We used the mismatch negativity event-related potential to examine how spatial location and feature variation affect the capacity of the auditory system to automatically respond to pairs of rapid (180 ms apart) acoustic changes within a single tone. When a tone first deviated from a standard tone in source location ...

Two experiments were performed to determine whether categorization of the pitch of a probe tone is influenced by the pitch of, and response made to, a preceding prime tone. The prime and the probe could be drawn either from a pool of low-frequency sounds or from a pool of high-frequency ...

Perception of auditory spectral-temporal patterns was examined in two Japanese monkeys. The stimuli used were pairs of pure tones of different frequencies that were presented sequentially. The monkeys were required to discriminate whether the frequency of the second tone was higher or lower than the first tone. The performances of ...

Visually perceived eye level (VPEL) and perceived pitch were measured while subjects viewed two sets of stimuli that were either upright or pitched top-toward or top-away from them. The first set of stimuli, a pair of vertical lines viewed at various angles of pitch, caused systematic changes in perceived pitch ...

The ability to detect a dynamic change in the interaural delay of a pure tone in the presence of a distracter tone of a different frequency was investigated in four conditions: (1) a control condition in which no distracter tone was present, (2) the distracter tone was stationary (fixed interaural ...

The classical conditioning task of blocking involves the adding of a novel but redundant stimulus to a previously trained stimulus. Both blocking and novelty detection are thought to involve the hippocampus. Previously, Solomon (1977) found that nonselective aspiration lesions of the hippocampal region eliminated blocking in rabbit eyeblink conditioning. We ...

The octave illusion occurs when each ear receives a sequence of tones alternating by 1 octave but with the high and low tones in different ears. Most listeners perceive these stimuli as a high pitch in one ear alternating with a low pitch in the other ear. D. Deutsch and ...

This experiment examined the generation of virtual pitch for harmonically related tones that do not overlap in time. The interval between successive tones was systematically varied in order to gauge the integration period for virtual pitch. A pitch discrimination task was employed, and both harmonic and nonharmonic tone series were ...

Both place and temporal codes in the peripheral auditory system contain pitch information, however, their actual use by the brain is unclear. Here pitch data are reported from users of the cochlear implant, which provides the ability to change the temporal code independently from the place code. With fixed electrode ...

Peripheral-channeling theorists argue that differences in excitation pattern between successive sounds are necessary for stream segregation to occur. The component phases of complex tones comprising unresolved harmonics (F0=100 Hz) were manipulated to change pitch and timbre without changing the power spectrum. In experiment 1, listeners compared two alternating sequences of ...

The perception of periodicity strength was studied in chinchillas using a stimulus generalization paradigm in an operant-conditioning, positive reinforcement behavioral task. Stimuli consisted of cosine-phase and random-phase harmonic complex tones, infinitely iterated rippled noises, and wideband noise. These stimuli vary in periodicity strength as measured by autocorrelation functions and are ...

The cerebellum and related brainstem structures are essential for excitatory eyeblink conditioning. Recent evidence indicates that the cerebellar interpositus and lateral pontine nuclei may also play critical roles in conditioned inhibition (CI) of the eyeblink response. The current study examined the role of GABAergic inhibition of the interpositus nucleus in ...

OBJECTIVES: We here review the findings of several experiments, aimed at clarifying the functional role of the human auditory cortex in the processing of complex sound mixtures. METHODS: Long-latency auditory evoked potentials were recorded to abrupt changes in the pitch or timbre of continuous complex tones (synthesized musical instrument sounds). ...

In normal listeners, acoustic reflex decay (ARD) typically occurs for high- but not for low-frequency tones. In patients with acoustic neuromas, decay can be obtained at all frequencies, presumably due to poor neural synchrony. These observations have led us to hypothesize that resistance to decay is due to robust encoding ...

Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) using clicks enable global objective estimation of hearing threshold. Recently, it has been suggested that a chirp stimulus may produce a synchronous response from a larger portion of the basilar membrane than a click, and that a chirp will produce a greater amplitude response than a ...

The diagnostic utility of static immittance (SI) with respect to distinguishing healthy from otosclerotic ears was investigated at different probe-tone frequencies in 68 healthy ears and 36 ears with surgically confirmed otosclerosis. Because one effect of otosclerosis is to shift the resonant frequency of the middle ear to higher values ...

What is the involvement of what we know in what we perceive? In this article, the contribution of melodic schema-based processes to the perceptual organization of tone sequences is examined. Two unfamiliar six-tone melodies, one of which was interleaved with distractor tones, were presented successively to listeners who were required ...

