Temporal Loudness Weights Are Frequency Specific.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Fischenich A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8017310 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Loudness judgments of sounds varying in level across time show a non-uniform temporal weighting, with increased weights assigned to the beginning of the sound (primacy effect). In addition, higher weights are observed for temporal components that are higher in level than the remaining components (loudness dominance). In three experiments, sounds consisting of 100- or 475-ms Gaussian wideband noise segments with random level variations were presented and either none, the first, or a central temporal segment was amplified or attenuated. In Experiment 1, the sounds consisted of four 100-ms segments that were separated by 500-ms gaps. Previous experiments did not show a primacy effect in such a condition. In Experiment 2, four- or ten-100-ms-segment sounds without gaps between the segments were presented to examine the interaction between the primacy effect and level dominance. As expected, for the sounds with segments separated by gaps, no primacy effect was observed, but weights on amplified segments were increased and weights on attenuated segments were decreased. For the sounds with contiguous segments, a primacy effect as well as effects of relative level (similar to those in Experiment 1) were found. For attenuation, the data indicated no substantial interaction between the primacy effect and loudness dominance, whereas for amplification an interaction was present. In Experiment 3, sounds consisting of either four contiguous 100-ms or 475-ms segments, or four 100-ms segments separated by 500-ms gaps were presented. Effects of relative level were more pronounced for the contiguous sounds. Across all three experiments, the effects of relative level were more pronounced for attenuation. In addition, the effects of relative level showed a dependence on the position of the change in level, with opposite direction for attenuation compared to amplification. Some of the results are in accordance with explanations based on masking effects on auditory intensity resolution.
| S-EPMC8699981 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesHypersensitivity to auditory stimuli is a commonly reported symptom in listeners with migraine, yet it remains relatively unexplored in research. This study aims to investigate loudness discomfort levels in listeners with migraine, while identifying the frequencies most affected by the phenomenon.DesignTo achieve this, the study compared just audible level and loudness discomfort level ranges between participants with and without migraine from the United Kingdom, Greece as well as the participant recruitment platform Prolific, across 13 frequencies from 100 to 12,000 Hz, through an online listening test.ResultsFifty-five participants with migraine and 49 participants without migraine from both countries and Prolific were included in the analysis, where threshold ranges between just audible and mildly uncomfortable levels were compared in 13 frequencies. Migraineur group participants presented significantly smaller ranges between just audible and mildly uncomfortable level, due to lower thresholds of mild discomfort in 12 of the 13 frequencies when compared with the nonmigraineur group participants. Participants taking the test during their migraine attack or aura presented a tendency for smaller ranges. In addition, participants with self-reported higher severity migraine exhibited bigger ranges compared with participants with low severity migraine within the migraineur group. No relationship between ranges and medication or migraine attack frequency within the migraineur group was observed.ConclusionsResults from the study demonstrate a tendency for the migraineur group to present lower thresholds of mild discomfort compared with the nonmigraineur group, aligning with previous studies while extending the phenomenon to more frequencies than those previously examined. Though the present study presented no relationship between ranges and medication or attack frequency, further research is required to investigate a potential link between these factors.
| S-EPMC10426780 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Objectives: Mandarin-speaking users of cochlear implants (CI) perform poorer than their English counterpart. This may be because present CI speech coding schemes are largely based on English. This study aims to evaluate the relative contributions of temporal envelope (E) cues to Mandarin phoneme (including vowel, and consonant) and lexical tone recognition to provide information for speech coding schemes specific to Mandarin. Design: Eleven normal hearing subjects were studied using acoustic temporal E cues that were extracted from 30 continuous frequency bands between 80 and 7,562 Hz using the Hilbert transform and divided into five frequency regions. Percent-correct recognition scores were obtained with acoustic E cues presented in three, four, and five frequency regions and their relative weights calculated using the least-square approach. Results: For stimuli with three, four, and five frequency regions, percent-correct scores for vowel recognition using E cues were 50.43-84.82%, 76.27-95.24%, and 96.58%, respectively; for consonant recognition 35.49-63.77%, 67.75-78.87%, and 87.87%; for lexical tone recognition 60.80-97.15%, 73.16-96.87%, and 96.73%. For frequency region 1 to frequency region 5, the mean weights in vowel recognition were 0.17, 0.31, 0.22, 0.18, and 0.12, respectively; in consonant recognition 0.10, 0.16, 0.18, 0.23, and 0.33; in lexical tone recognition 0.38, 0.18, 0.14, 0.16, and 0.14. Conclusion: Regions that contributed most for vowel recognition was Region 2 (502-1,022 Hz) that contains first formant (F1) information; Region 5 (3,856-7,562 Hz) contributed most to consonant recognition; Region 1 (80-502 Hz) that contains fundamental frequency (F0) information contributed most to lexical tone recognition.
