15. The system of claim 13 further comprising: a kernel matrix generator for forming a kernel matrix using the cortical representation of the training set; wherein the matrix decomposition module for computing a matrix decomposition using the cortical representation of the training set is for computing an eigendecomposition of the kernel matrix, wherein the eigendecomposition is the matrix decomposition.
13. A sound discrimination system, comprising: a cortical representation module for receiving a training set of sound waveforms and generating a cortical representation of the training set; a matrix decomposition module for computing a matrix decomposition using the cortical representation of the training set and for computing a singular value decomposition (SVD) using the cortical representation of the training set, wherein the SVD is the matrix decomposition; a coefficient computation module for receiving a plurality of regularization parameters and computing coefficients for each regularization parameter using the matrix decomposition; a LOO error computation module for receiving the plurality of regularization parameters and computing a leave-one-out (LOO) error for each of the regularization parameters; and a regularization parameter selection module for selecting the regularization parameter with the lowest LOO error.