Role
I am currently building computer models of how we learn to hear. The aim of this project is to help to design devices, that is machines, that learn to make sense of the world by experiencing it via artificial sensory systems.
If this sounds to you a bit like robotics then you are pretty close. There are important differences between what we do and more conventional robotics but the end is the same - machines that are more useful, reliable, and flexible.
But, because we are doing this in a way that closely resembles the way a living organism would do it, we also hope to learn something about the way brains work at the same time.
This is part of an EU funded project called SCANDLE and ties in nicely with my association with the newly created Centre for Robotic and Neural Systems CRNS here in Plymouth.
Find out more here.
Qualifications & background
B.Sc. (Hons, Chemistry), M.Sc. (Distinction, Computational Intelligence), Ph.D. (Neuroscience)
I was for 20 years a freelance programmer, teacher, and IT consultant. I was offered the chance to take a small role in a very interesting academic research project in 2002 (ALAVLSI) and although this project is long finished I am still here doing related work.
Professional membership
MBCS
Publications
Coath, M.; Mill, R.; Denham, S. & Wennekers, T.
The emergence of feature sensitivity in a recurrent model of auditory cortex with spike timing dependent plasticity.
Proceedings of BICS Madrid, 2010
Mill,R; Coath, M; Wennekers, T & Denham, S.L.
Abstract Stimulus Adaptation Models
Biological Cybernetics, 2010, in press
Denham, S.L.; Dura-Bernal, S; Coath, M. & Balaguer-Ballester, E.
Neurocomputational models of perceptual organization
In: Unconscious Memory Representations in Perception (John Benjamins B.V.), 2010, 147-177
Coath, M.; Denham, S.; Smith, L.; Honing, H.; Hazan, A.; Holonowicz, P. & Purwins, H.
Model cortical responses for the detection of perceptual onsets and beat tracking in singing
Connection Science, 2009, 21, 193-205
Balaguer-Ballester, E.; Clark, N. R.; Coath, M.; Krumbholz, K. & Denham, S. L.
Understanding pitch perception as a hierarchical process with top-down modulation.
PLoS Comput Biol, 2009
Coath, M.; Ballaguer-Ballester, E. & Denham, S. L.
The linearity of emergent spectro-temporal receptive fields in a model of auditory cortex
Biosystems, 2008
Coath, M. & Denham, S. L.
The role of transients in auditory processing.
Biosystems, 2007, 89, 182-189
Coath, M. & Denham, S. L.
Learning to Hear: the emergence of spectro-temporal response fields in a model auditory cortex.
Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on IPCAT, 2007, 170-180
Coath, M.; S. L. Denham, H. H.; Smith, L.; Hazan, A. & Purwins, H.
An auditory model for the detection of perceptual onsets and beat tracking in singing.
Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference., 2007
Balaguer-Ballester, E.; Coath, M. & Denham, S.
A model of perceptual segregation based on clustering the time series of the simulated auditory nerve firing probability.
Biol Cybern, 2007
Denham, S. L. & Coath, M.
A model based upon response fields derived during early experience can account for the interference effects of synthetically degraded speech signals.
Proceedings of ISCA workshop on plasticity in speech perception., 2005
Coath, M.
A Computational Model of Auditory Feature Extraction and Sound Classification.
Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, University of Plymouth, Ph.D. 2005
Coath, M. & Denham, S. L.
Robust sound classification through the representation of similarity using response fields derived from stimuli during early experience.
Biol Cybern, 2005, 93, 22-30
Coath, M.; Brader, J. M.; Fusi, S. & Denham, S. L.
Multiple views of the response of an ensemble of spectro-temporal features support concurrent classification of utterance, prosody, sex and speaker identity.
Network, 2005, 16, 285-300
Coath, M. & Denham, S. L.
Re-synthesis from onset features.
BSA Proceedings 2003, 2003
Conferences organised
Music, Science, and the Brain. Symposium. UoP, Sept. 08.
Other academic activities
I have a long standing commitment to science education, or perhaps more accurately 'public engagement with science' although I see no clear distinction between the two.
This means that I regularly turn up in public trying to combat the absurd idea that science is somehow too complex or arcane to form a part of everyones world view.
In the last 12 months I have helped measure the acceleration due to gravity with the help of under 10s in a public park, given the pre-concert talk at the last night of the Cheltenham Music Festival (about science and the violin) and helped out with a maths exploration day at a primary school in Cornwall
To find out more visit my SCANDLE project web page and follow the public activities links:
http://www.scandle.eu/partners/project-researchers/martin-coath
I am easy to google because 'Martin Coath' is not such a common name. There is just one other who is a ornithologist in Kent who has quite a few hits so beware!
I also teach \LaTeX as part of the post-graduate skills curriculum at Plymouth and elsewhere. \LaTeX is a cult dedicated to the overthrow of wordprocessors.
Links
For more about the SCANDLE project visit:
http://www.scandle.eu/Plone
or my page within this site
http://www.scandle.eu/partners/project-researchers/martin-coath
where you will find links to my public work with science engagement.
