AI Article Synopsis
- Sound detection improves when the target sound and background noise come from different locations due to how our brains process sound.
- The proposed mathematical model, using a complex-valued correlation coefficient, helps quantify how differences in sound reaching our ears can improve clarity in noisy environments.
- This model effectively explains findings from multiple psychoacoustic studies, suggesting it may enhance our overall understanding of how we hear and distinguish sounds in complex auditory environments.
Article Abstract
Sound in noise is better detected or understood if target and masking sources originate from different locations. Mammalian physiology suggests that the neurocomputational process that underlies this binaural unmasking is based on two hemispheric channels that encode interaural differences in their relative neuronal activity. Here, we introduce a mathematical formulation of the two-channel model - the complex-valued correlation coefficient. We show that this formulation quantifies the amount of temporal fluctuations in interaural differences, which we suggest underlie binaural unmasking. We applied this model to an extensive library of psychoacoustic experiments, accounting for 98% of the variance across eight studies. Combining physiological plausibility with its success in explaining behavioral data, the proposed mechanism is a significant step towards a unified understanding of binaural unmasking and the encoding of interaural differences in general.
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Source |
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9587988 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-04098-x | DOI Listing |
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