| S-EPMC8678109 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Temporal integration of loudness of 1 kHz tones with 5 and 200 ms durations was assessed in four subjects using two loudness measurement procedures: categorical loudness scaling (CLS) and loudness matching. CLS provides a reliable and efficient procedure for collecting data on the temporal integration of loudness and previously reported nonmonotonic behavior observed at mid-sound pressure level levels is replicated with this procedure. Stimuli that are assigned to the same category are effectively matched in loudness, allowing the measurement of temporal integration with CLS without curve-fitting, interpolation, or assumptions concerning the form of the loudness growth function.
| S-EPMC3138798 | biostudies-other
Project description:Narrowband noise stimuli were used to derive relative weights for detecting frequency glides in a yes/no procedure. One stimulus set was restricted to the duration of the glide. For the second stimulus set, there were fringe noise bands preceding and following the glide. For both sets, the center frequency of the linear glide was either fixed at 1000 Hz or randomly chosen on each trial from the range of 800-1200 Hz. Relative weights as a function of time were derived using a linear model and the linear classification method [A. Ahumada, J. Vis., 2, 121-131 (2002)]. Sensitivity was better for the fixed- than random-frequency conditions, and weight patterns from the random-frequency conditions were less reliable than those obtained from the fixed-frequency conditions. The magnitudes of the relative weights tended to be larger for the second half of the stimulus, suggesting that subjects paid more attention to the later than the earlier parts of stimuli. In the random-frequency conditions, the linear model failed to account for subjects' performance unless the stimuli were expressed in terms of relative changes in frequency rather than absolute frequency.
| S-EPMC2677319 | biostudies-other
Project description:Background and objectivesWe assessed correlations between the resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) of different thalamic nuclei and seizure frequency in patients with drug-resistant medial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE).MethodsSeventeen patients with mTLE and 17 sex-/age-/handedness-matched controls participated. A seed-based correlation method for the resting-state FMRI data was implemented to get RSFC maps of 70 thalamic nuclei seed masks. Group statistics for individual RSFC for subjects and seed masks were performed to obtain within-group characteristics and between-group differences with age covariates. A linear regression was applied to test whether seizure frequency correlated with thalamic nuclear RSFC with the whole brain in mTLE patients.ResultsRSFC of thalamic nuclei showed spatially distinguishable connectivity patterns that reflected principal inputs and outputs that were derived from priori anatomical knowledge. We found group differences between normal control and mTLE groups in RSFC for nuclei seeds located in various subdivisions of thalamus. The RSFCs in some of those nuclei were strongly correlated with seizure frequency.ConclusionsMediodorsal thalamic nuclei may play important roles in seizure activity or in the regulation of neuronal activity in the limbic system. The RSFC of motor- and sensory-relay nuclei may help elucidate sensory-motor deficits associated with chronic seizure activity. RSFC of the pulvinar nuclei of the thalamus could also be a key reflection of symptom-related functional deficits in mTLE.
| S-EPMC6412104 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Low frequency noise (LFS) and infrasound (IS) are controversially discussed as potential causes of annoyance and distress experienced by many people. However, the perception mechanisms for IS in the human auditory system are not completely understood yet. In the present study, sinusoids at 32 Hz (at the lower limit of melodic pitch for tonal stimulation), as well as 8 Hz (IS range) were presented to a group of 20 normal hearing subjects, using monaural stimulation via a loudspeaker sound source coupled to the ear canal by a long silicone rubber tube. Each participant attended two experimental sessions. In the first session, participants performed a categorical loudness scaling procedure as well as an unpleasantness rating task in a sound booth. In the second session, the loudness scaling procedure was repeated while brain activation was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Subsequently, activation data were collected for the respective stimuli presented at fixed levels adjusted to the individual loudness judgments. Silent trials were included as a baseline condition. Our results indicate that the brain regions involved in processing LFS and IS are similar to those for sounds in the typical audio frequency range, i.e., mainly primary and secondary auditory cortex (AC). In spite of large variation across listeners with respect to judgments of loudness and unpleasantness, neural correlates of these interindividual differences could not yet be identified. Still, for individual listeners, fMRI activation in the AC was more closely related to individual perception than to the physical stimulus level.
