Communicating in Challenging Environments: Noise and Reverberation

Bidelman, Gavin M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47944-6_8

Cited by 17 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 116 publications

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“…22 Physiologically, the robustness of F0 coding to noise could reflect the engagement of low-frequency "tails" of basal, high-frequency neurons that phase-lock to the common F0 across cochlear channels. 15 Multiple responses to F0 across the cochlear array would tend to reinforce one another at the population level and consequently offer some resilience/redundancy in pitch cues observed here in scalp-recorded FFRs (for discussion of other mechanisms of F0 enhancement see Refs. 15,22).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…15 Multiple responses to F0 across the cochlear array would tend to reinforce one another at the population level and consequently offer some resilience/redundancy in pitch cues observed here in scalp-recorded FFRs (for discussion of other mechanisms of F0 enhancement see Refs. 15,22).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Musical training can improve degraded speech processing. 15,16 As such, all participants were required to have minimal (< 5 years) formal musical training. All were paid and gave written informed consent in compliance with a protocol approved by the IRB of The University of Memphis.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…13 Previous FFR studies demonstrate weakened and delayed brainstem responses to speech in the presence of acoustic interferences (e.g., noise and reverberation). 15 While these studies a) Also at: Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee 38152, USA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relative contribution of envelope and fine structure to the subcortical encoding of noise-degraded speech

Bidelman¹

2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Brainstem frequency-following responses (FFR) were elicited to the speech token /ama/ in noise containing only envelope (ENV) or fine structure (TFS) cues to assess the relative contribution of these temporal features to the neural encoding of degraded speech. Successive cue removal weakened FFRs with noise having the most deleterious effect on TFS coding. Neuro-acoustic and response-to-response correlations revealed speech-FFRs are dominated by stimulus ENV for clean speech, with TFS making a stronger contribution in moderate noise levels. Results suggest that the relative weighting of temporal ENV and TFS cues to the neural transcription of speech depends critically on the degree of noise in the soundscape.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relative contribution of envelope and fine structure to the subcortical encoding of noise-degraded speech

Bidelman¹

2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…In real-world listening environments, acoustic interference hinders the successful extraction of 73 critical speech information. Speech-in-noise (SIN) understanding is often exacerbated in cases of 74 hearing impairment (Chmiel & Jerger, 1996;Popelka et al, 2016), and figure-ground deficits are 75 among the hallmarks of central hearing disorders (Medwetsky, 2002), putative "hidden hearing 76 loss" (Kujawa & Liberman, 2015), and listening deficits in older adults ( successful listening abilities (for review, see Bidelman, 2017). 83…”

Section: Introduction 72mentioning

confidence: 99%

Subcortical rather than cortical sources of the frequency-following response (FFR) relate to speech-in-noise perception

Bidelman

Momtaz

2020

Preprint

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38The frequency-following response (FFR) is a scalp-recorded potential reflecting a mixture of 39 phase-locked neural activity generated from several nuclei along the auditory pathway. FFRs 40 have been widely used as a neural barometer of complex listening skills especially performance 41 on speech-in noise (SIN) tasks: across listeners with various hearing profiles and ages, more 42 robust speech-evoked FFRs are associated with improved SIN perception. Applying individually 43 optimized source reconstruction to speech-FFRs recorded via EEG (FFREEG), we assessed the 44 relative contributions of subcortical [auditory nerve (AN), brainstem (BS)] and cortical [bilateral 45 primary auditory cortex, PAC] generators to the scalp response with the aim of identifying which 46 source(s) drives the brain-behavior relation between FFRs and perceptual SIN skills. We found 47 FFR strength declined precipitously from AN to PAC, consistent with the roll-off of phase-locking 48 at progressively higher stages of the auditory neuroaxis. FFRs at the speech fundamental 49 frequency (F0) were resistant to moderate noise interference across all sources, but FFRs were 50 largest in BS relative to all other sources (BS > AN >> PAC). Cortical PAC FFRs were only 51 weakly observed above the noise floor in a restricted bandwidth around the low pitch of speech 52 stimuli (F0≈100 Hz). Brain-behavior regressions revealed (i) AN and BS FFRs were sufficient to 53 describe listeners' QuickSIN scores and (ii) contrary to neuromagnetic (MEG) FFRs, neither left 54 nor right PAC FFREEG predicted SIN performance. Our findings suggest subcortical sources not 55 only dominate the electrical FFR but also the link between speech-FFRs and SIN processing as 56 observed in previous EEG studies. 57 58 59 Keywords: Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs); auditory brainstem response (ABR); 60 cocktail party scenario; cortical FFR; noise-degraded speech perception 61 62 63 64 New & Noteworthy: The frequency-following responses (FFRs) is an auditory neurophonic brain 65response that correlates with complex listening skills including speech-in-noise perception. 66FFRs origin from phase-locked activity across the auditory pathway including sub-and neo-67 cortex. By recording speech-FFRs via EEG, we show that brainstem sources dominate FFRs 68 measured at the scalp and are most predictive of behavior. Findings underscore the brainstem-69 centric view of the FFR and its relation to nascent auditory perceptual processing. 70 71

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Brainstem correlates of concurrent speech identification in adverse listening conditions

Yellamsetty

Bidelman

2019

Brain Research

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When two voices compete, listeners can segregate and identify concurrent speech sounds using pitch (fundamental frequency, F0) and timbre (harmonic) cues. Speech perception is also hindered by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). How clear and degraded concurrent speech sounds are represented at early, pre-attentive stages of the auditory system is not well understood. To this end, we measured scalp-recorded frequency-following responses (FFR) from the EEG while human listeners heard two concurrently presented, steady-state (time-invariant) vowels whose F0 differed by zero or four semitones (ST) presented diotically in either clean (no noise) or noise-degraded ( + 5dB SNR) conditions. Listeners also performed a speeded double vowel identification task in which they were required to identify both vowels correctly. Behavioral results showed that speech identification accuracy increased with F0 differences between vowels, and this perceptual F0 benefit was larger for clean compared to noise degraded ( + 5dB SNR) stimuli. Neurophysiological data demonstrated more robust FFR F0 amplitudes for single compared to double vowels and considerably weaker responses in noise. F0 amplitudes showed speech-on-speech masking effects, along with a non-linear constructive interference at 0ST, and suppression effects at 4ST. Correlations showed that FFR F0 amplitudes failed to predict listeners’ identification accuracy. In contrast, FFR F1 amplitudes were associated with faster reaction times, although this correlation was limited to noise conditions. The limited number of brain-behavior associations suggests subcortical activity mainly reflects exogenous processing rather than perceptual correlates of concurrent speech perception. Collectively, our results demonstrate that FFRs reflect pre-attentive coding of concurrent auditory stimuli that only weakly predict the success of identifying concurrent speech.

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Communicating in Challenging Environments: Noise and Reverberation

Cited by 17 publications

References 116 publications

Relative contribution of envelope and fine structure to the subcortical encoding of noise-degraded speech

Relative contribution of envelope and fine structure to the subcortical encoding of noise-degraded speech

Subcortical rather than cortical sources of the frequency-following response (FFR) relate to speech-in-noise perception

Brainstem correlates of concurrent speech identification in adverse listening conditions

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