The role of cochlear place coding in the perception of frequency modulation

Whiteford, Kelly L.; Kreft, Heather A.; Oxenham, Andrew J.

doi:10.7554/elife.58468

Cited by 29 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 108 publications

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“…The pendulum is still swinging, and several recent papers strengthen the case for spectral and place-rate accounts (e.g. Shera et al, 2002;Sumner et al, 2018;Verschooten et al, 2018;Whiteford et al, 2020;Su and Delgutte, 2020). Arguments for time remain (a) evidence for temporal mechanisms of binaural processing, (b) existence of specialized neural circuitry within the brain, (c) the simplicity, effectiveness and ease of implementation of a timedomain harmonic filter, in contrast to a harmonic template or sieve in the frequency domain.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harmonic Cancellation - a Fundamental of Auditory Scene Analysis

Cheveigné¹

2021

Preprint

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This paper reviews the hypothesis of {\em harmonic cancellation}\ according to which an interfering sound is suppressed or canceled on the basis of its harmonicity (or periodicity in the time domain). It defines the concept, discusses theoretical arguments in its favor, and reviews experimental results that support it, or not. If correct, the hypothesis likely draws on time domain processing of temporally-accurate neural representations within the brainstem, as required also by the classic Equalization-Cancellation (EC) model of binaural unmasking. It predicts that a target sound corrupted by interference will be easier to hear if the interference is harmonic than inharmonic, all else being equal. This prediction is borne out in a number of behavioral studies, but not all. The paper reviews those results, with the aim to understand the inconsistencies and come up with a reliable conclusion for, or against, the hypothesis of harmonic cancellation within the auditory system.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harmonic Cancellation - a Fundamental of Auditory Scene Analysis

Cheveigné¹

2021

Preprint

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“…In this realm, individual variability is a nuisance parameter. In recent years, studies with a larger number of participants have exploited individual differences to understand foundational aspects of auditory processing (McDermott et al, 2010;Bharadwaj et al, 2015;Whiteford et al, 2020). However, large-N studies are difficult to perform in a laboratory environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Web-based Psychoacoustics: Hearing Screening, Infrastructure, and Validation

Ba¹,

Vaiyapuri

Borjigin

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Anonymous web-based experiments are increasingly and successfully used in many domains of behavioral research. However, online studies of auditory perception, especially of psychoacoustic phenomena pertaining to low-level sensory processing, are challenging because of limited available control of the acoustics, and the unknown hearing status of participants. Here, we outline our approach to mitigate these challenges and validate our procedures by comparing web-based measurements to lab-based data on a range of classic psychoacoustic tasks. Individual tasks were created using jsPsych, an open-source javascript front-end library. Dynamic sequences of psychoacoustic tasks were implemented using Django, an open-source library for web applications, and combined with consent pages, questionnaires, and debriefing pages. Subjects were recruited via Prolific, a web-based human-subject marketplace. Guided by a meta-analysis of normative data, we developed and validated a screening procedure to select participants for (putative) normal-hearing status; this procedure combined thresholding of scores in a suprathreshold cocktail-party task with filtering based on survey responses. Headphone use was standardized by supplementing procedures from prior literature with a binaural hearing task. Individuals meeting all criteria were re-invited to complete a range of classic psychoacoustic tasks. Performance trends observed in re-invited participants were in excellent agreement with lab-based data for fundamental frequency discrimination, gap detection, sensitivity to interaural time delay and level difference, comodulation masking release, word identification, and consonant confusions. Our results suggest that web-based psychoacoustics is a viable complement to lab-based research. Source code for our infrastructure is also provided.

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“…However, no direct evidence regarding the lowpass characteristic of phase locking is available in humans, with estimates based on comparative studies, electrophysiology, and psychophysics of the “upper limit” of useful phase locking ranging quite widely from 1.5 kHz up to 8–12 kHz [ 21 , 23 , 25 , 29 ]. In addition, new behavioral results [ 30 ] have resulted in considerable uncertainty surrounding the extent to which the deterioration of frequency discrimination at high frequencies truly reflects the underlying rolloff of auditory-nerve phase locking to TFS. Nevertheless, at a sufficiently high (although unknown) frequency, no usable phase-locked information should be available in the auditory nerve.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human discrimination and modeling of high-frequency complex tones shed light on the neural codes for pitch

Guest

Oxenham

2022

PLoS Comput Biol

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Accurate pitch perception of harmonic complex tones is widely believed to rely on temporal fine structure information conveyed by the precise phase-locked responses of auditory-nerve fibers. However, accurate pitch perception remains possible even when spectrally resolved harmonics are presented at frequencies beyond the putative limits of neural phase locking, and it is unclear whether residual temporal information, or a coarser rate-place code, underlies this ability. We addressed this question by measuring human pitch discrimination at low and high frequencies for harmonic complex tones, presented either in isolation or in the presence of concurrent complex-tone maskers. We found that concurrent complex-tone maskers impaired performance at both low and high frequencies, although the impairment introduced by adding maskers at high frequencies relative to low frequencies differed between the tested masker types. We then combined simulated auditory-nerve responses to our stimuli with ideal-observer analysis to quantify the extent to which performance was limited by peripheral factors. We found that the worsening of both frequency discrimination and F0 discrimination at high frequencies could be well accounted for (in relative terms) by optimal decoding of all available information at the level of the auditory nerve. A Python package is provided to reproduce these results, and to simulate responses to acoustic stimuli from the three previously published models of the human auditory nerve used in our analyses.

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The role of cochlear place coding in the perception of frequency modulation

Cited by 29 publications

References 108 publications

Harmonic Cancellation - a Fundamental of Auditory Scene Analysis

Harmonic Cancellation - a Fundamental of Auditory Scene Analysis

Web-based Psychoacoustics: Hearing Screening, Infrastructure, and Validation

Human discrimination and modeling of high-frequency complex tones shed light on the neural codes for pitch

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