Here is a lecture on a hierarchical learning algorithm inspired by neocortical design:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7512275382500312900&q=user%3A%22Google+engEDU%22

By Tom Dean at Brown.

Great video on voice recognition

I saw a great video on voice recognition research that I post here to remember the reference:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1131332207960335088&q=user%3A%22Google+engEDU%22&hl=en

I definitely think this guy understands the problem correctly. I've often wondered about the early transformation of speech signals and I'd like to study his research more.

Speaker Roy Patterson: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~roy/
STRAIGHT vocoder: http://www.wakayama-u.ac.jp/~kawahara/STRAIGHTadv/index_e.html