-
Scientific Reports Apr 2024Temporal envelope modulations (TEMs) are one of the most important features that cochlear implant (CI) users rely on to understand speech. Electroencephalographic...
Temporal envelope modulations (TEMs) are one of the most important features that cochlear implant (CI) users rely on to understand speech. Electroencephalographic assessment of TEM encoding could help clinicians to predict speech recognition more objectively, even in patients unable to provide active feedback. The acoustic change complex (ACC) and the auditory steady-state response (ASSR) evoked by low-frequency amplitude-modulated pulse trains can be used to assess TEM encoding with electrical stimulation of individual CI electrodes. In this study, we focused on amplitude modulation detection (AMD) and amplitude modulation frequency discrimination (AMFD) with stimulation of a basal versus an apical electrode. In twelve adult CI users, we (a) assessed behavioral AMFD thresholds and (b) recorded cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs), AMD-ACC, AMFD-ACC, and ASSR in a combined 3-stimulus paradigm. We found that the electrophysiological responses were significantly higher for apical than for basal stimulation. Peak amplitudes of AMFD-ACC were small and (therefore) did not correlate with speech-in-noise recognition. We found significant correlations between speech-in-noise recognition and (a) behavioral AMFD thresholds and (b) AMD-ACC peak amplitudes. AMD and AMFD hold potential to develop a clinically applicable tool for assessing TEM encoding to predict speech recognition in CI users.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Psychoacoustics; Speech Perception; Speech; Acoustic Stimulation; Cochlear Implants; Cochlear Implantation; Evoked Potentials, Auditory
PubMed: 38589483
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-58225-1 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Apr 2024The auditory sensitivity of a small songbird, the red-cheeked cordon bleu, was measured using the standard methods of animal psychophysics. Hearing in cordon bleus is...
The auditory sensitivity of a small songbird, the red-cheeked cordon bleu, was measured using the standard methods of animal psychophysics. Hearing in cordon bleus is similar to other small passerines with best hearing in the frequency region from 2 to 4 kHz and sensitivity declining at the rate of about 10 dB/octave below 2 kHz and about 35 dB/octave as frequency increases from 4 to 9 kHz. While critical ratios are similar to other songbirds, the long-term average power spectrum of cordon bleu song falls above the frequency of best hearing in this species.
Topics: Animals; Vocalization, Animal; Hearing; Songbirds; Acoustic Stimulation; Auditory Threshold; Male; Psychoacoustics; Sound Spectrography; Female
PubMed: 38656337
DOI: 10.1121/10.0025764 -
Frontiers in Neuroscience 2024Acute ischemic stroke, characterized by a localized reduction in blood flow to specific areas of the brain, has been shown to affect binaural auditory perception. In a...
Acute ischemic stroke, characterized by a localized reduction in blood flow to specific areas of the brain, has been shown to affect binaural auditory perception. In a previous study conducted during the acute phase of ischemic stroke, two tasks of binaural hearing were performed: binaural tone-in-noise detection, and lateralization of stimuli with interaural time- or level differences. Various lesion-specific, as well as individual, differences in binaural performance between patients in the acute phase of stroke and a control group were demonstrated. For the current study, we re-invited the same group of patients, whereupon a subgroup repeated the experiments during the subacute and chronic phases of stroke. Similar to the initial study, this subgroup consisted of patients with lesions in different locations, including cortical and subcortical areas. At the group level, the results from the tone-in-noise detection experiment remained consistent across the three measurement phases, as did the number of deviations from normal performance in the lateralization task. However, the performance in the lateralization task exhibited variations over time among individual patients. Some patients demonstrated improvements in their lateralization abilities, indicating recovery, whereas others' lateralization performance deteriorated during the later stages of stroke. Notably, our analyses did not reveal consistent patterns for patients with similar lesion locations. These findings suggest that recovery processes are more individual than the acute effects of stroke on binaural perception. Individual impairments in binaural hearing abilities after the acute phase of ischemic stroke have been demonstrated and should therefore also be targeted in rehabilitation programs.
