Infrasounds are signals with frequencies below the classical audio-frequency range, i.e., below 20 Hz.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study investigates how sensorineural hearing loss affects the perception of suprathreshold tonal components in noise. Masked threshold, tonality, and loudness of the tonal content are measured for one, two, or four simultaneously presented sinusoids. The levels of the suprathreshold tonal components were chosen relative to the individual masked thresholds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJASA Express Lett
January 2022
Although comodulation masking release (CMR) is commonly associated with across-channel processes, it was often argued that part of the effect may be explained by processing within an auditory filter. One peripheral mechanism for such within-channel process is cochlear suppression. Using the dual-resonance nonlinear filter model with different sets of model parameters, the present study shows that the simulated CMR is associated with the simulated two-tone suppression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn patients with strong asymmetric hearing loss, standard clinical practice involves testing speech intelligibility in the ear with the higher hearing threshold by simultaneously presenting noise to the other ear. However, psychoacoustic and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies indicate that this approach may be problematic as contralateral noise has a disruptive effect on task processing. Furthermore, fMRI studies have revealed that the effect of contralateral noise on brain activity depends on the lateralization of task processing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComodulation masking release (CMR) is an effect that is associated with auditory sensitivity to coherent amplitude modulations in different frequency regions. The present study investigated if this comodulation is detected by a direct comparison of auditory filter outputs, or if common masker fluctuations are first extracted by a broadly tuned stage that integrates information across a large spectral range. To this end, a modified flanking-band experiment with a narrowband noise masker at the signal frequency (on-frequency masker), and two flanking bands (FBs), one centered below and one above the signal frequency, were used.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman loudness judgments of time-varying sounds show a non-uniform temporal weighting pattern with increased weights at the beginning of a sound. Four experiments were conducted to investigate whether this primacy effect reoccurs after a silent gap of an appropriate duration that is inserted into a level-fluctuating sound. In three of the experiments, contiguous sounds as well as sounds containing silent gaps of different durations were presented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study investigated the effect of the number of spectral components on the threshold in quiet of infrasound stimuli. Stimuli with one, two, or three sinusoidal components were presented monaurally to the ear with a low-distortion infrasound reproduction system. All components of the complex tones had the same level relative to their respective pure-tone threshold.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study investigated the combined effect of binaural cues and comodulation for a narrowband target noise masked by a narrowband noise. The threshold difference between a diotic condition (same stimuli in both ears) and a dichotic condition (target interaural phase difference of π and diotic masker) decreased with spectral distance between masker and target, irrespective of across-frequency envelope correlation. The threshold difference between a condition with comodulated target and masker and a corresponding uncorrelated condition, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrelingually deaf children listening through cochlear implants (CIs) face severe limitations on their experience of music, since the hearing device degrades relevant details of the acoustic input. An important parameter of music is harmony, which conveys emotional as well as syntactic information. The present study addresses musical harmony in three psychoacoustic experiments in young, prelingually deaf CI listeners and normal-hearing (NH) peers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe onset of a sound receives a higher weight than later portions in time when its loudness is assessed, an effect commonly referred to as primacy effect. It is investigated if this effect can be predicted on the basis of an exponentially decaying function where the weight assigned to a temporal portion of a sound is the integral of this function over the segment duration. To test this model, temporal loudness weights were measured for sounds with different segment durations and total durations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The purpose of this study was to establish a paradigm that allows for the simultaneous recording of auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) to two largely different modulation rates.
Methods: In 21 normal-hearing adults, ASSRs for 40- and 80-Hz modulation rates were recorded in (1) a classical monotic single-stimulus condition, (2) a monotic simultaneous condition, where 40 Hz was paired with a 1-kHz carrier and 80 Hz with a 2-kHz carrier, and (3) a dichotic simultaneous condition with the same modulation rate/carrier pairing. Response amplitudes, residual noises, and signal-to-noise ratios were compared across conditions.