Auditory sequences of tones were used to examine a form of stimulus-driven attending that involves temporal expectancies and is influenced by stimulus rhythm. Three experiments examined the influence of sequence timing on comparative pitch judgments of two tones (standard, comparison) separated by interpolated pitches. In two of the experiments, interpolated ...

Tone languages differ from English in that the pitch pattern of a single-syllable word conveys lexical meaning. In the present study, dependence of tonal-speech perception on features of the stimulation was examined using an acoustic simulation of a CIS-type speech-processing strategy for cochlear prostheses. Contributions of spectral features of the ...

This study examined the effect of the distribution of values for various acoustic properties on the similarity ratings obtained in a paired-comparison study of complex sounds. Listeners rated the similarity of tones and tone complexes in one of four sets. Across the four sets both component frequency and the number ...

Empirically testable assumptions relate 3 psychophysical primitives: presentations of pairs of physical intensities (e.g., pure tones of the same frequency and phase to the 2 ears or 2 successive tones to both ears); a respondent's ordering of such signal pairs by perceived intensity (e.g., loudness); and judgments about 2 pairs ...

The hearing sensitivity of an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) to both pure tones and broadband signals simulating echoes from a 7.62-cm water-filled sphere was measured. Pure tones with frequencies between 40 and 140 kHz in increments of 20 kHz were measured along with broadband thresholds using a stimulus with ...

AIMS: The study was designed to investigate the acute effects of ingested tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on auditory function. METHODS: Eight male subjects (aged 22-30 years), who had previous experience of cannabis use, took part in this study. They performed air conduction pure tone audiometry in both ears over 0.5-8 kHz. A ...

The influence of intensity range in auditory identification and intensity discrimination experiments is well documented and is usually attributed to nonsensory factors. Recent studies, however, have suggested that the stimulus range effect might be sensory in origin. To test this notion, in one set of experiments, we had listeners identify ...

We have reviewed epidemiological studies examining the association between residential exposure to extremely low frequency electric and magnetic fields (ELF-EMF) and childhood leukemia. We have excluded studies focusing on electrical appliances, because it is difficult to consolidate transient exposure from multiple sources and equally difficult to control information bias. We ...

Recent studies have suggested that the saliency or the strength of pitch of complex sounds can be accounted for on the basis of the temporal properties in the stimulus waveform as measured by the height of the first peak in the waveform autocorrelation function. We used a scaling procedure to ...

Auditory ERPs were recorded from eight tinnitus patients and 12 controls. Tone pips of 1000 and 2000 Hz, as well as the patient's tinnitus pitch (around 4000 Hz) were used. Controls received tone pips at 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. Tones were presented at 30, 36, 42, 48 and 54 ...

Sounds with frequencies >15 kHz elicit an acoustic startle response (ASR) in flying crickets (Eunemobius carolinus). Although frequencies <15 kHz do not elicit the ASR when presented alone, when presented with ultrasound (40 kHz), low-frequency stimuli suppress the ultrasound-induced startle. Thus, using methods similar to those in masking experiments, we ...

Analysis of mechanical cochlear responses to wide bands of random noise clarifies many effects of cochlear nonlinearity. The previous paper [de Boer and Nuttall, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107, 1497-1507 (2000)] illustrates how closely results of computations in a nonlinear cochlear model agree with responses from physiological experiments. In the ...

The neural mechanisms underlying the perception of pitch, a sensory attribute of paramount importance in hearing, have been a matter of debate for over a century. A question currently at the heart of the debate is whether the pitch of all harmonic complex tones can be determined by the auditory ...

We present here a comparison between the local field potentials (LFP) and multiunit (MU) responses, comprising 401 single units, in primary auditory cortex (AI) of 31 cats to periodic click trains, gamma-tone and time-reversed gamma-tone trains, AM noise, AM tones, and frequency-modulated (FM) tones. In a large number of cases, ...

Latent inhibition (LI) consists of decreased associative strength between an elemental stimulus (CS: tone) paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US: footshock) following non-reinforced pre-exposure to the tone. In view of the differences shown by C57BL/6 (C57) and DBA/2 (DBA) mice in processing elemental vs. configural stimuli, the present experiments were ...

Multicomponent stimuli consisting of two to seven tones were used to study suppression of basilar-membrane vibration at the 3-4-mm region of the chinchilla cochlea with a characteristic frequency between 6.5 and 8.5 kHz. Three-component stimuli were amplitude-modulated sinusoids (AM) with modulation depth varied between 0.25 and 2 and modulation frequency ...

