Spatial cues can support auditory figure-ground segregation

Reed, Darrin K.; Chait, Maria; Tóth, Brigitta; Winkler, István; Shinn‐Cunningham, Barbara

doi:10.1121/10.0001387

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 8 publications

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“…We live in a world full of sounds. The auditory system employs a variety of adaptive coding strategies ( Figures 1 , 2 ) to navigate this cacophonous environment, including: compensatory dynamic range and gain adaptations to incoming stimulus statistics in order to build level and contrast invariant tuning of sound features under different background conditions ( Rabinowitz et al, 2013 ); adaptive spatial tuning for localizing and focusing on specific sound sources to aid in the segregation of auditory streams in the presence of complex sound environment ( Reed et al, 2020 ); and top-down attentional mechanisms that modulate auditory response and receptive field properties to selectively amplify behaviorally relevant sound features ( Fritz et al, 2005b ). These adaptations are observed throughout the ascending and descending auditory hierarchy to various degrees and can be both rapid, as seen in task-engaged subjects in perceptual decision-making paradigms, as well as sustained, as seen with long-term changes to auditory input associated with hearing loss.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing in Complex Environments: Auditory Gain Control, Attention, and Hearing Loss

Auerbach

Gritton

2022

Front. Neurosci.

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Listening in noisy or complex sound environments is difficult for individuals with normal hearing and can be a debilitating impairment for those with hearing loss. Extracting meaningful information from a complex acoustic environment requires the ability to accurately encode specific sound features under highly variable listening conditions and segregate distinct sound streams from multiple overlapping sources. The auditory system employs a variety of mechanisms to achieve this auditory scene analysis. First, neurons across levels of the auditory system exhibit compensatory adaptations to their gain and dynamic range in response to prevailing sound stimulus statistics in the environment. These adaptations allow for robust representations of sound features that are to a large degree invariant to the level of background noise. Second, listeners can selectively attend to a desired sound target in an environment with multiple sound sources. This selective auditory attention is another form of sensory gain control, enhancing the representation of an attended sound source while suppressing responses to unattended sounds. This review will examine both “bottom-up” gain alterations in response to changes in environmental sound statistics as well as “top-down” mechanisms that allow for selective extraction of specific sound features in a complex auditory scene. Finally, we will discuss how hearing loss interacts with these gain control mechanisms, and the adaptive and/or maladaptive perceptual consequences of this plasticity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing in Complex Environments: Auditory Gain Control, Attention, and Hearing Loss

Auerbach

Gritton

2022

Front. Neurosci.

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The role of auditory source and action representations in segmenting experience into events

Winkler,

Denham

2024

Nat Rev Psychol

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The what and where of synchronous sound perception

Bentum

Opstal

Wanrooij

2021

Preprint

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Sound localization and identification are challenging in acoustically rich environments. The relation between these two processes is still poorly understood. As natural sound-sources rarely occur exactly simultaneously, we wondered whether the auditory system could identify ('what') and localize ('where') two spatially separated sounds with synchronous onsets. While listeners typically report hearing a single source at an average location, one study found that both sounds may be accurately localized if listeners are explicitly being told two sources exist. We here tested whether simultaneous source identification (one vs. two) and localization is possible, by letting listeners choose to make either one or two head-orienting saccades to the perceived location(s). Results show that listeners could identify two sounds only when presented on different sides of the head, and that identification accuracy increased with their spatial separation. Notably, listeners were unable to accurately localize either sound, irrespective of whether one or two sounds were identified. Instead, the first (or only) response always landed near the average location, while second responses were unrelated to the targets. We conclude that localization of synchronous sounds in the absence of prior information is impossible. We discuss that the putative cortical 'what' pathway may not transmit relevant information to the 'where' pathway. We examine how a broadband interaural correlation cue could help to correctly identify the presence of two sounds without being able to localize them. We propose that the persistent averaging behavior reveals that the 'where' system intrinsically assumes that synchronous sounds originate from a single source.

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Spatial cues can support auditory figure-ground segregation

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

Hearing in Complex Environments: Auditory Gain Control, Attention, and Hearing Loss

Hearing in Complex Environments: Auditory Gain Control, Attention, and Hearing Loss

The role of auditory source and action representations in segmenting experience into events

The what and where of synchronous sound perception

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