The psychoacoustic measure pitch strength describes the strength of the tonal sensation evoked by a sound on a scale from weak to strong. For normal-hearing listeners, it was shown in the literature that pitch strength of bandpass noise (relative to the pitch strength of a sinusoid at its center frequency) decreases with increasing bandwidth. This decrease also depends on the center frequency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLoudness is a fundamental aspect of auditory perception that is closely related to the physical level of the sound. However, it has been demonstrated that, in contrast to a sound level meter, human listeners do not weight all temporal segments of a sound equally. Instead, the beginning of a sound is more important for loudness estimation than later temporal portions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral behavioural studies in humans have shown that listening to sounds with two ears that is binaural hearing, provides the human auditory system with extra information on the sound source that is not available when sounds are only perceived through one ear that is monaurally. Binaural processing involves the analysis of phase and level differences between the two ear signals. As monaural cochlea processing (in each ear) precedes the neural stages responsible for binaural processing properties it is reasonable to assume that properties of the cochlea may also be observed in binaural processing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThresholds were measured for a 250-Hz signal with an interaural phase difference of 0° (diotic) or 180° (dichotic), with signal durations of 12 and 60 ms (including 6-ms ramps) and 300 ms (including 6- or 50-ms ramps). The signal-centered diotic noise masker had a bandwidth of 20 or 200 Hz. For the 20-Hz wide masker, the binaural masking level difference (BMLD), i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExperimental binaural masking-pattern data are presented together with model simulations for 12- and 600-ms signals. The masker was a diotic 11-Hz wide noise centered on 500 Hz. The tonal signal was presented either diotically or dichotically (180° interaural phase difference) with frequencies ranging from 400 to 600 Hz.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBinaural notched-noise experiments indicate a reduced frequency selectivity of the binaural system compared to monaural processing. The present study investigates how auditory efferent activation (via the medial olivocochlear system) affects binaural frequency selectivity in normal-hearing listeners. Thresholds were measured for a 1-kHz signal embedded in a diotic notched-noise masker for various notch widths.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Acoust Soc Am
March 2017
There is increasing evidence that the auditory system shows frequency selectivity for spectro-temporal modulations. A recent study of the authors has shown spectro-temporal modulation masking patterns that were in agreement with the hypothesis of spectro-temporal modulation filters in the human auditory system [Oetjen and Verhey (2015). J.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe loudness of a bandpass-filtered noise depends on its bandwidth. For bandwidths larger than a critical bandwidth, loudness increases as the bandwidth increases, an effect commonly referred to as spectral loudness summation. For bandwidths smaller than the critical bandwidth, it was shown recently for normal-hearing listeners that loudness decreases as the bandwidth increases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdv Exp Med Biol
September 2016
Object binding cues such as binaural and across-frequency modulation cues are likely to be used by the auditory system to separate sounds from different sources in complex auditory scenes. The present study investigates the interaction of these cues in a binaural masking pattern paradigm where a sinusoidal target is masked by a narrowband noise. It was hypothesised that beating between signal and masker may contribute to signal detection when signal and masker do not spectrally overlap but that this cue could not be used in combination with interaural cues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdaptation to visual or auditory motion affects within-modality motion processing as reflected by visual or auditory free-field motion-onset evoked potentials (VEPs, AEPs). Here, a visual-auditory motion adaptation paradigm was used to investigate the effect of visual motion adaptation on VEPs and AEPs to leftward motion-onset test stimuli. Effects of visual adaptation to (i) scattered light flashes, and motion in the (ii) same or in the (iii) opposite direction of the test stimulus were compared.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDetection threshold of a sinusoidal signal masked by a broadband masker is lower when on- and off-frequency masker components have a correlated envelope, compared to a condition in which these masker components have different envelopes. This effect is commonly referred to as comodulation masking release (CMR). The present study investigated if there is a CMR in the absence of a masker component at the signal frequency, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Acoust Soc Am
August 2015
Categorical loudness scaling was used to measure suprathreshold release from masking. The signal was a 986-Hz sinusoid that was embedded in a bandpass-filtered masking noise. This noise was either unmodulated or was amplitude modulated with a square-wave modulator.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTechnical sounds often contain several tonal components, forming a multi-tone sound. The present study investigates the perception of multi-tone sounds consisting of two harmonic complexes with different fundamental frequencies and combination tones with frequencies that are equal to the sum of multiple integers of the two fundamentals. The experimental parameter is the ratio between the two fundamental frequencies ρ.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Acoust Soc Am
February 2015
The present study investigated the possibility that the human auditory system demonstrates frequency selectivity to spectro-temporal amplitude modulations. Threshold modulation depth for detecting sinusoidal spectro-temporal modulations was measured using a generalized masked threshold pattern paradigm with narrowband masker modulations. Four target spectro-temporal modulations were examined, differing in their temporal and spectral modulation frequencies: a temporal modulation of -8, 8, or 16 Hz combined with a spectral modulation of 1 cycle/octave and a temporal modulation of 4 Hz combined with a spectral modulation of 0.
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