Psychophysiology and psychoacoustics of music: Perception of complex sound in normal subjects and psychiatric patients

Abstract

Perception of complex sound is a process carried out in everyday life situations and contributes in the way one perceives reality. Attempting to explain sound perception and how it affects human beings is complicated. Physics of simple sound can be described as a function of frequency, amplitude and phase. Psychology of sound, also termed psychoacoustics, has its own distinct elements of pitch, intensity and tibre. An interconnection exists between physics and psychology of hearing.Music being a complex sound contributes to communication and conveys information with semantic and emotional elements. These elements indicate the involvement of the central nervous system through processes of integration and interpretation together with peripheral auditory processing.Effects of sound and music in human psychology and physiology are complicated. Psychological influences of listening to different types of music are based on the different characteristics of basic musical sounds. Attempting to explain music perception can be simpler if music is broken down to its basic auditory signals. Perception of auditory signals is analyzed by the science of psychoacoustics. Differences in complex sound perception have been found between normal subjects and psychiatric patients and between different types of psychopathologies.

Measurement and sonification of construction site noise and particle pollution data

“…This mimicked a richer high frequency content when sounds at the data recording device location contained more noisy attributes, and thus altered the overall timbre of the sonification. The change to more complex timbre that the addition of noise created, should create a larger response in a listener compared to the simpler less energy-rich timbre used at lower sound levels (Iakovides et al. , 2004).…”

“…More complex harmonies and more dissonant chords are experienced as more unpleasant (Pallesen et al. , 2005) and activating (Iakovides et al. , 2004) compared to harmonious chords.…”

“…(6) The sound level measured by the data recording device was finally also linearly to exponentially mapped to the fine-tuned pitch of the additional slightly detuned saw-tooth waveforms, with a higher degree of dissonance for higher sound levels. More complex harmonies and more dissonant chords are experienced as more unpleasant (Pallesen et al, 2005) and activating (Iakovides et al, 2004) compared to harmonious chords. This was done to mimic the experienced disturbance from loud sounds at the location.…”

Acquisition and analysis of snore signals for diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea

“…The hearing system is a complicated human organ, which constantly appraises the acoustic environment by means of sound perception mechanisms, also known as psychoacoustic metrics [232], for instance, loudness, sharpness, roughness, fluctuation strength, and even annoyance. Functionality of these metrics has been successfully realized in the analysis of auditory signals (e.g., speech [233][234][235], voice [236,237], and music [238,239]) and in noise control studies [240][241][242][243][244], ascertaining relationship between the acoustical and the perceptual space [232].…”