Harmonic Cancellation—A Fundamental of Auditory Scene Analysis

Cheveigné, Alain de

doi:10.1177/23312165211041422

Cited by 14 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 207 publications

(404 reference statements)

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“…A similar masking asymmetry has been observed between harmonic and inharmonic (or noise-like) probes and maskers, as reviewed by de Cheveigné (2021). A harmonic masker is less effective than an inharmonic or noise-like masker of similar spectral envelope, suggesting the operation of an unmasking mechanism specific to harmonic maskers.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 70%

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In-channel cancellation: a model of early auditory processing

Cheveigné

2022

Preprint

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A model of early auditory processing is proposed, in which each peripheral channel is processed by a delay-and-subtract cancellation filter. The delay is tuned automatically with a criterion of minimum power, independently for each channel. For a channel dominated by a pure tone, or a resolved partial of a complex tone, the optimal delay is its period. For a channel responding to harmonically-related partials, the optimal delay is their common fundamental period. Each channel is thus split into two subchannels, one filtered and the other not, either of which can be attended to depending on the task. Here, the model is used to explain the masking asymmetry between pure tones and noise. According to the model, a noise target masked by a tone is more easily detectable, thanks to cancellation, than a tone target masked by noise, as indeed is reported in the literature. The in-channel cancellation model is one of a wider class of models, monaural or binaural, that apply cancellation to suppress irrelevant stimulus dimensions so as to attain invariance to competing sources. Similar to occlusion in the visual domain, cancellation yields sensory evidence that is incomplete, thus requiring Bayesian inference of an internal model along the lines of Helmholtz's doctrine of unconscious inference.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 70%

“…An analogous model was proposed to explain harmonic unmasking (de Cheveigné 1993(de Cheveigné , 2021.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In-channel cancellation: a model of early auditory processing

Cheveigné

2022

Preprint

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“…Why would different acoustic cues be used for frequency-change tracking depending on the harmonicity of the sounds? Speculatively, it can be remarked that harmonicity plays an important role in auditory scene analysis [65][66][67]. In particular, harmonicity favors the binding of frequency components within and across sounds [26,65].…”

Section: The Role Of Acoustic Cues In Frequency Change Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A unitary model of auditory frequency change perception

Siedenburg

Graves

Pressnitzer

2022

Preprint

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Changes in the frequency content of sounds over time are arguably the most basic form of information about the behavior of sound-emitting objects. In perceptual studies, such changes have mostly been investigated separately, as aspects of either pitch or timbre. Here, we propose a unitary account of “up” and “down” subjective judgments of frequency change, based on a model combining auditory correlates of acoustic cues in a sound-specific and listener-specific manner. To do so, we introduce a generalized version of so-called Shepard tones, allowing symmetric manipulations of spectral information on a fine scale, usually associated to pitch (spectral fine structure, SFS), and on a coarse scale, usually associated timbre (spectral envelope, SE). In a series of behavioral experiments, listeners reported “up” or “down” shifts across pairs of generalized Shepard tones that differed in SFS, in SE, or in both. We observed the classic properties of Shepard tones for either SFS or SE shifts: subjective judgements followed the smallest log-frequency change direction, with cases of ambiguity and circularity. Interestingly, when both SFS and SE changes were applied concurrently (synergistically or antagonistically), we observed a trade-off between cues. Listeners were encouraged to report when they perceived “both” directions of change concurrently, but this rarely happened, suggesting a unitary percept. A computational model could accurately fit the behavioral data by combining different cues reflecting frequency changes after auditory filtering. The model revealed that cue weighting depended on the nature of the sound. When presented with harmonic sounds, listeners put more weight on SFS-related cues, whereas inharmonic sounds led to more weight on SE-related cues. Moreover, these stimulus-based factors were modulated by inter-individual differences, revealing variability across listeners in the detailed recipe for “up” and “down” judgments. We argue that frequency changes are tracked perceptually via the adaptive combination of a diverse set of cues, in a manner that is in fact similar to the derivation of other basic auditory dimensions such as spatial location.

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“…We surmise that this sensitivity provides a basic display mechanism which can be recruited for a variety of perceptual tasks, which likely differ between species. For example, temporal interactions between harmonics of different sound sources, e.g., different speakers, have repeatedly been proposed as a mechanism to segregate such sounds ( 68 – 74 ). Our findings suggest that octopus cells are very sensitive to such interactions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mammalian octopus cells are direction selective to frequency sweeps by excitatory synaptic sequence detection

Smith

Joris

2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Octopus cells are remarkable projection neurons of the mammalian cochlear nucleus, with extremely fast membranes and wide-frequency tuning. They are considered prime examples of coincidence detectors but are poorly characterized in vivo. We discover that octopus cells are selective to frequency sweep direction, a feature that is absent in their auditory nerve inputs. In vivo intracellular recordings reveal that direction selectivity does not derive from across-frequency coincidence detection but hinges on the amplitudes and activation sequence of auditory nerve inputs tuned to clusters of hot spot frequencies. A simple biophysical octopus cell model excited with real nerve spike trains recreates direction selectivity through interaction of intrinsic membrane conductances with the activation sequence of clustered excitatory inputs. We conclude that octopus cells are sequence detectors, sensitive to temporal patterns across cochlear frequency channels. The detection of sequences rather than coincidences is a much simpler but powerful operation to extract temporal information.

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Harmonic Cancellation—A Fundamental of Auditory Scene Analysis

Cited by 14 publications

References 207 publications

In-channel cancellation: a model of early auditory processing

In-channel cancellation: a model of early auditory processing

A unitary model of auditory frequency change perception

Mammalian octopus cells are direction selective to frequency sweeps by excitatory synaptic sequence detection

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