PubMed: 38482140
DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1322762 -
International Journal of Audiology Feb 2024The aim of this study was to investigate whether consumer-grade mobile audio equipment can be reliably used as a platform for the notched-noise test, including when the...
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to investigate whether consumer-grade mobile audio equipment can be reliably used as a platform for the notched-noise test, including when the test is conducted outside the laboratory.
DESIGN
Two studies were conducted: Study 1 was a notched-noise masking experiment with three different setups: in a psychoacoustic test booth with a standard laboratory PC; in a psychoacoustic test booth with a mobile device; and in a quiet office room with a mobile device. Study 2 employed the same task as Study 1, but compared circumaural headphones to insert earphones.
STUDY SAMPLE
Nine and ten young, normal-hearing participants completed studies 1 and 2, respectively.
RESULTS
The test-retest accuracy of the notched-noise test on the mobile implementation did not differ from that for the laboratory setup. A possible effect of the earphone design was identified in Study 1, which was corroborated by Study 2, where test-retest variability was smallest when comparing results from experiments conducted using identical acoustic transducers.
CONCLUSIONS
Results and test-retest repeatability comparable to standard laboratory settings for the notched-noise test can be obtained with mobile equipment outside the laboratory.
Topics: Humans; Noise; Acoustics; Psychoacoustics; Computers, Handheld; Transducers
PubMed: 36633444
DOI: 10.1080/14992027.2022.2161955 -
Cerebellum (London, England) Feb 2024Brainstem degeneration is a prominent feature of spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), involving structures that execute binaural synchronization with microsecond...
Brainstem degeneration is a prominent feature of spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), involving structures that execute binaural synchronization with microsecond precision. As a consequence, auditory processing may deteriorate during the course of disease. We tested whether the binaural "Huggins pitch" effect is suitable to study the temporal precision of brainstem functioning in SCA3 mutation carriers. We expected that they would have difficulties perceiving Huggins pitch at high frequencies, and that they would show attenuated neuromagnetic responses to Huggins pitch. The upper limit of Huggins pitch perception was psychoacoustically determined in 18 pre-ataxic and ataxic SCA3 mutation carriers and in 18 age-matched healthy controls. Moreover, the cortical N100 response following Huggins pitch onset was acquired by means of magnetoencephalography (MEG). MEG recordings were analyzed using dipole source modeling and comprised a monaural pitch condition and a no-pitch condition with simple binaural correlation changes. Compared with age-matched controls, ataxic but not pre-ataxic SCA3 mutation carriers had significantly lower frequency limits up to which Huggins pitch could be heard. Listeners with lower frequency limits also showed diminished MEG responses to Huggins pitch, but not in the two control conditions. Huggins pitch is a promising tool to assess brainstem functioning in ataxic SCA3 patients. Future studies should refine the psychophysiological setup to capture possible performance decrements also in pre-ataxic mutation carriers. Longitudinal observations will be needed to prove the potential of the assessment of Huggins pitch as a biomarker to track brainstem functioning during the disease course in SCA3.
Topics: Humans; Machado-Joseph Disease; Hearing; Pitch Perception; Magnetoencephalography; Mutation
PubMed: 36715818
DOI: 10.1007/s12311-023-01519-3 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Feb 2024Dealing with newborns' health is a delicate matter since they cannot express needs, and crying does not reflect their condition. Although newborn cries have been studied...
Dealing with newborns' health is a delicate matter since they cannot express needs, and crying does not reflect their condition. Although newborn cries have been studied for various purposes, there is no prior research on distinguishing a certain pathology from other pathologies so far. Here, an unsophisticated framework is proposed for the study of septic newborns amid a collective of other pathologies. The cry was analyzed with music inspired and speech processing inspired features. Furthermore, neighborhood component analysis (NCA) feature selection was employed with two goals: (i) Exploring how the elements of each feature set contributed to classification outcome; (ii) investigating to what extent the feature space could be compacted. The attained results showed success of both experiments introduced in this study, with 88.66% for the decision template fusion (DTF) technique and a consistent enhancement in comparison to all feature sets in terms of accuracy and 86.22% for the NCA feature selection method by drastically downsizing the feature space from 86 elements to only 6 elements. The achieved results showed great potential for identifying a certain pathology from other pathologies that may have similar effects on the cry patterns as well as proving the success of the proposed framework.
