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Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech

The human auditory system is exceptional at comprehending an individual speaker even in complex acoustic environments. Because the inner ear, or cochlea, possesses an active mechanism that can be controlled by subsequent neural processing centers through descending nerve fibers, it may already contr...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Saiz-Alía, Marina, Miller, Peter, Reichenbach, Tobias
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Society for Neuroscience 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8046024/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33632811
http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0428-20.2021
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author Saiz-Alía, Marina
Miller, Peter
Reichenbach, Tobias
author_facet Saiz-Alía, Marina
Miller, Peter
Reichenbach, Tobias
author_sort Saiz-Alía, Marina
collection PubMed
description The human auditory system is exceptional at comprehending an individual speaker even in complex acoustic environments. Because the inner ear, or cochlea, possesses an active mechanism that can be controlled by subsequent neural processing centers through descending nerve fibers, it may already contribute to speech processing. The cochlear activity can be assessed by recording otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), but employing these emissions to assess speech processing in the cochlea is obstructed by the complexity of natural speech. Here, we develop a novel methodology to measure OAEs that are related to the time-varying harmonic structure of speech [speech-distortion-product OAEs (DPOAEs)]. We then employ the method to investigate the effect of selective attention on the speech-DPOAEs. We provide tentative evidence that the speech-DPOAEs are larger when the corresponding speech signal is attended than when it is ignored. Our development of speech-DPOAEs opens up a path to further investigations of the contribution of the cochlea to the processing of complex real-world signals.
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spelling pubmed-80460242021-04-15 Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech Saiz-Alía, Marina Miller, Peter Reichenbach, Tobias eNeuro Research Article: New Research The human auditory system is exceptional at comprehending an individual speaker even in complex acoustic environments. Because the inner ear, or cochlea, possesses an active mechanism that can be controlled by subsequent neural processing centers through descending nerve fibers, it may already contribute to speech processing. The cochlear activity can be assessed by recording otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), but employing these emissions to assess speech processing in the cochlea is obstructed by the complexity of natural speech. Here, we develop a novel methodology to measure OAEs that are related to the time-varying harmonic structure of speech [speech-distortion-product OAEs (DPOAEs)]. We then employ the method to investigate the effect of selective attention on the speech-DPOAEs. We provide tentative evidence that the speech-DPOAEs are larger when the corresponding speech signal is attended than when it is ignored. Our development of speech-DPOAEs opens up a path to further investigations of the contribution of the cochlea to the processing of complex real-world signals. Society for Neuroscience 2021-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8046024/ /pubmed/33632811 http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0428-20.2021 Text en Copyright © 2021 Saiz-Alía et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
spellingShingle Research Article: New Research
Saiz-Alía, Marina
Miller, Peter
Reichenbach, Tobias
Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech
title Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech
title_full Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech
title_fullStr Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech
title_full_unstemmed Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech
title_short Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech
title_sort otoacoustic emissions evoked by the time-varying harmonic structure of speech
topic Research Article: New Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8046024/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33632811
http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0428-20.2021
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