Authors: Sijia Zhao, Christopher A Brown, Lori L Holt...

Most human auditory psychophysics research has historically been conducted in carefully controlled environments with calibrated audio equipment, and over potentially hours of repetitive testing with expert listeners. Here, we operationally define such conditions as having high 'auditory hygiene'. From this perspective, conducting auditory psychophysical paradigms online presents a serious challenge, in that results may hinge on absolute sound presentation level, reliably estimated perceptual thresholds, low and controlled background noise levels, and sustained motivation and attention. We introduce a set of procedures that address these challenges and facilitate auditory hygiene for online auditory psychophysics. First, we establish a simple means of setting sound presentation levels. Across a set of four level-setting conditions conducted in person, we demonstrate the stability and robustness of this level setting procedure in open air and controlled settings. Second, we test participants' tone-in-noise thresholds using widely adopted online experiment platforms and demonstrate that reliable threshold estimates can be derived online in approximately one minute of testing. Third, using these level and threshold setting procedures to establish participant-specific stimulus conditions, we show that an online implementation of the classic probe-signal paradigm can be used to demonstrate frequency-selective attention on an individual-participant basis, using a third of the trials used in recent in-lab experiments. Finally, we show how threshold and attentional measures relate to well-validated assays of online participants' in-task motivation, fatigue, and confidence. This demonstrates the promise of online auditory psychophysics for addressing new auditory perception and neuroscience questions quickly, efficiently, and with more diverse samples. Code for the tests is publicly available through Pavlovia and Gorilla.

Topics: Auditory Perception; Auditory Threshold; Humans; Noise; Psychophysics

PubMed: 36131515
DOI: 10.1177/23312165221118792

Authors: Aaron L McDaniel, Theodore N Dimitrov, Stephen P Bruehl...

For over 100 years, psychophysics ..÷ the scientific study between physical stimuli and sensation ... has been successfully employed in numerous scientific and healthcare disciplines, as an objective measure of sensory phenomena. This manuscript provides an overview of fundamental psychophysical concepts, emphasizing pain and research application..÷defining common terms, methods, and procedures.Psychophysics can provide systematic and objective measures of sensory perception that can be used by nursing scientists to explore complex, subjective phenomena..÷such as pain perception. While there needs to be improved standardization of terms and techniques, psychophysical approaches are diverse and may be tailored to address or augment current research paradigms. The interdisciplinary nature of psychophysics..÷like nursing..÷provides a unique lens for understanding how our perceptions are influenced by measurable sensations. While the quest to understand human perception is far from complete, nursing science has an opportunity to contribute to pain research by using the techniques and methods available through psychophysical procedures.

Topics: Humans; Pain; Sensation; Pain Perception; Psychophysics; Pain Measurement

PubMed: 36948969
DOI: 10.1016/j.pmn.2023.02.006

Authors: Francois Guérit, John C Middlebrooks, Matthew L Richardson...

We describe a scalp-recorded measure of tonotopic selectivity, the "cortical onset response" (COR) and compare the results between humans and cats. The COR results, in turn, were compared with psychophysical masked-detection thresholds obtained using similar stimuli and obtained from both species. The COR consisted of averaged responses elicited by 50-ms tone-burst probes presented at 1-s intervals against a continuous noise masker. The noise masker had a bandwidth of 1 or 1/8th octave, geometrically centred on 4000 Hz for humans and on 8000 Hz for cats. The probe frequency was either - 0.5, - 0.25, 0, 0.25 or 0.5 octaves re the masker centre frequency. The COR was larger for probe frequencies more distant from the centre frequency of the masker, and this effect was greater for the 1/8th-octave than for the 1-octave masker. This pattern broadly reflected the masked excitation patterns obtained psychophysically with similar stimuli in both species. However, the positive signal-to-noise ratio used to obtain reliable COR measures meant that some aspects of the data differed from those obtained psychophysically, in a way that could be partly explained by the upward spread of the probe's excitation pattern. Our psychophysical measurements also showed that the auditory filter width obtained at 8000 Hz using notched-noise maskers was slightly wider in cat than previous measures from humans. We argue that although conclusions from COR measures differ in some ways from conclusions based on psychophysics, the COR measures provide an objective, noninvasive, valid measure of tonotopic selectivity that does not require training and that may be applied to acoustic and cochlear-implant experiments in humans and laboratory animals.

Topics: Animals; Auditory Threshold; Cats; Electrophysiology; Humans; Noise; Perceptual Masking; Psychophysics

PubMed: 35697952
DOI: 10.1007/s10162-022-00851-5

Review

Authors: B Treutwein

Improvements in measuring thresholds, or points on a psychometric function, have advanced the field of psychophysics in the last 30 years. The arrival of laboratory computers allowed the introduction of adaptive procedures, where the presentation of the next stimulus depends on previous responses of the subject. Unfortunately, these procedures present themselves in a bewildering variety, though some of them differ only slightly. Even someone familiar with several methods cannot easily name the differences, or decide which method would be best suited for a particular application. This review tries to illuminate the historical background of adaptive procedures, explain their differences and similarities, and provide criteria for choosing among the various techniques.

Topics: Cost-Benefit Analysis; Differential Threshold; Humans; Mathematics; Psychometrics; Psychophysics; Stochastic Processes

PubMed: 8594817
DOI: No ID Found

Authors: Luke E Miller, Felix Jarto, W Pieter Medendorp...