Topics: Infant, Newborn; Humans; Psychoacoustics; Crying
PubMed: 38310608
DOI: 10.1121/10.0024618 -
Journal of Communication Disorders 2024Central auditory processing disorders (CAPD) can significantly affect the daily functioning of a child, and the first step in determining whether rehabilitation...
INTRODUCTION
Central auditory processing disorders (CAPD) can significantly affect the daily functioning of a child, and the first step in determining whether rehabilitation procedures are required is a proper diagnosis. Different guidelines for making diagnoses have been published in the literature, and in various centers normative values for psychoacoustic tests of CAPD have been used internally. The material presented in this paper is based on more than 1000 children and is the largest collection so far published. The aim of this study is to present normative values for tests assessing CAPD in children aged 6 to 12 years, divided by age at last birthday.
METHOD
We tested 1037 children aged 6 to 12 years who were attending primary schools and kindergartens. The criteria for inclusion were a normal audiogram, intellectually normal, no developmental problems, and no difficulties in auditory processing. To evaluate auditory processing all children were given three tests on the Senses Examination Platform: the Frequency Pattern Test (FPT), Duration Pattern Test (DPT), and Dichotic Digit Test (DDT).
RESULTS
The results from 1,037 children allowed us to determine normative values for FPT, DPT, and DDT in seven different age groups (6 through to 12 years). We developed a newapproach, based on quantile-based norms, to determine normative values in each group. Three categories - average, below-average, and above-average - allow for a broader but more realistic interpretation than those used previously. We compare our results with published standards.
CONCLUSIONS
Our study is the largest normative database published to date for CAPD testing, setting a standard for each child by age in years. We used the Senses Examination Platform, a universal tool, to unify standards for the classification of CAPD. Our study can serve as a basis for the development of a Polish model for the diagnosis of CAPD.
Topics: Humans; Child; Female; Reference Values; Male; Auditory Perceptual Disorders
PubMed: 38692192
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2024.106426 -
Ear and HearingPostlingually deaf adults with cochlear implants (CIs) have difficulties with perceiving differences in speakers' voice characteristics and benefit little from voice...
Prelingually Deaf Children With Cochlear Implants Show Better Perception of Voice Cues and Speech in Competing Speech Than Postlingually Deaf Adults With Cochlear Implants.
OBJECTIVES
Postlingually deaf adults with cochlear implants (CIs) have difficulties with perceiving differences in speakers' voice characteristics and benefit little from voice differences for the perception of speech in competing speech. However, not much is known yet about the perception and use of voice characteristics in prelingually deaf implanted children with CIs. Unlike CI adults, most CI children became deaf during the acquisition of language. Extensive neuroplastic changes during childhood could make CI children better at using the available acoustic cues than CI adults, or the lack of exposure to a normal acoustic speech signal could make it more difficult for them to learn which acoustic cues they should attend to. This study aimed to examine to what degree CI children can perceive voice cues and benefit from voice differences for perceiving speech in competing speech, comparing their abilities to those of normal-hearing (NH) children and CI adults.
DESIGN
CI children's voice cue discrimination (experiment 1), voice gender categorization (experiment 2), and benefit from target-masker voice differences for perceiving speech in competing speech (experiment 3) were examined in three experiments. The main focus was on the perception of mean fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), the primary acoustic cues related to speakers' anatomy and perceived voice characteristics, such as voice gender.
