their relationship; (ii) characterize and explain the effects of SNHL on perception and emotional response to these soundscapes; (iii) assess the extent to which alterations in soundscape perception and emotional responses can be restored back to normal via hearing aids.
This will be achieved through a combination of psychophysical experiments and physiological measurements in young and elderly normal-hearing and HI subjects, using a massive database of soundscapes recorded in nature reserves and urban sites. This work will be guided by predictions made using an information-theoretic approach and a computational model of the human auditory system.