The role of transients in auditory processing

Biosystems ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 89 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 182-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Coath ◽  
Susan L. Denham
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Hui Sun ◽  
Kazuya Saito ◽  
Adam Tierney

Abstract Precise auditory perception at a subcortical level (neural representation and encoding of sound) has been suggested as a form of implicit L2 aptitude in naturalistic settings. Emerging evidence suggests that such implicit aptitude explains some variance in L2 speech perception and production among adult learners with different first language backgrounds and immersion experience. By examining 46 Chinese learners of English, the current study longitudinally investigated the extent to which explicit and implicit auditory processing ability could predict L2 segmental and prosody acquisition over a 5-month early immersion. According to the results, participants’ L2 gains were associated with more explicit and integrative auditory processing ability (remembering and reproducing music sequences), while the role of implicit, preconscious perception appeared to be negligible at the initial stage of postpubertal L2 speech learning.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meike M. Rogalla ◽  
Inga Rauser ◽  
Karsten Schulze ◽  
Lasse Osterhagen ◽  
K Jannis Hildebrandt

SummarySuccessful navigation in complex acoustic scenes requires focusing on relevant sounds while ignoring irrelevant distractors. It has been argued that the ability to track stimulus statistics and generate predictions supports the choice what to attend and what to ignore. However, the role of these predictions about future auditory events in drafting decisions remains elusive. While most psychophysical studies in humans indicate that expected stimuli serve as implicit cues attracting attention, most work studying physiological auditory processing in animals highlights the detection of unexpected, surprising stimuli. Here, we tested whether in the mouse, target probability is used as an implicit cue attracting attention or whether detection is biased towards low-probability deviants using an auditory detection task. We implemented a probabilistic choice model to investigate whether a possible dependence on stimulus statistics arises from short term serial correlations or from integration over longer periods. Our results demonstrate that target detectability in mice decreases with increasing probability, contrary to humans. We suggest that mice indeed track probability over a time scale of at least several minutes but do not use this information in the same way as humans do: instead of maximizing reward by focusing on high-probability targets, the saliency of a target is determined by surprise.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Samartin-Veiga ◽  
A. J. González-Villar ◽  
Y. Triñanes ◽  
C. Gómez-Perretta ◽  
M. T. Carrillo-de-la-Peña

AbstractFibromyalgia (FM) has been associated to an increased processing of somatosensory stimuli, but its generalization to other sensory modalities is under discussion. To clarify this, we studied auditory event-related potentials (AEPs) to stimuli of different intensity in patients with FM and healthy controls (HCs), considering the effects of attention mechanisms and medication. We performed two experiments: In study 1 (n = 50 FM, 60 HCs), the stimuli were presented randomly within the sequence; in study 2 (n = 28 FM, 30 HCs), they were presented in blocks of the same intensity. We analyzed intensity and group effects on N1-P2 amplitude and, only for the FM group, the effect of medication and the correlation between AEPs and clinical variables. Contrary to the expectation, the patients showed a trend of reduced AEPs to the loudest tones (study 1) or no significant differences with the HCs (study 2). Medication with central effects significantly reduced AEPs, while no significant relationships between the N1-P2 amplitude/intensity function and patients’ symptoms were observed. The findings do not provide evidence of augmented auditory processing in FM. Nevertheless, given the observed effect of medication, the role of sensory amplification as an underlying pathophysiological mechanism in fibromyalgia cannot be discarded.


Acta Acustica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Song Li ◽  
Robert Baumgartner ◽  
Jürgen Peissig

Perceived externalization is a relevant feature to create an immersive acoustic environment with headphone reproduction. In the present study, listener-specific acoustic transfer characteristics for an azimuth angle of 90° were modified to investigate the role of monaural spectral cues, interaural level differences (ILDs), and temporal fluctuations of ILDs on perceived externalization in anechoic and reverberant environments. Listeners’ ratings suggested that each acoustic cue was important for perceived externalization. If only one correct acoustic cue remained in the ear signals, the sound image could not be perceived as fully externalized. Reverberation did reduce but not eliminate the influences of monaural spectral and ILD cues on perceived externalization. Additionally, the spectral details of the ipsilateral ear signal were more important for perceived externalization than those in the contralateral ear signal. A computational model was proposed to quantify those relationships and predict externalization ratings by comparing the acoustic cues extracted from the target (modified) and template (non-processed) binaural signals after several auditory processing steps. The accuracy of predicted externalization ratings was higher than 90% under all experimental conditions.


Perception ◽  
10.1068/p3025 ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (9) ◽  
pp. 1127-1142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Au ◽  
Bill Lovegrove

In the present study, the role of rapid visual and auditory temporal processing in reading irregular and nonsense words was investigated with a group of normal readers. One hundred and five undergraduates participated in various visual and auditory temporal-processing tasks. Readers who primarily adopted the phonological route in reading (nonsense-word readers) showed a trend for better auditory temporal resolution but readers who primarily adopted sight word skills (irregular-word readers) did not exhibit better visual temporal resolution. Both the correlation and stepwise multiple-regression analyses, however, revealed a relationship between visual temporal processing and irregular-word reading as well as a relationship between auditory temporal processing and nonsense-word reading. The results support the involvement of visual and auditory processing in reading irregular and nonsense words respectively, and were discussed with respect to recent findings that only dyslexics with phonological impairment will display temporal deficits. Further, the temporal measures were not effective discriminants for the reading groups, suggesting a lack of association between reading ability and the choice of reading strategy.


2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (04) ◽  
pp. 205-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer B. Shinn ◽  
Jane A. Baran ◽  
Deborah W. Moncrieff ◽  
Frank E. Musiek

The role of attention in the differentiation of auditory processing disorders from attention deficit disorders is gaining considerable interest in both the clinical and research arenas. It has been well established that when attention is directed to one ear or the other on traditional dichotic tests, performance can be altered. However, preliminary studies in our laboratory have shown that dichotic fusion paradigms are resistant to shifts in ear performance associated with changes in attention. The purpose of this study was to assess the performance of normal listeners on a dichotic consonant-vowel and a dichotic rhyme (fusion) test. Both test procedures were administered to 20 young adults in three different listening conditions (free recall, attention directed to the left ear, and attention directed to the right ear). Results from this study supported the hypothesis that dichotic rhyme tests are resistant to alterations in the laterality of attention and have implications for the development of test paradigms that can be used to segregate attention from pure auditory deficits in the clinical domain.


2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Wilson ◽  
Dean Lusher ◽  
Catherine L. Martin ◽  
Genevieve Rayner ◽  
Neil McLachlan

the skill of absolute pitch (ap) has been proposed as an ideal paradigm for investigating the complex relationships that exist between the genome and its expression at a cognitive and behavioral level (the phenotype). Yet despite this, we still have limited understanding of the early conditions that might be necessary or sufficient for development of this skill, and the influence of the current music environment has not been explored. To investigate these issues we undertook a detailed characterization of the early and current music environment of 160 musicians, and then identified factors predictive of varying extent of AP ability. The results demonstrate a similar contribution of past and present environmental influences, with a combination of factors (rather than any given factor) most salient in AP musicians. The novel finding for the role of the current environment suggests that auditory processing models emphasizing plasticity effects are relevant to AP ability.


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