RESULTS
CI children's F0 and VTL discrimination thresholds indicated lower sensitivity to differences compared with their NH-age-equivalent peers, but their mean discrimination thresholds of 5.92 semitones (st) for F0 and 4.10 st for VTL indicated higher sensitivity than postlingually deaf CI adults with mean thresholds of 9.19 st for F0 and 7.19 st for VTL. Furthermore, CI children's perceptual weighting of F0 and VTL cues for voice gender categorization closely resembled that of their NH-age-equivalent peers, in contrast with CI adults. Finally, CI children had more difficulties in perceiving speech in competing speech than their NH-age-equivalent peers, but they performed better than CI adults. Unlike CI adults, CI children showed a benefit from target-masker voice differences in F0 and VTL, similar to NH children.
CONCLUSION
Although CI children's F0 and VTL voice discrimination scores were overall lower than those of NH children, their weighting of F0 and VTL cues for voice gender categorization and their benefit from target-masker differences in F0 and VTL resembled that of NH children. Together, these results suggest that prelingually deaf implanted CI children can effectively utilize spectrotemporally degraded F0 and VTL cues for voice and speech perception, generally outperforming postlingually deaf CI adults in comparable tasks. These findings underscore the presence of F0 and VTL cues in the CI signal to a certain degree and suggest other factors contributing to the perception challenges faced by CI adults.
Topics: Humans; Cochlear Implants; Deafness; Male; Speech Perception; Female; Cues; Child; Adult; Cochlear Implantation; Young Adult; Adolescent; Voice; Case-Control Studies; Child, Preschool; Middle Aged
PubMed: 38616318
DOI: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000001489 -
The Journal of the Acoustical Society... Aug 2023In songbirds, singing with precision (vocal consistency) has been proposed to reflect whole-organism performance. Vocal consistency is measured using spectrogram cross...
In songbirds, singing with precision (vocal consistency) has been proposed to reflect whole-organism performance. Vocal consistency is measured using spectrogram cross correlation (SPCC) to assess the acoustic similarity between subsequent renditions of the same note. To quantify how SPCC is sensitive to the acoustic discrepancies found in birdsong, we created a set of 40 000 synthetic sounds that were designed based on the songs of 345 species. This set included 10 000 reference sounds and 30 000 inexact variants with quantified differences in frequency, bandwidth, or duration with respect to the reference sounds. We found that SPCC is sensitive to acoustic discrepancies within the natural range of vocal consistency, supporting the use of this method as a tool to assess vocal consistency in songbirds. Importantly, the sensitivity of SPCC was significantly affected by the bandwidth of sounds. The predictions derived from the analysis of synthetic sounds were then validated using 954 song recordings from 345 species (20 families). Based on psychoacoustic studies from birds and humans, we propose that the sensitivity of SPCC to acoustic discrepancies mirrors a perceptual bias in sound discrimination. Nevertheless, we suggest the tool be used with care, since sound bandwidth varies considerably between singing styles and therefore, SPCC scores may not be comparable.
Topics: Humans; Animals; Vocalization, Animal; Sound; Songbirds; Voice; Acoustics
PubMed: 37550240
DOI: 10.1121/10.0020543 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024In this perspective paper, we explore the use of haptic feedback to enhance human-human interaction during musical tasks. We start by providing an overview of the...
In this perspective paper, we explore the use of haptic feedback to enhance human-human interaction during musical tasks. We start by providing an overview of the theoretical foundation that underpins our approach, which is rooted in the embodied music cognition framework, and by briefly presenting the concepts of action-perception loop, sensorimotor coupling and entrainment. Thereafter, we focus on the role of haptic information in music playing and we discuss the use of wearable technologies, namely lightweight exoskeletons, for the exchange of haptic information between humans. We present two experimental scenarios in which the effectiveness of this technology for enhancing musical interaction and learning might be validated. Finally, we briefly discuss some of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the use of technologies for haptic communication in musical contexts, while also addressing the potential barriers to the widespread adoption of exoskeletons in such contexts.
PubMed: 38515976
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1327992