This volume contains the papers presented at the 15th International Symposium on Hearing (ISH), which was held at the Hotel Regio, Santa Marta de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain, between 1st and 5th June 2009. Since its inception in 1969, this Symposium has been a forum of excellence for debating the neurophysiological basis of auditory perception, with computational models as tools to test and unify physiological and perceptual theories. Every paper in this symposium includes two of the following: auditory physiology, psychoph- ics or modeling. The topics range from cochlear physiology to auditory attention and learning. While the symposium is always hosted by European countries, p- ticipants come from all over the world and are among the leaders in their fields. The result is an outstanding symposium, which has been described by some as a "world summit of auditory research. " The current volume has a bottom-up structure from "simpler" physiological to more "complex" perceptual phenomena and follows the order of presentations at the meeting. Parts I to III are dedicated to information processing in the peripheral au- tory system and its implications for auditory masking, spectral processing, and c- ing. Part IV focuses on the physiological bases of pitch and timbre perception. Part V is dedicated to binaural hearing. Parts VI and VII cover recent advances in und- standing speech processing and perception and auditory scene analysis. Part VIII focuses on the neurophysiological bases of novelty detection, attention, and learning.

Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda, Ph.D. is director of the Auditory Computation and Psychoacoustics Unit of the Neuroscience Institute of Castilla y León (University of Salamanca, Spain). His research focuses on understanding and modeling human cochlear nonlinear signal processing and the role of the peripheral auditory system in normal and impaired auditory perception. He has authored over 45 scientific papers and book chapters and is co-editor of the book Computational Models of the Auditory System (Springer Handbook of Auditory Research). He has been principal investigator, participant and consultant on numerous research projects. He is member of the Acoustical Society of America and of the Association of Research in Otolaryngololgy.

Alan R. Palmer, Ph.D. is Deputy Director of the MRC Institute of Hearing Research and holds a Special Professorship in neuroscience at the University of Nottingham UK. He received his first degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Birmingham UK and his PhD in Communication and Neuroscience from the University of Keele UK. After postdoctoral research at Keele, he established his own laboratory at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. This was followed by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Sussex before taking a program leader position at the Medical Research Council Institute for Hearing Research in 1986. He heads a research team that uses neurophysiological, computational and neuroanatomical techniques to study the way the brain processes sound.

Ray Meddis, Ph.D. is director of the Hearing Research Laboratory at the University of Essex, England. His research has concentrated on the development of computer models of the physiology of the auditory periphery and how these can be incorporated into models of psychophysical phenomena such as pitch and auditory scene analysis. He has published extensively in this area. He is co-editor of the book Computational Models of the Auditory System (Springer Handbook of Auditory Research). His current research concerns the application of computer models to an understanding of hearing impairment. He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and a member of the Association of Research in Otolaryngololgy.

