Purpose: To study the perceptual consequences of changes in parameters of vocoded speech in various reverberation conditions.
Method: The 3 controlled variables were number of vocoder bands, instantaneous frequency change rate, and reverberation conditions. The effects were quantified in terms of (a) nonsense words' recognition scores for young normal-hearing listeners, (b) ease of listening based on the time of response (response delay), and (c) the subjective measure of difficulty (10-degree scale).
Results: It has been shown that the fine structure of a signal is a relevant cue in speech perception in reverberation conditions. The results obtained for different number of bands, frequency-modulation cutoff frequencies, and reverberation conditions have shown that all these parameters are important for speech perception in reverberation.
Conclusions: Only slow variations in the instantaneous frequency (<50 Hz) seem to play a critical role in speech intelligibility in anechoic conditions. In reverberant enclosures, however, fast fluctuations of instantaneous frequency are also significant.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2009/08-0068) | DOI Listing |
Front Cell Neurosci
January 2025
Section of Clinical Pharmacology and Oncology, Department of Health Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
For over a century after their discovery astrocytes were regarded merely as cells located among other brain cells to hold and give support to neurons. Astrocytes activation, "astrocytosis" or A1 functional state, was considered a detrimental mechanism against neuronal survival. Recently, the scientific view on astrocytes has changed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScience
January 2025
Maria D. Van Kerkhove is a director at the World Health Organization, leading the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Threat Management, and serves as the COVID-19 Technical Lead and Emergency Manager in the Health Emergencies Programme, Geneva, Switzerland.
Just over 5 years ago, on New Year's Eve 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) became aware of the first cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, China. A massive global infectious disease storm was already brewing-one that would shut down the world, with profound economic, social, and political impacts that still reverberate today. It's understandable that governments and individuals may want to forget that the COVID-19 pandemic ever happened, but such collective amnesia prevents humanity from being ready for the next pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
January 2025
Deptartment of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America.
Binaural speech intelligibility in rooms is a complex process that is affected by many factors including room acoustics, hearing loss, and hearing aid (HA) signal processing. Intelligibility is evaluated in this paper for a simulated room combined with a simulated hearing aid. The test conditions comprise three spatial configurations of the speech and noise sources, simulated anechoic and concert hall acoustics, three amounts of multitalker babble interference, the hearing status of the listeners, and three degrees of simulated HA processing provided to compensate for the noise and/or hearing loss.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBioelectromagnetics
January 2025
Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
In this paper, we present the design, RF-EMF performance, and a comprehensive uncertainty analysis of the reverberation chamber (RC) exposure systems that have been developed for the use of researchers at the University of Wollongong Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory, Australia, for the purpose of investigating the biological effects of RF-EMF in rodents. Initial studies, at 1950 MHz, have focused on investigating thermophysiological effects of RF exposure, and replication studies related to RF-EMF exposure and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in mice predisposed to AD. The RC exposure system was chosen as it allows relatively unconstrained movement of animals during exposures which can have the beneficial effect of minimizing stress-related, non-RF-induced biological and behavioral changes in the animals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBioengineering (Basel)
December 2024
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA.
Room reverberation can affect oral/aural communication and is especially critical in computer analysis of voice. High levels of reverberation can distort voice recordings, impacting the accuracy of quantifying voice production quality and vocal health evaluations. This study quantifies the impact of additive simulated reverberation on otherwise clean voice recordings as reflected in voice metrics commonly used for voice quality evaluation.
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