<i>Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook</i>

Fay, Richard R.; Wilber, Laura Ann

doi:10.1121/1.398550

Cited by 349 publications

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“…Humans, cats, chinchillas, and nonhuman primates all show parallel critical band functions, which indicate that frequency is organized in a logarithmic fashion along the basilar membrane (Fay, 1988). The similar results from pigeons and blackbirds are somewhat more intriguing, but limited, because the birds were tested only with single exemplars of synthetic vowels.…”

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“…Correspondence should be addressed to Robert J. Dooling, Psychology Department. University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-4411. with frequency at a rate of about 3 dBloctave (see, e.g., Dooling, 1980;Fay, 1988;. Such differences in critical band functions suggest that budgerigars should not discriminate among human speech sounds very well and that humans should not discriminate among budgerigar vocalizations very well.…”

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Speech perception by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus): Spoken vowels

Dooling

Brown

1990

Perception & Psychophysics

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Discrimination of natural, sustained vowels was studied in 5 budgerigars. The birds were trained using operant conditioning procedures on a same-different task, which was structured so that response latencies would provide a measure of stimulus similarity. These response latencies were used to construct similarity matrices, which were then analyzed by multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedures. MDS produced spatial maps of these speech sounds where perceptual similarity was represented by spatial proximity. The results ofthe three experiments suggest that budgerigars perceive natural, spoken vowels according to phonetic categories, find the acoustic differences among different talkers less salient than the acoustic differences among vowel categories, and use formant frequencies in making these complex discriminations.A number of recent psychophysical experiments have shown that budgerigars (Melopsiuacus undulatus) have an unusual degree of spectral resolving power in the frequency region of 2-4 kHz-the frequency region where most of the energy in budgerigar vocalizations falls. The fact that frequency resolving power in budgerigars is roughly the inverse of the spectral energy distribution in their complex vocalizations has invited speculation regarding their specialized processing of species-specific vocal signals (Dooling, 1986). Spectral cues in the region of 2-4 kHz do underlie the perceptual categories for speciesspecific vocal signals in this species (Brown,

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Speech perception by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus): Spoken vowels

Dooling

Brown

1990

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…When viewed in light of the relatively sensitive low-frequency auditory thresholds in this species (Fay 1988;Miller 1970), the chinchilla middle ear appears specialized for lowfrequency hearing. While preliminary acoustic admittance (Dear 1987) 1 , cochlear potential (Dallos 1970) and ossicular-motion measurements (Ruggero et al 1990) are all consistent with this view, past studies have not determined which middle-ear structures contribute to the sensitivity to low-frequency sound.…”

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confidence: 99%

Structures that contribute to middle-ear admittance in chinchilla

2006

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We describe measurements of middle-ear input admittance in chinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera) before and after various manipulations that define the contributions of different middle-ear components to function. The chinchilla's middle-ear air spaces have a large effect on the lowfrequency compliance of the middle ear, and removing the influences of these spaces reveals a highly admittant tympanic membrane and ossicular chain. Measurements of the admittance of the air spaces reveal that the high-degree of segmentation of these spaces has only a small effect on the admittance. Draining the cochlea further increases the middle-ear admittance at low frequencies and removes a low-frequency (less than 300 Hz) level dependence in the admittance. Spontaneous or sound-driven contractions of the middle-ear muscles in deeply anesthetized animals were associated with significant changes in middle-ear admittance. KeywordsMiddle-ear structure-function; Comparative Auditory Function INTRODUCTIONChinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera) are nocturnal foragers that lived in communal burrows and are native to the rocky slopes of the high Andes. However, wild chinchillas are endangered, having been over-hunted by humans for food and their fur, and preyed upon by European species introduced into their habitat. Captive chinchillas have been successfully bred in the USA and Russia over the last 80 years. Since the 1950s, chinchillas have become a common animal model in hearing and other research areas (Price 1953;Tibbitts and Hillemann 1959);Peters 1965;Henderson 1969;Lupien and McCay 1960; Bismark and Pfeiffer 1967;Trautwein & Helmboldt 1967;Strike and Seigneur 1969;Dallos 1970;Miller 1970).The high Andes is an open and arid environment and chinchillas show some adaptations that are similar to those seen in other animals adapted to open and arid areas including a few distinctive features of the middle ear:1. large middle-ear air spaces ( total volume ≥ 1.5 cc) that are segmented into multiple sub-cavities (Browning and Granish 1978; Vrettakkos et al. 1988).Corresponding Author: John J Rosowski, Email: John_Rosowski@meei.harvard.edu, Phone: 1 617 657 4237, Fax 1 617 720 4408. 2. large tympanic-membrane (TM) and ossicular dimensions for an animal of its size (Vrettakkos et al. 1988; Rosowski 1991a&b, 1994, and 3. increased mechanical sensitivity to low-frequency (f < 1000 Hz) acoustic stimuli relative to other animals with similar hearing ranges (Ruggero et al. 1990). NIH Public AccessWhen viewed in light of the relatively sensitive low-frequency auditory thresholds in this species (Fay 1988;Miller 1970), the chinchilla middle ear appears specialized for lowfrequency hearing. While preliminary acoustic admittance (Dear 1987) 1 , cochlear potential (Dallos 1970) and ossicular-motion measurements (Ruggero et al. 1990) are all consistent with this view, past studies have not determined which middle-ear structures contribute to the sensitivity to low-frequency sound.There is a history of work on other species specialized for arid climates,...

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“…Although the general properties of cochlear physiology are similar across mammals, there are differences in the frequency range of hearing and the length of the cochlea (Fay 1988;Greenwood 1990). For example, human hearing extends from approximately 20 to 15 kHz in a 35 mm cochlea and cat hearing extends from approximately 90 to 60 kHz in a 25 mm cochlea.…”

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Neural representation of spectral and temporal information in speech

Young

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Speech is the most interesting and one of the most complex sounds dealt with by the auditory system. The neural representation of speech needs to capture those features of the signal on which the brain depends in language communication. Here we describe the representation of speech in the auditory nerve and in a few sites in the central nervous system from the perspective of the neural coding of important aspects of the signal. The representation is tonotopic, meaning that the speech signal is decomposed by frequency and different frequency components are represented in different populations of neurons. Essential to the representation are the properties of frequency tuning and nonlinear suppression. Tuning creates the decomposition of the signal by frequency, and nonlinear suppression is essential for maintaining the representation across sound levels. The representation changes in central auditory neurons by becoming more robust against changes in stimulus intensity and more transient. However, it is probable that the form of the representation at the auditory cortex is fundamentally different from that at lower levels, in that stimulus features other than the distribution of energy across frequency are analysed.

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Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook

Cited by 349 publications

References 0 publications

Speech perception by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus): Spoken vowels

Speech perception by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus): Spoken vowels

Structures that contribute to middle-ear admittance in chinchilla

Neural representation of spectral and temporal information in speech

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