Part I Peripheral/Cochlear Processing 1. Otoacoustic emissions theories can be tested with behavioral methods. ENRIQUE A. LÓPEZ-POVEDA, PETER JOHANNESEN 2. Basilar membrane responses to simultaneous presentations of white noise and a single tone. ALBERTO RECIO-SPINOSO, ENRIQUE A. LOPEZ-POVEDA 3. The influence of the helicotrema on low-frequency hearing. TORSTEN MARQUARDT, CHRISTIAN SEJER PEDERSEN 4. Mechanisms of masking by Schroeder-phase complexes. MAGDALENA WOJTCZAK, ANDREW J. OXENHAM 5. The frequency selectivity of gain reduction masking: Analysis using two equally-effective maskers. SKYLER G. JENNINGS, ELIZABETH A. STRICKLAND 6. Investigating cortical descending control of the peripheral auditory system. DARREN EDWARDS, ALAN R. PALMER 7. Exploiting transgenic mice to explore the role of the tectorial membrane in cochlear sensory processing. GUY P. RICHARDSON, VICTORIA LUKASHKINA, ANDREI N. LUKASHKIN, IAN J. RUSSELL 8. Auditory prepulse inhibition of neuronal activity in the rat cochlear root nucleus. RICARDO GÓMEZ-NIETO, JOSÉ ANCHIETA DE CASTRO E HORTA JÚNIOR, ORLANDO CASTELLANO, DONAL G. SINEX, DOLORES E. LÓPEZ Part II Masking 9. FM forward masking: Implications for FM processing. NEAL VIEMEISTER, ANDREW BYRNE, MAGDALENA WOJTCZAK, MARK STELLMACK 10. Electrophysiological correlates of intensity resolution under forward masking. DANIEL OBERFELD 11. Neuronal measures of threshold and magnitude of forward masking in primary auditory cortex. ANA ALVES-PINTO, SYLVIE BAUDOUX, ALAN PALMER, CHRIS J. SUMNER 12. Effect of presence of cue tone on tuning of auditory filter derived from simultaneous masking. SHUNSUKE KIDANI, MASASHI UNOKI Part III Spectral processing and coding 13. Tone in noise detection: Observed discrepancies in spectral integration. NICOLAS LE GOFF, ARMIN KOHLRAUSCHB, JEROEN BREEBAARTC, STEVEN VAN DE PAR 14. Linear and nonlinear coding of sound spectra by discharge rate in neurons comprising the ascending pathway through the lateral superior olive. DANIEL J. TOLLIN, KANTHAIAH KOKA 15. Enhancement in the marmoset inferior colliculus: neural correlates of perceptual "pop out". PAUL NELSON, ERIC YOUNG 16. Auditory temporal integration at threshold: Evidence of a cortical origin. BERND LÜTKENHÖNER Part IV Pitch and Timbre 17. Spatiotemporal characteristics of cortical responses to a new dichotic pitch stimulus. CAROLINE WITTON, ARJAN HILLEBRAND, G. BRUCE HENNING 18. A temporal code for Huggins pitch? CHRISTOPHER J. PLACK, SUZANNE FITZPATRICK, ROBERT P. CARLYON, HEDWIG E. GOCKEL 19. Understanding pitch perception as a hierarchical process with top-down modulation. EMILI BALAGUER-BALLESTER, NICHOLAS R. CLARK, MARTIN COATH, KATRIN KRUMBHOLZ, SUSAN DENHAM 20. The Harmonic Organization of Auditory Cortex. XIAOQIN WANG 21. Reviewing the definition of timbre as it pertains to the perception of speech and musical sounds. ROY D. PATTERSON, THOMAS C. WALTERS, JESSICA J. M. MONAGHAN, ETIENNE GAUDRAIN 22. Size Perception for acoustically scaled sounds of naturally pronounced and whispered words. TOSHIO IRINO, YOSHIE AOKI, HIDEKI KAWAHARA, ROY D. PATTERSON Part V Binaural hearing 23. Subcomponent cues in binaural unmasking. JOHN CULLING 24. Interaural correlations between +1 and -1 on a Thurstone scale: psychometric functions and a two-parameter model. HELGE LÜDDEMANN, HELMUT RIEDEL, ANDRE RUPP 25. Dynamic ITDs, not ILDs, underlie binaural detection of a tone in wideband noise. MARCEL VAN DER HEIJDEN, PHILIP X. JORIS 26. Effect of reverberation on directional sensitivity of auditory neurons: Central and peripheral factors. SASHA DEVORE, ANDREW SCHWARTZ, BERTRAND DELGUTTE 27. New experiments employing raised-sine stimuli suggest an unknown factor affects sensitivity to envelope-based ITDs for stimuli having low depths of modulation. LESLIE R. BERNSTEIN, CONSTANTINE TRAHIOTIS 28. Modeling Physiological and Psychophysical Responses to Precedence Effect Stimuli. JING XIA, ANDREW BRUGHERA, H. STEVEN COLBURN, BARBARA SHINN-CUNNINGHAM 29. Binaurally-coherent jitter improves neural and perceptual ITD sensitivity in normal and electric hearing. M. GOUPELL, K. HANCOCK, P. MAJDAK, B. LABACK, B. DELGUTTE 30. Lateralization of tone complexes in noise: the role of monaural envelope processing in binaural hearing. STEVEN VAN DE PAR, ARMIN KOHLRAUSCH, NICOLAS LE GOFF 31. Adjustment of interaural-time-difference analysis to sound level. IDA SIVEKE, CHRISTIAN LEIBOLD, KATHARINA KAISER, BENEDIKT GROTHE, LUTZ WIEGREBE 32. The role of envelope wave form, adaptation, and attacks