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Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands

The auditory system uses interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD) as cues to localize and lateralize sounds. The availability of ITDs and ILDs in the auditory system is limited by neural phase-locking and by the head size, respectively. Although the frequency-specific limitations are well...

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Autores principales: Ahrens, Axel, Joshi, Suyash Narendra, Epp, Bastian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7644719/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32915339
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10162-020-00770-3
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author Ahrens, Axel
Joshi, Suyash Narendra
Epp, Bastian
author_facet Ahrens, Axel
Joshi, Suyash Narendra
Epp, Bastian
author_sort Ahrens, Axel
collection PubMed
description The auditory system uses interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD) as cues to localize and lateralize sounds. The availability of ITDs and ILDs in the auditory system is limited by neural phase-locking and by the head size, respectively. Although the frequency-specific limitations are well known, the relative contribution of ITDs and ILDs in individual frequency bands in broadband stimuli is unknown. To determine these relative contributions, or spectral weights, listeners were asked to lateralize stimuli consisting of eleven simultaneously presented 1-ERB-wide noise bands centered between 442 and 5544 Hz and separated by 1-ERB-wide gaps. Either ITDs or ILDs were varied independently across each noise band, while fixing the other interaural disparity to either 0 dB or 0 μs. The weights were obtained using a multiple linear regression analysis. In a second experiment, the effect of auditory enhancement on the spectral weights was investigated. The enhancement of single noise bands was realized by presenting ten of the noise bands as preceding and following sounds (pre- and post-cursors, respectively). Listeners were asked to lateralize the stimuli as in the first experiment. Results show that in the absence of pre- and post-cursors, only the lowest or highest frequency band received highest weight for ITD and ILD, respectively. Auditory enhancement led to significantly enhanced weights given to the band without the pre- and post-cursor. The weight enhancement could only be observed at low frequencies, when determined with ITD cues and for low and high frequencies for ILDs. Hence, the auditory system seems to be able to change the spectral weighting of binaural information depending on the information content.
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spelling pubmed-76447192020-11-10 Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands Ahrens, Axel Joshi, Suyash Narendra Epp, Bastian J Assoc Res Otolaryngol Research Article The auditory system uses interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD) as cues to localize and lateralize sounds. The availability of ITDs and ILDs in the auditory system is limited by neural phase-locking and by the head size, respectively. Although the frequency-specific limitations are well known, the relative contribution of ITDs and ILDs in individual frequency bands in broadband stimuli is unknown. To determine these relative contributions, or spectral weights, listeners were asked to lateralize stimuli consisting of eleven simultaneously presented 1-ERB-wide noise bands centered between 442 and 5544 Hz and separated by 1-ERB-wide gaps. Either ITDs or ILDs were varied independently across each noise band, while fixing the other interaural disparity to either 0 dB or 0 μs. The weights were obtained using a multiple linear regression analysis. In a second experiment, the effect of auditory enhancement on the spectral weights was investigated. The enhancement of single noise bands was realized by presenting ten of the noise bands as preceding and following sounds (pre- and post-cursors, respectively). Listeners were asked to lateralize the stimuli as in the first experiment. Results show that in the absence of pre- and post-cursors, only the lowest or highest frequency band received highest weight for ITD and ILD, respectively. Auditory enhancement led to significantly enhanced weights given to the band without the pre- and post-cursor. The weight enhancement could only be observed at low frequencies, when determined with ITD cues and for low and high frequencies for ILDs. Hence, the auditory system seems to be able to change the spectral weighting of binaural information depending on the information content. Springer US 2020-09-11 2020-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7644719/ /pubmed/32915339 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10162-020-00770-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ahrens, Axel
Joshi, Suyash Narendra
Epp, Bastian
Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands
title Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands
title_full Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands
title_fullStr Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands
title_full_unstemmed Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands
title_short Perceptual Weighting of Binaural Lateralization Cues across Frequency Bands
title_sort perceptual weighting of binaural lateralization cues across frequency bands
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7644719/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32915339
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10162-020-00770-3
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