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The International Tinnitus Journal Jan 2021The aim of the present study was to evaluate the association of presence and absence of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs) on different psycho-acoustic measures...
AIM
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the association of presence and absence of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs) on different psycho-acoustic measures such as intensity discrimination, gap detection test, duration discrimination test, modulation detection for sinusoidal amplitude modulated noise at 8, 20, 60, and 100 Hz.
METHOD
Sixty adults with hearing sensitivity within normal limits were divided into two groups; group 1 consisted of participants with SOAEs present and group 2 consisted of participants with SOAEs absent. All the participants were tested for presence of SOAEs and different psycho-acoustic measures.
RESULTS
The present study results showed no significant difference on intensity discrimination, gap detection test, duration discrimination test, modulation detection for sinusoidal amplitude modulated noise at 8, 20, 60, and 100 Hz in presence and absent of SOAE.
CONCLUSION
The findings reveals that the presence or absence of SOAE did not influence or enhance the psychophysical performance at most comfortable level in individuals having normal hearing.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Hearing; Humans; Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous; Psychoacoustics
PubMed: 33496417
DOI: 10.5935/0946-5448.20200016 -
The Journal of Neuroscience : the... Oct 2019Natural sounds such as vocalizations often have covarying acoustic attributes, resulting in redundancy in neural coding. The efficient coding hypothesis proposes that...
Natural sounds such as vocalizations often have covarying acoustic attributes, resulting in redundancy in neural coding. The efficient coding hypothesis proposes that sensory systems are able to detect such covariation and adapt to reduce redundancy, leading to more efficient neural coding. Recent psychoacoustic studies have shown the auditory system can rapidly adapt to efficiently encode two covarying dimensions as a single dimension, following passive exposure to sounds in which temporal and spectral attributes covaried in a correlated fashion. However, these studies observed a cost to this adaptation, which was a loss of sensitivity to the orthogonal dimension. Here we explore the neural basis of this psychophysical phenomenon by recording single-unit responses from the primary auditory cortex in awake ferrets exposed passively to stimuli with two correlated attributes, similar in stimulus design to the psychoacoustic experiments in humans. We found: (1) the signal-to-noise ratio of spike-rate coding of cortical responses driven by sounds with correlated attributes remained unchanged along the exposure dimension, but was reduced along the orthogonal dimension; (2) performance of a decoder trained with spike data to discriminate stimuli along the orthogonal dimension was equally reduced; (3) correlations between neurons tuned to the two covarying attributes decreased after exposure; and (4) these exposure effects still occurred if sounds were correlated along two acoustic dimensions, but varied randomly along a third dimension. These neurophysiological results are consistent with the efficient coding hypothesis and may help deepen our understanding of how the auditory system encodes and represents acoustic regularities and covariance. The efficient coding (EC) hypothesis (Attneave, 1954; Barlow, 1961) proposes that the neural code in sensory systems efficiently encodes natural stimuli by minimizing the number of spikes to transmit a sensory signal. Results of recent psychoacoustic studies in humans are consistent with the EC hypothesis in that, following passive exposure to stimuli with correlated attributes, the auditory system rapidly adapts so as to more efficiently encode the two covarying dimensions as a single dimension. In the current neurophysiological experiments, using a similar stimulus design and the experimental paradigm to the psychoacoustic studies of Stilp et al. (2010) and Stilp and Kluender (2011, 2012, 2016), we recorded responses from single neurons in the auditory cortex of the awake ferret, showing adaptive efficient neural coding of two correlated acoustic attributes.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Action Potentials; Adaptation, Physiological; Animals; Auditory Cortex; Auditory Perception; Female; Ferrets; Models, Neurological; Neurons; Psychoacoustics
PubMed: 31519821
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0141-19.2019 -
Psychophysiology Jun 2016A comprehensive characterization of autonomic and somatic responding within the auditory domain is currently lacking. We studied whether simple types of auditory change...
A comprehensive characterization of autonomic and somatic responding within the auditory domain is currently lacking. We studied whether simple types of auditory change that occur frequently during music listening could elicit measurable changes in heart rate, skin conductance, respiration rate, and facial motor activity. Participants heard a rhythmically isochronous sequence consisting of a repeated standard tone, followed by a repeated target tone that changed in pitch, timbre, duration, intensity, or tempo, or that deviated momentarily from rhythmic isochrony. Changes in all parameters produced increases in heart rate. Skin conductance response magnitude was affected by changes in timbre, intensity, and tempo. Respiratory rate was sensitive to deviations from isochrony. Our findings suggest that music researchers interpreting physiological responses as emotional indices should consider acoustic factors that may influence physiology in the absence of induced emotions.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Auditory Perception; Face; Female; Galvanic Skin Response; Heart Rate; Humans; Male; Motor Activity; Music; Psychoacoustics; Respiratory Rate; Young Adult
PubMed: 26927928
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.12633 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Apr 2017The efficient measurement of the threshold and slope of the psychometric function (PF) is an important objective in psychoacoustics. This paper proposes a procedure that...
