Sensitivity of auditory-nerve fibers to changes in intensity: A dichotomy between decrements and increments

Smith, Robert L.; Brachman, Michael L.; Frisina, Robert D.

doi:10.1121/1.392900

Cited by 46 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In particular, a number of neurophysiological studies of auditory nerve (AN) recordings (e.g., Smith and Zwislocki, 1971;Smith, 1979;Smith et al, 1985) strongly imply a role for peripheral adaptation. More recently, Delgutte and colleagues (Delgutte, 1980(Delgutte, , 1986(Delgutte, , 1996Delgutte et al, 1996;Delgutte and Kiang, 1984) have established the case for a much broader role of peripheral adaptation for perception of speech.…”

Section: Potential Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity to change in perception of speech

Kluender

Coady

Kiefte

2003

Speech Communication

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Perceptual systems in all modalities are predominantly sensitive to stimulus change, and many examples of perceptual systems responding to change can be portrayed as instances of enhancing contrast. Multiple findings from perception experiments serve as evidence for spectral contrast explaining fundamental aspects of perception of coarticulated speech, and these findings are consistent with a broad array of known psychoacoustic and neurophysiological phenomena. Beyond coarticulation, important characteristics of speech perception that extend across broader spectral and temporal ranges may best be accounted for by the constant calibration of perceptual systems to maximize sensitivity to change. Sensorineural systems respond to changeIt is both true and fortunate that sensorineural systems respond to change and to little else. Perceptual systems do not record absolute level be it loudness, pitch, brightness, or color. This fact has been demonstrated in every sensory domain. Physiologically, sensory encoding is always relative. This sacrifice of absolute encoding has enormous benefits along the way to maximizing information transmission. Biological sensors have impressive dynamic range given their evolution via borrowed parts (e.g., gill arches becoming middle ear bones). However, biological dynamic range always is a small fraction of the physical range of absolute levels available in the environment as well as in the perceptual range essential to organisms' survival. This is true whether one is considering optical luminance or acoustic pressure. The beauty of sensory systems is that, by responding to relative change, a limited dynamic range adjusts to maximize the amount of change that can be detected in the environment.The simplest way that sensory systems adjust dynamic range to maximize sensitivity to change is via adaptation. Following nothing, a sensory stimulus triggers a strong sensation. However, when sustained sensory input does not change over time, constant stimulation loses impact. This sort of sensory attenuation due to adaptation is ubiquitous, and has been documented in vision (Riggs et al

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Section: Potential Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity to change in perception of speech

Kluender

Coady

Kiefte

2003

Speech Communication

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“…Several studies have confirmed that the process of short-term adaptation is additive in nature ͑Smith and Zwislocki, 1975;Smith, 1977;Abbas, 1979͒, meaning that the change in firing rate in response to an increment/decrement in stimulus level does not greatly depend on the time between the onset and the subsequent change in level. Smith et al ͑1985͒ showed that this property also holds if increment responses are analyzed with different window lengths that separate the portions of the response associated with rapid and short-term adaptation. In contrast, the small-window decrement response decreases with increasing time delay ͑i.e., decrement responses are not additive over a short time window following the decrement͒.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A phenomenological model of the synapse between the inner hair cell and auditory nerve: Long-term adaptation with power-law dynamics

Zilany

Bruce²,

Nelson³

et al. 2009

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

314

346

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There is growing evidence that the dynamics of biological systems that appear to be exponential over short time courses are in some cases better described over the long-term by power-law dynamics. A model of rate adaptation at the synapse between inner hair cells and auditory-nerve ͑AN͒ fibers that includes both exponential and power-law dynamics is presented here. Exponentially adapting components with rapid and short-term time constants, which are mainly responsible for shaping onset responses, are followed by two parallel paths with power-law adaptation that provide slowly and rapidly adapting responses. The slowly adapting power-law component significantly improves predictions of the recovery of the AN response after stimulus offset. The faster power-law adaptation is necessary to account for the "additivity" of rate in response to stimuli with amplitude increments. The proposed model is capable of accurately predicting several sets of AN data, including amplitude-modulation transfer functions, long-term adaptation, forward masking, and adaptation to increments and decrements in the amplitude of an ongoing stimulus.

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“…First, the effective auditory level of the components of the precursor declines over its duration because of adaptation. Second, while adaptation reduces the auditory response to existing components, it does not change the size of the increase in the auditory response produced by energy added to existing components (e.g., see Smith, 1979;Smith, Brachman, & Frisina, 1985). Hence, the components whose levels are raised to define the test stimulus produce a greater auditory response than the unchanging components.…”

Section: Possmle Bases Of the Dsv Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory enhancement and the perception of concurrent vowels

Summerfield

Assmann

1989

Perception & Psychophysics

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Listehers identified both constituents of double vowels created by summing the waveforms of pairs of synthetic vowels with the same duration and fundamental frequency. Accuracy of identification was significantly above chance. Effects of introducing such double vowels by visual or acoustical precursor stimuli were examined. Precursors specified the identity of one of the two constituent vowels. Performance was scored as the accuracy with which the other vowel was identified. Visual precursors were standard English spellings of one member of the vowel pair; acoustical precursors were I-sec segments of one member of the vowel pair. Neither visual precursors nor contralateral acoustical precursors improved performance over the condition with no precursor. Thus, knowledge of the identity of one of the constituents of a double vowel does not help listeners to identify the other constituent. A significant improvement in performance did occur with ipsilateral acoustical precursors, consistent with earlier demonstrations that frequency components which undergo changes in spectral amplitude achieve enhanced auditory prominence relative to unchanging components. This outcome demonstrates the joint but independent operation of auditory and perceptual processes underlying the ability of listeners to understand speech despite adversely peaked frequency responses in communication channels.The experiment described in this paper addresses two distinct but related issues. First, how do listeners identify the constituents of pairs of concurrent vowels that possess the same fundamental frequency? Second, can auditory and perceptual mechanisms that are sensitive to changes in spectral amplitude help listeners to discount coloration from communication channels with uneven frequency responses? The following paragraphs establish the background to these questions, explain the link between them.The frequency response of the communication channel between a speaker's mouth and a listener's ear is rarely flat or time-invariant. Earphones and loudspeakers can impose gross peaks and troughs, while sound paths in reverberant rooms introduce a fine-grained pattern of resonances and antiresonances due to cancellation and reinforcement of wavefronts. Figure 1 illustrates the problem for the listener. It shows the spectrum of a neutral vowel presented against a low level of background noise through two communication channels that have different, uneven, frequency responses. In neither case does the spectrum of the vowel correspond to its anechoic form. Rather, it is colored by the frequency response of the communication channel.Some of the data reported in this paper were presented at the winter meeting of the Experimental Psychology Society, London, January 1986, and to the NATO ARW on "The Psychophysics of Speech Perception, " Utrecht, July 1986; they are summarized in Summerfield and Assmann (1987). We thank Mark Haggard and an anonymous reviewer for constructive criticisms of a draft of this paper. Correspondence may be addressed to Quentin S...

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Sensitivity of auditory-nerve fibers to changes in intensity: A dichotomy between decrements and increments

Cited by 46 publications

References 18 publications

Sensitivity to change in perception of speech

Sensitivity to change in perception of speech

A phenomenological model of the synapse between the inner hair cell and auditory nerve: Long-term adaptation with power-law dynamics

Auditory enhancement and the perception of concurrent vowels

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