The spatial limits of sensory acquisition (its sensory horizon) are a fundamental property of any sensorimotor system. In the present study, we sought to determine whether there is a sensory horizon for the human haptic modality. At first blush, it seems obvious that the haptic system is bounded by the space where the body can interact with the environment (e.g., the arm span). However, the human somatosensory system is exquisitely tuned to sensing with tools-blind-cane navigation being a classic example of this. The horizon of haptic perception therefore extends beyond body space, but to what extent is unknown. We first used neuromechanical modeling to determine the theoretical horizon, which we pinpointed as 6 m. We then used a psychophysical localization paradigm to behaviorally confirm that humans can haptically localize objects using a 6-m rod. This finding underscores the incredible flexibility of the brain's sensorimotor representations, as they can be adapted to sense an object many times longer than the user's own body. There are often spatial limits to where an active sensory system can sample information from the environment. Hand-held tools can extend human haptic perception beyond the body, but the limits of this extension are unknown. We used theoretical modeling and psychophysics to determine these spatial limits. We find that the ability to spatially localize objects through a tool extends at least 6 m beyond the user's body.

Topics: Humans; Stereognosis; Psychophysics; Touch Perception; Touch; Visual Perception

PubMed: 36812143
DOI: 10.1152/jn.00442.2022

Review

Authors: Michael L Waskom, Gouki Okazawa, Roozbeh Kiani...

Scientific experimentation depends on the artificial control of natural phenomena. The inaccessibility of cognitive processes to direct manipulation can make such control difficult to realize. Here, we discuss approaches for overcoming this challenge. We advocate the incorporation of experimental techniques from sensory psychophysics into the study of cognitive processes such as decision making and executive control. These techniques include the use of simple parameterized stimuli to precisely manipulate available information and computational models to jointly quantify behavior and neural responses. We illustrate the potential for such techniques to drive theoretical development, and we examine important practical details of how to conduct controlled experiments when using them. Finally, we highlight principles guiding the use of computational models in studying the neural basis of cognition.

Topics: Animals; Cognition; Cognitive Neuroscience; Computer Simulation; Decision Making; Decision Theory; Executive Function; Humans; Psychophysics; Research Design

PubMed: 31600507
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.09.016

Review

Authors: Joshua A Solomon

Dipper-shaped curves often accurately depict the relationship between a baseline, or "pedestal," magnitude and a just noticeable difference in it. This tutorial traces the 45-year history of the dipper function in auditory and visual psychophysics, focusing on when they happen and why. Popular theories of both positive and negative masking (i.e., the "handle" and "dip," respectively) are described. Sometimes, but not always, negative masking disappears with an appropriate redescription of stimulus magnitude.

Topics: Auditory Perception; Differential Threshold; Discrimination, Psychological; History, 20th Century; Humans; Psychophysics; Visual Perception

PubMed: 19304634
DOI: 10.3758/APP.71.3.435

Review

Authors: Matteo Carandini, Anne K Churchland

The study of perceptual decision-making offers insight into how the brain uses complex, sometimes ambiguous information to guide actions. Understanding the underlying processes and their neural bases requires that one pair recordings and manipulations of neural activity with rigorous psychophysics. Though this research has been traditionally performed in primates, it seems increasingly promising to pursue it at least partly in mice and rats. However, rigorous psychophysical methods are not yet as developed for these rodents as they are for primates. Here we give a brief overview of the sensory capabilities of rodents and of their cortical areas devoted to sensation and decision. We then review methods of psychophysics, focusing on the technical issues that arise in their implementation in rodents. These methods represent a rich set of challenges and opportunities.

Topics: Animals; Brain; Decision Making; Mice; Neural Pathways; Neurons; Perception; Physical Stimulation; Psychophysics; Rats; Signal Detection, Psychological

PubMed: 23799475
DOI: 10.1038/nn.3410

Review

Authors: Vivek Khatri, Raddy Ramos

Topics: Animals; Neural Pathways; Psychophysics; Rats; Sensory Deprivation; Vibrissae

PubMed: 17139795
DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.4148-06.2006

Authors: Yiya Chen, Zhimo Yao, Zhifen He...

PURPOSE

We developed a stereo task that is based on a motion direction discrimination to examine the role that depth can play in disambiguating motion direction.

METHODS

In this study, we quantified normal adults' static and dynamic (i.e., laterally moving) stereoscopic performance using a psychophysical task, where we dichoptically presented randomly arranged, limited lifetime Gabor elements at two depth planes (one plane was at the fixation plane and the other at an uncrossed disparity relative to the fixation plane). Each plane contained half of the elements. For the dynamic condition, all elements were vertically oriented and moved to the left in one plane and to the right in another plane; for the static condition, the elements were horizontally oriented in one plane and vertically oriented in another plane.

RESULTS

For the range of motion speed that we measured (from 0.17°/s to 5.33°/s), we observed clear speed tuning of the stereo sensitivity (P = 3.0 × 10-5). The shape of this tuning did not significantly change with different spatial frequencies. We also found a significant difference in stereo sensitivity between stereopsis with static and laterally moving stimuli (speed = 0.67°/s; P = 0.004). Such difference was not evident when we matched the task between the static and moving stimuli.

CONCLUSIONS

We report that lateral motion modulates human global depth perception. This motion/stereo constraint is related to motion velocity not stimulus temporal frequency. We speculate that the processing of motion-based stereopsis of the kind reported here occurs in dorsal extrastriate cortex.

Topics: Adult; Depth Perception; Female; Humans; Male; Motion Perception; Psychophysics; Reference Values; Vision Disparity; Vision, Binocular; Visual Cortex; Young Adult

PubMed: 35077551
DOI: 10.1167/iovs.63.1.32