The efficient measurement of the threshold and slope of the psychometric function (PF) is an important objective in psychoacoustics. This paper proposes a procedure that combines a Bayesian estimate of the PF with either a look one-ahead or a look two-ahead method of selecting the next stimulus presentation. The procedure differs from previously proposed algorithms in two respects: (i) it does not require the range of possible PF parameters to be specified in advance and (ii) the sequence of probe signal-to-noise ratios optimizes the threshold and slope estimates at a performance level, ϕ, that can be chosen by the experimenter. Simulation results show that the proposed procedure is robust and that the estimates of both threshold and slope have a consistently low bias. Over a wide range of listener PF parameters, the root-mean-square errors after 50 trials were ∼1.2 dB in threshold and 0.14 in log-slope. It was found that the performance differences between the look one-ahead and look two-ahead methods were negligible and that an entropy-based criterion for selecting the next stimulus was preferred to a variance-based criterion.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Algorithms; Bayes Theorem; Computer Simulation; Humans; Monte Carlo Method; Psychoacoustics; Speech Intelligibility; Speech Perception; Speech Reception Threshold Test
PubMed: 28464623
DOI: 10.1121/1.4979580 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Oct 2017This study compared psychoacoustic reverberance parameters to each other, as well as to reverberation time (RT) and early decay time (EDT) under various acoustic... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
This study compared psychoacoustic reverberance parameters to each other, as well as to reverberation time (RT) and early decay time (EDT) under various acoustic conditions. The psychoacoustic parameters were loudness-based RT (T), loudness-based EDT [EDT; Lee, Cabrera, and Martens, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 131, 1194-1205 (2012a)], and parameter for reverberance [P; van Dorp Schuitman, de Vries, and Lindau., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 133, 1572-1585 (2013)]. For the comparisons, a wide range of sound pressure levels (SPLs) from 20 dB to 100 dB and RTs from 0.5 s to 5.0 s were evaluated, and two sets of subjective data from the previous studies were used for the cross-validation and comparison. Results of the comparisons show that the psychoacoustic reverberance parameters provided better matches to reverberance than RT and EDT; however, the performance of these psychoacoustic reverberance parameters varied with the SPL range, the type of audio sample, and the reverberation conditions. This study reveals that P is the most relevant for estimating a relative change in reverberance between samples when the SPL range is small, while EDT is useful in estimating the absolute reverberance. This study also suggests the use of P and EDT for speech and music samples, respectively.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Auditory Perception; Humans; Loudness Perception; Motion; Music; Pressure; Psychoacoustics; Sound; Speech; Speech Perception; Time Factors; Vibration
PubMed: 29092554
DOI: 10.1121/1.5005508 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Oct 2022Undergraduates in Spanish universities conclude their science degrees with a capstone project (CP) where they must apply the knowledge gained during their studies. In...
Undergraduates in Spanish universities conclude their science degrees with a capstone project (CP) where they must apply the knowledge gained during their studies. In recent years, students in technical degrees often postponed this last step due to a fast entry into the labour market or disappointment about the development of their capstone projects. This article presents an approach that tries to overcome these challenges and avoid delays in project submission called Engagement capstone projects. The authors, supported by the French Company EOMYS, manage this educational project in which students become responsible for their contribution to a free and open software project called MOSQITO, which provides sound quality metrics based on psychoacoustics. A framework is provided to ensure involvement in the project by both students and academic/industrial supervisors to help avoid student discouragement. The proposed methodology is compared with the current program and the learning proposal, and the expected outcomes are extensively explained. The experience gathered to date is limited, but the results obtained show the potential application of the proposed Engagement capstone projects as a solution to late CP submission.
Topics: Humans; Curriculum; Psychoacoustics; Learning
PubMed: 36319229
DOI: 10.1121/10.0014693 -
Scientific Reports May 2021Information integration is considered a hallmark of human consciousness. Recent research has challenged this tenet by showing multisensory interactions in the absence of...
Information integration is considered a hallmark of human consciousness. Recent research has challenged this tenet by showing multisensory interactions in the absence of awareness. This psychophysics study assessed the impact of spatial and semantic correspondences on audiovisual binding in the presence and absence of visual awareness by combining forward-backward masking with spatial ventriloquism. Observers were presented with object pictures and synchronous sounds that were spatially and/or semantically congruent or incongruent. On each trial observers located the sound, identified the picture and rated the picture's visibility. We observed a robust ventriloquist effect for subjectively visible and invisible pictures indicating that pictures that evade our perceptual awareness influence where we perceive sounds. Critically, semantic congruency enhanced these visual biases on perceived sound location only when the picture entered observers' awareness. Our results demonstrate that crossmodal influences operating from vision to audition and vice versa are interactively controlled by spatial and semantic congruency in the presence of awareness. However, when visual processing is disrupted by masking procedures audiovisual interactions no longer depend on semantic correspondences.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Auditory Perception; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Psychoacoustics; Semantics; Space Perception; Visual Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 34035358
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-90183-w -
Brain Research Mar 2022Attention is a crucial component in sound source segregation allowing auditory objects of interest to be both singled out and held in focus. Our study utilizes a...
