Lecture 6- Hearing and Language Flashcards
What is misophonia?
A disorder where certain sounds trigger an emotional /physiological response
Who looked at misophonia?
Kumar, 2017
What did Kumar find with brain regions involved in misophonia?
Hyperactivation of brain regions that is involved in emotion processing (e.g. amygdala and anterior insular cortex)
What is the overlap with misophonia? (Kumar)
Between OCD and Tourette’s so they could share the same neurological conditions
What is the treatment for misophonia (Kumar)?
CBT, exposure therapy and sound therapy
What is the nature of sound?
A sound source that emits circular pressure waves in the air
What is a pure tone represented by?
A singular sinewave
What are the properties of sound waves?
Amplitude and frequency
What is amplitude?
The volume
What is frequency?
The pitch
What do the notes of a musical sheet refer to?
The keys on the piano where frequency is generated and the pitch of a musical tone
How are the keys arranged on a keyboard?
In the order of rising frequency of the musical tone generated
What is harmonic intervals determined by in music?
By characteristic frequency ratios
What are the frequency and amplitude of pure tone?
Perceived pitch and loudness
How are musical tones a combination of pure tones?
Fundamental and harmonic frequencies
What is fundamental?
Determines pitch
What is harmonic frequencies?
They determine timbre
What do more complex sound have?
Chords, consonance, dissonance and vowels
What is interference?
The superposition of many
tones with random amplitude and frequency
How is the ear a transducer?
It converts neural signals to sound waves
What does the outer ear do?
Acts as a directional microphone
What does the middle ear do?
Impedance, matching and overload protection
What does the inner ear do?
Frequency, analysis and neural encoding
What is extreme sensitivity?
The absolute threshold at sound levels that generate eardrum vibrations
What is frequency masking?
When two similar sounds play at the same time and then one masks the other which can confuse the perception of sound
What is the psychophysical masking experiment?
When detecting a target tone in the presence of another tone at another frequency
What is the threshold in the psychophysical masking experiment?
Increasing the intensity of the mask tone until the target is no longer audible
How can you determine the threshold for different frequencies in psychophysical?
Varying the frequency of masking tone
How is a tuning curve determined?
Systematic variation of masking frequency
What is the channel filter tuning?
The basis for perception of pitch
How is perceived loudness measured?
Comparing present tones of different frequency to see which one is louder
Why is the intensity comparison tone adjusted?
Until the same subjective loudness is matched to the reference tone
What is physical intensity recorded as?
Perceived loudness
What are equal loudness contours?
The measure of sound pressure
There is perceived loudness due to the pure tones
What are equal loudness contours determined by?
Matching the perceived intensity of tone pairs at various base intensities
What is the threshold curve also called?
The audibility function
What is function of frequency?
The loudness comparison
When is there hearing loss?
When there is a high frequency in decibels and a high pitch in Hertx
What do speech sound cover?
A wide range of the audible spectrum
Where are vowel sounds?
In the lower frequency region
Where are consonants?
The range in the rgion
What are telephone systems used for?
To cut off the upper part of the spectrum with minimal effects on speech recognition
What is presbycusis?
Selective high frequency hearing loss with age
What can noise exposure lead to?
Can lead to temporary threshold shifts (auditory
fatigue) and permanent (partial) deafness
What is tinnitus?
Continuous humming or ringing that leads to suppression
What are auditory events?
Complicated patterns of frequency and intensity in time
What are spectrograms and sonograms used for?
Displaying and analysing real sounds to see frequency as a function of time
What do chords show in schematic spectrograms?
The sequence of different fundamental and harmonic frequency clusters
What do each spoken words generate?
A complex pattern of frequency and intensity which is modulated as a function of time
How are spoken words recorded as?
Spectrograms (time and frequency) and waveform envelope
What is the aim from Ellis et al?
Segmenting a complex task into processing steps that we explain as perception and cognition mechanisms
What is the process of hearing a word (Ellis et al)?
Auditory analysis system–> auditory input lexicon–>semantic system
What is the process for generating speech (Ellis et al)?
Phoneme response buffer, spoken word lexicon, semantic system
What are the brain regions involved in language?
Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area
What is the Broca’s area?
In the frontal lobe and is involved in speech production
What is the Wernicke’s area?
In the temporal lobe and involved in understanding speech
What has neuroimagery allowed in understanding language?
Regions and networks can be studied in detail and we can test language models
What sensor is the ear?
A 1D sensor (samples one point in space)
How is sound localisation calculated?
Pinnae, inter-aural processing and inter-aural time difference
What is pinnae?
Important for sensation of space and locating elevation
What is inter-aural processing?
The neural mechanisms so the auditory system can processes and integrates information localise sounds and enhance perception
What does inter-aural processing utilise?
Binaural and spectral cues
What binaural cues does inter-aural processing use?
Timing differences to localise and intensity differences to determine the direction
What spectral cues does inter-aural processing use?
Inter-aural spectral difference from the effects of the pinnae, torso and head
What is inter-aural time difference?
Differences in the time it takes for a sound to reach each ear
How is the sensitivity of the inter-aural time difference effected?
Varies with sound frequency and inter-aural distance
When is inter-aural time difference most effective?
At low frequency sounds
Which brain areas are the most effective for encoding inter-aural time difference?
The neurones in the auditory brainstem
Why is it difficult to single out a particular voice?
The cocktail party effect
Who looked at the cocktail party effect?
Cherry, 1953
What is the cocktail party effect?
The brain can attend to auditory information from one person and ignore others due to spatial cues
What did Cherry find with binaural listening?
Binaural listening has allowed ppts to repeat a message while ignoring another and binaural listening improved selective attention to a target message when there is competing messages
What is masking?
The detection of a tone is impaired if another tone or noise is presented at the same time
What does masking depend on?
Proximity in space and similarity in frequency composition
What is binaural unmasking?
When two different auditory signals, next to each ear separately, become distinct due to the differences in their characteristics
When can binaural unmasking also occur?
When two sounds have different frequencies or spectral characteristics
How does spatial separation link to binaural unmasking?
As they arrive at each ear with slightly different timing and intensity levels.
It provides cues that help the brain separate and localise the sounds
What are the high level effects?
Attention, familiarity of the voice and language