in binaural perception. STEPHAN D. EWERT, MATHIAS DIETZ, MARTIN KLEIN-HENNIG, VOLKER HOHMANN 33. Short-term synaptic plasticity and adaptation contribute to the coding of timing and intensity information. KATRINA MACLEOD, GO ASHIDA, CHRIS GLAZE AND CATHERINE CARR 34. Adaptive coding for auditory spatial cues. PHILLIPP HEHRMANN, JULIA MAIER, NICOL HARPER, DAVID MCALPINE, MANEESH SAHANI 35. Phase shifts in monaural field potentials of the medial superior olive. MYLES MC LAUGHLIN, MARCEL VAN DER HEIJDEN, PHILIP X. JORIS Part VI Speech Processing and Perception 36. Representation of intelligible and distorted speech in human auditory cortex. STEFAN UPPENKAMP, HAGEN WIERSTORF 37. Intelligibility of time-compressed speech with periodic and aperiodic insertions of silence: Evidence for endogenous brain rhythms in speech perception? ODED GHITZA, STEVEN GREENBERG 38. The representation of the pitch of vowel sounds in ferret auditory cortex. JAN SCHNUPP, ANDREW KING, KERRY WALKER, JENNIFER BIZLEY 39. Macroscopic and microscopic analysis of speech recognition in noise: What can be understood at which level? THOMAS BRAND, TIM JÜRGENS, RAINER BEUTELMANN, RALPH M. MEYER, BIRGER KOLLMEIER 40. Effects of peripheral tuning on the auditory nerve's representation of speech envelope and temporal fine structure cues. RASHA A. IBRAHIM, IAN C. BRUCE 41. Room reflections and constancy in speech-like sounds: Within-band effects. A. J. WATKINS, A. RAIMOND, S. J. MAKIN 42. Identification of perceptual cues for consonant sounds and the influence of sensorineural hearing loss on speech perception. FEIPENG LI, JONT B. ALLEN Part VII Auditory Scene Analysis 43. A comparative view on the perception of mistuning: constraints of the auditory periphery. ASTRID KLINGE, NAOYA ITATANI, GEORG M. KLUMP 44. Stability of perceptual organisation in auditory streaming. SUSAN L. DENHAM, KINGA GYIMESI, GÁBOR STEFANICS, ISTVÁN WINKLER 45. Sequential and simultaneous auditory grouping measured with synchrony detection. CHRISTOPHE MICHEYL, SHIHAB SHAMMA, MOUNYA ELHILALI, ANDREW J. OXENHAM 46. Rate vs. temporal code? A spatio-temporal coherence model of the cortical basis of streaming. MOUNYA ELHILALI, LING MA, CHRISTOPHE MICHEYL, ANDREW J. OXENHAM, SHIHAB A. SHAMMA 47. Objective measures of Auditory Scene Analysis. ROBERT P. CARLYON, SARAH K. THOMPSON, ANTJE HEINRICH, FRIEDEMANN PULVERMULLER, MATTHEW H. DAVIS, YURY SHTYROV, RHODRI CUSACK, INGRID S. JOHNSRUDE 48. Perception of concurrent sentences with harmonic or frequency-shifted voiced excitation: Performance of human listeners and of computational models based on autocorrelation. BRIAN ROBERTS, STEPHEN D. HOLMES, CHRISTOPHER J. DARWIN, GUY J. BROWN Part VIII Novelty detection, Attention and Learning 49. Is there stimulus-specific adaptation in the medial geniculate body of the rat? FLORA ANTUNES, ELLEN COVEY, MANUEL S. MALMIERCA 50. Auditory streaming at the cocktail party: Simultaneous neural and behavioral studies of auditory attention. MOUNYA ELHILALI, JUANJUAN XIANG, SHIHAB A. SHAMMA, JONATHAN Z. SIMON 51. Correlates of auditory attention and task performance in primary auditory and prefrontal cortex. SHIHAB SHAMMA, JONATHAN FRITZ, STEPHEN DAVID, MOUNYA ELHILALI, DANIEL WINKOWSKI, PINGBO YIN 52. The implicit learning of noise: Behavioural data and computational models. TREVOR R. AGUS, MARION BEAUVAIS, SIMON J. THORPE, DANIEL PRESSNITZER 53. Role of primary auditory cortex in acoustic orientation and approach-to-target responses. FERNANDO R. NODAL, VICTORIA M. BAJO, ANDREW J. KING Part IX Hearing impairment 54. Objective and behavioral estimates of cochlear response times in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired human listeners. OLAF STRELCYK, TORSTEN DAU 55. Why do hearing-impaired listeners fail to benefit from masker fluctuations? JOSHUA G. W. BERNSTEIN 56. Across-fiber coding of temporal fine-structure: Effects of noise-induced hearing loss on auditory-nerve responses. MICHAEL G. HEINZ, JAYAGANESH SWAMINATHAN, JONATHAN D. BOLEY, SUSHRUT KALE 57. Beyond the audiogram: identifying and modelling patterns of hearing deficits. RAY MEDDIS, WENDY LECLUYSE, CHRISTINE M. TAN, MANASA R. PANDA, ROBERT T. FERRY