Attention is a crucial component in sound source segregation allowing auditory objects of interest to be both singled out and held in focus. Our study utilizes a fundamental paradigm for sound source segregation: a sequence of interleaved tones, A and B, of different frequencies that can be heard as a single integrated stream or segregated into two streams (auditory streaming paradigm). We focus on the irregular alternations between integrated and segregated that occur for long presentations, so-called auditory bistability. Psychaoustic experiments demonstrate how attentional control, a listener's intention to experience integrated or segregated, biases perception in favour of different perceptual interpretations. Our data show that this is achieved by prolonging the dominance times of the attended percept and, to a lesser extent, by curtailing the dominance times of the unattended percept, an effect that remains consistent across a range of values for the difference in frequency between A and B. An existing neuromechanistic model describes the neural dynamics of perceptual competition downstream of primary auditory cortex (A1). The model allows us to propose plausible neural mechanisms for attentional control, as linked to different attentional strategies, in a direct comparison with behavioural data. A mechanism based on a percept-specific input gain best accounts for the effects of attentional control.
Topics: Adult; Attention; Auditory Perception; Female; Humans; Male; Models, Theoretical; Psychoacoustics
PubMed: 34785256
DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2021.147720 -
PloS One 2019Good hearing is a fundamental skill that allows children to develop properly, both socially and intellectually. In contrast to defects in inner ear function, however,...
BACKGROUND
Good hearing is a fundamental skill that allows children to develop properly, both socially and intellectually. In contrast to defects in inner ear function, however, auditory processing disorders (APDs)-which can affect up to 2-3% of school-children-are not easily identified with basic screening programs and must be diagnosed using special tests. Although such psychoacoustic tests are available, the scores achieved depend highly on the social, cultural, and linguistic characteristics of the population, and norms must be established for each population separately. Reference values are still lacking for the Polish population, especially for children in school-age, so that practitioners must interpret test scores themselves, often intuitively or using potentially biased thresholds from other countries.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
We investigated a sample of 94 Polish schoolchildren with normal hearing, divided into four age groups: from 7 years-olds to 10 years-olds. All children had no speech or language development disorder, learning problem, or symptom of APD. Participants were volunteers who had previously taken part in a large screening study. The group consisted of 56 girls (60%) and 38 boys (40%) with an average age of 8.6 years (SD = 1.1). The test battery included the Duration Pattern Test (DPT), Frequency Pattern Test (FPT), Time-Compressed Speech Test (CST), and Dichotic Digit Test (DDT).
RESULTS
The scores on all tests increased consistently with age. The difference between each age-group for DPT, CST, and left- and right-ear DDT tests was significant (Kruskal-Wallis test, p-values = 0.002, 0.006, 0.005, 0.020, respectively), but the effect of age on the FPT test was not (p-value = 0.143). The analysis showed a clear and significant separation between a merged group of ages 7 and 8 and another of ages 9 and 10. We, therefore, propose, for each test, separate reference values for these two particular age-groups. Using thresholds based on a 10% quantile, we offer the following reference values for ages 7-8 and 9-10 respectively: DPT, 28.5% and 53.8%; FPT, 18.5% and 27.5%; CST, 68.6% and 77.2%; left-ear DDT, 34.3% and 52.5%; right-ear DDT, 56% and 72.5%.
CONCLUSION
The scores on psychoacoustic tests to diagnose APD differ between cultures and linguistic backgrounds. Clinicians should, therefore, use norms that have been designed for the population most similar to their patients. Here, we report the use of a test battery designed for the Polish language that accounts for various aspects of APD when screening school children. Together with a full methodology of those tests, we provide norms that can be used as cut-offs in clinical diagnosis. Practitioners are invited to use them to obtain more accurate, evidence-based decisions.
Topics: Child; Female; Humans; Male; Poland; Psychoacoustics; Reference Values; Regression Analysis; Schools
PubMed: 31461473
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221689 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aug 2023This study sought to determine whether rap expertise is associated with enhanced knowledge of psychoacoustic similarity. Using a stimulus composed of pseudo-word...
This study sought to determine whether rap expertise is associated with enhanced knowledge of psychoacoustic similarity. Using a stimulus composed of pseudo-word assonantal half-rhyme triplets (e.g., freet/speet//yeek), expert improvisational rap lyricists were compared to laypersons (non-lyricists) in their judgments of half-rhyme acceptability. According to both a perception-based and a linguistic feature-based measure of psychoacoustic similarity, lyricists were distinct from non-lyricists in the rates at which they found half-rhymes acceptable, and in how group responses were correlated with the similarity measures. Data indicate that, compared to non-lyricists, lyricists' half-rhyme acceptance rates are more highly correlated with linguistic features that have more robust perceptual cues. Evidence suggests that lyricists and non-lyricists employ different strategies for determining the acceptability of half-rhymes, and that lyricists might be more sensitive or attuned to similar aspects of speech sounds.
Topics: Humans; Psychoacoustics; Judgment; Phonetics; Cues; Speech Perception
PubMed: 36929042
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-09932-9