HYPOTHESIS: Optimum stimulus parameters for tone burst-evoked myogenic responses can be defined. These optimized responses will be similar to those evoked by clicks in the same subjects. BACKGROUND: Loud tones give rise to myogenic responses in the anterior neck muscles, similar to click-evoked potentials, and are likely to be saccular ...

Global pitch depends on harmonic relations between components, but the perceptual coherence of a complex tone cannot be explained in the same way. Instead, it has been proposed that the auditory system responds to a common pattern of equal spacing between components, but is only sensitive to deviations from this ...

This study investigated two sources of variance in the ability to discriminate auditory profiles: individual differences and extended training. The goals of the study were (1) to determine the range and origins of individual differences in profile analysis and (2) to determine whether those who initially had poor sensitivity to ...

Although tone-bursts have been commonly used in auditory brainstem response (ABR) evaluations for many years, national standards describing normal calibration values have not been established. This study was designed to gather normative threshold data to establish a physical reference for tone-burst stimuli that can be reproduced across clinics and laboratories. ...

Four signal-detection experiments demonstrated robust stimulus-driven, or exogenous, attentional processes in selective frequency listening. Detection of just-above-threshold signal tones was consistently better when the, signal matched the frequency of an uninformative cue tone, even with relatively long cue-signal delays (Experiment 1) or when as few as 1 in 8 signals ...

Priming/conditioning the cochlea with moderately loud sound can reduce damage caused by subsequent loud sound. This study examined immediate effects of short-term priming with monaural broadband noise on temporary threshold shifts (TTSs) in hearing caused by a subsequent loud high-frequency tone and the role of centrifugal olivocochlear pathways. Priming caused ...

Piano bass tones raise questions related to the perception of multicomponent, inharmonic tones. In this study, the influence of the relative phases among partials on pitch and timbre was investigated for synthesized bass tones with piano-like inharmonicity. Three sets of bass tones (A0 = 27.5 Hz, 100 partials, flat spectral ...

The age-related changes in the fast rate (70-110 Hz) auditory steady state response elicited by multiple-frequency tones (MSSR) that were amplitude-modulated (AM) are reported here. The MSSR was recorded in a sample of 64 well babies distributed into three age groups: 0-29 days (n = 25); 1-6 months (n = ...

The present study aims to evaluate tone decay (auditory adaptation) in Digisonic cochlear implant patients, and to compare tone decay results with speech recognition performance. The following criteria are evaluated: tone decay occurrence, place effect, pulse rate effect, and correlation with speech recognition. A great variability in tone decay was ...

The goal of our study was to determine the extent of changes in frequency tuning in the auditory cortex over weeks. The subjects were awake adult male guinea pigs (n = 8) bearing electrodes chronically implanted in layers IV-VI of primary auditory cortex. Tuning was determined by presenting sequences of ...

The auditory evoked field (AEF) in response to pure tones of 250 and 1000 Hz and a complex tone with a periodicity of 4 ms (composed of the frequencies 1000, 1250, 1500, 1750, and 2000 Hz), corresponding to a pitch of 250 Hz, was recorded with a 37-channel neuromagnetometer system. ...

The recognition of 10 different 16-note melodies, constructed using either dichotic-pitch stimuli or diotic pure-tone stimuli, was measured. The dichotic pitches were created by placing a frequency-dependent transition in the interaural phase of a noise burst. Three different configurations for the transition were used in order to give Huggins pitch, ...

'Pitch' refers to a sound's subjective highness or lowness, as distinct from 'frequency,' which refers to a sound's physical structure. In speech, music and other natural contexts, complex tones are often perceived with a single pitch. Using whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) and stimuli that dissociate pitch from frequency, we studied cortical ...

The cochlea uses active amplification to capture faint sounds. It has been proposed that the amplifier comprises a set of self-tuned critical oscillators: each hair cell contains a force-generating dynamical system that is maintained at the threshold of an oscillatory instability, or Hopf bifurcation. While the active response to a ...

When a partial of a periodic complex is mistuned, its change in pitch is greater than expected. Two experiments examined whether these partial-pitch shifts are related to the computation of global pitch. In experiment 1, stimuli were either harmonic or frequency-shifted (25% of F0) complexes. One partial was mistuned by ...

To investigate whether monkeys perceive relative pitch, the author trained 3 Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) to detect changes from rising to falling contours of 3-tone sequences. Tone sequences were presented serially with transposition, so monkeys were urged to attend to cues other than the absolute frequency of a component tone. ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine the hypothesis that auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) to pitch and timbre change of complex harmonic tones reflect a process of spectral envelope analysis. METHODS: AEPs were recorded to: (1) continuous tones of 'clarinet' timbre whose pitch abruptly rose or fell by 1 or 7 semitones every 0.5 ...