| S-EPMC7034801 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Purkinje cell (PC) synapses onto cerebellar nuclei (CbN) neurons allow signals from the cerebellar cortex to influence the rest of the brain. PCs are inhibitory neurons that spontaneously fire at high rates, and many PC inputs are thought to converge onto each CbN neuron to suppress its firing. It has been proposed that PCs convey information using a rate code, a synchrony and timing code, or both. The influence of PCs on CbN neuron firing was primarily examined for the combined effects of many PC inputs with comparable strengths, and the influence of individual PC inputs has not been extensively studied. Here, we find that single PC to CbN synapses are highly variable in size, and using dynamic clamp and modeling we reveal that this has important implications for PC-CbN transmission. Individual PC inputs regulate both the rate and timing of CbN firing. Large PC inputs strongly influence CbN firing rates and transiently eliminate CbN firing for several milliseconds. Remarkably, the refractory period of PCs leads to a brief elevation of CbN firing prior to suppression. Thus, individual PC-CbN synapses are suited to concurrently convey rate codes and generate precisely timed responses in CbN neurons. Either synchronous firing or synchronous pauses of PCs promote CbN neuron firing on rapid time scales for nonuniform inputs, but less effectively than for uniform inputs. This is a secondary consequence of variable input sizes elevating the baseline firing rates of CbN neurons by increasing the variability of the inhibitory conductance. These findings may generalize to other brain regions with highly variable inhibitory synapse sizes.
| S-EPMC10798666 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundUrban sound levels are a ubiquitous environmental stressor and have been shown to be associated with a wide variety of health outcomes. While much is known about the predictors of A-weighted sound pressure levels in the urban environment, far less is known about other frequencies.ObjectiveTo develop a series of spatial-temporal sound models to predict A-weighted sound pressure levels, low, mid, and high frequency sound for Boston, Massachusetts.MethodsShort-term sound levels were gathered at n = 400 sites from February 2015 - February 2016. Spatial and meteorological attributes at or near the sound monitoring site were obtained using publicly available data and a portable weather station. An elastic net variable selection technique was used to select predictors of A-weighted, low, mid, and high frequency sound.ResultsThe final models for low, mid, high, and A-weighted sound levels explained 59 - 69% of the variability in each measure. Similar to other A-weighted models, our sound models included transportation related variables such as length of roads and bus lines in the surrounding area; distance to road and rail lines; traffic volume, vehicle mix, residential and commercial land use. However, frequency specific models highlighted additional predictors not included in the A-weighted model including temperature, vegetation, impervious surfaces, vehicle mix, and density of entertainment establishments and restaurants.ConclusionsBuilding spatial temporal models to characterize sound levels across the frequency spectrum using an elastic net approach can be a promising tool for noise exposure assessments within the urban soundscape. Models of sound's character may give us additional important sound exposure metrics to be utilized in epidemiological studies.
| S-EPMC5903552 | biostudies-literature
Project description:PurposeThe aims of this study were to (a) demonstrate the feasibility of administering categorical loudness scaling (CLS) tests in a remote setting, (b) assess the reliability of remote compared with laboratory CLS results, and (c) provide preliminary evidence of the validity of remote CLS testing.MethodCLS data from 21 adult participants collected in a home setting were compared to CLS data collected in a laboratory setting from previous studies. Five participants took part in studies in both settings. Precalibrated equipment was delivered to participants who performed headphone output level checks and measured ambient noise levels. After a practice run, CLS measurements were collected for two runs at 1 and 4 kHz.ResultsMean headphone output levels were within 1.5 dB of the target calibration level. Mean ambient noise levels were below the target level. Within-run variability was similar between the two settings, but across-run bias was smaller for data collected in the laboratory setting compared with the remote setting. Systematic differences in CLS functions were not observed for the five individuals who participated in both settings.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that precise stimulus levels can be delivered and background noise levels can be controlled in a home environment. Across-run bias for remote CLS was larger than for in-laboratory CLS, indicating that further work is needed to improve the reliability of CLS data collected in remote settings. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17131856.
| S-EPMC9128724 | biostudies-literature