Estimating the form of the peripheral nonlinearity from slopes of psychometric functions in forward masking

Walt Jesteadt; Stephen T. Neely; Kim S. Schairer

doi:10.1121/1.4777930

Effects of masker frequency and duration in forward masking: further evidence for the influence of peripheral nonlinearity

Hearing Research ◽

10.1016/s0378-5955(00)00206-9 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 150 (1-2) ◽

pp. 258-266 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

Andrew J. Oxenham ◽

Christopher J. Plack

Keyword(s):

Forward Masking ◽

Peripheral Nonlinearity

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Masker interaction in pure‐tone forward masking

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America ◽

10.1121/1.384745 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 68 (2) ◽

pp. 475-479 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Gregory P. Widin ◽

Neal F. Viemeister

Keyword(s):

Pure Tone ◽

Forward Masking

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Comparison of Behavioral and Physiological Measures of the Status of the Cochlear Nonlinearity

Trends in Hearing ◽

10.1177/23312165211016155 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 25 ◽

pp. 233121652110161

Author(s):

Michal Fereczkowski ◽

Torsten Dau ◽

Ewen N. MacDonald

Keyword(s):

Otoacoustic Emissions ◽

Hearing Impaired ◽

Good Correspondence ◽

Cochlear Nonlinearity ◽

Temporal Masking ◽

The Status ◽

Peripheral Compression ◽

Two Measures ◽

Peripheral Nonlinearity ◽

Fitting In

While an audiogram is a useful method of characterizing hearing loss, it has been suggested that including a complementary, suprathreshold measure, for example, a measure of the status of the cochlear active mechanism, could lead to improved diagnostics and improved hearing-aid fitting in individual listeners. While several behavioral and physiological methods have been proposed to measure the cochlear-nonlinearity characteristics, evidence of a good correspondence between them is lacking, at least in the case of hearing-impaired listeners. If this lack of correspondence is due to, for example, limited reliability of one of such measures, it might be a reason for limited evidence of the benefit of measuring peripheral compression. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between measures of the peripheral-nonlinearity status estimated using two psychoacoustical methods (based on the notched-noise and temporal-masking curve methods) and otoacoustic emissions, on a large sample of hearing-impaired listeners. While the relation between the estimates from the notched-noise and the otoacoustic emissions experiments was found to be stronger than predicted by the audiogram alone, the relations between the two measures and the temporal-masking based measure did not show the same pattern, that is, the variance shared by any of the two measures with the temporal-masking curve-based measure was also shared with the audiogram.

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Monaural inhibition in cat auditory cortex

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.1995.73.5.1876 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 73 (5) ◽

pp. 1876-1891 ◽

Cited By ~ 187

Author(s):

M. B. Calford ◽

M. N. Semple

Keyword(s):

Auditory Cortex ◽

Lateral Inhibition ◽

Cortical Neurons ◽

Frequency Tuning ◽

Inhibitory Response ◽

Forward Masking ◽

Excitatory Response ◽

Rate Level ◽

Wide Range ◽

Response Area

1. Several studies of auditory cortex have examined the competitive inhibition that can occur when appropriate sounds are presented to each ear. However, most cortical neurons also show both excitation and inhibition in response to presentation of stimuli at one ear alone. The extent of such inhibition has not been described. Forward masking, in which a variable masking stimulus was followed by a fixed probe stimulus (within the excitatory response area), was used to examine the extent of monaural inhibition for neurons in primary auditory cortex of anesthetized cats (barbiturate or barbiturate-ketamine). Both the masking and probe stimuli were 50-ms tone pips presented to the contralateral ear. Most cortical neurons showed significant forward masking at delays beyond which masking effects in the auditory nerve are relatively small compared with those seen in cortical neurons. Analysis was primarily concerned with such components. Standard rate-level functions were also obtained and were examined for nonmonotonicity, an indication of level-dependent monaural inhibition. 2. Consistent with previous reports, a wide range of frequency tuning properties (excitatory response area shapes) was found in cortical neurons. This was matched by a wide range of forward-masking-derived inhibitory response areas. At the most basic level of analysis, these were classified according to the presence of lateral inhibition, i.e., where a probe tone at a neuron's characteristic frequency was masked by tones outside the limits of the excitatory response area. Lateral inhibition was a property of 38% of the sampled neurons. Such neurons represented 77% of those with nonmonotonic rate-level functions, indicating a strong correlation between the two indexes of monaural inhibition; however, the shapes of forward masking inhibitory response areas did not usually correspond with those required to account for the "tuning" of a neuron. In addition, it was found that level-dependent inhibition was not added to by forward masking inhibition. 3. Analysis of the discharges to individual stimulus pair presentations, under conditions of partial masking, revealed that discharges to the probe occurred independently of discharges to the preceding masker. This indicates that even when the masker is within a neuron's excitatory response area, forward masking is not a postdischarge habituation phenomenon. However, for most neurons the degree of masking summed over multiple stimulus presentations appears determined by the same stimulus parameters that determine the probability of response to the masker.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

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