Editorial Material
Behavioral Sciences
Peter M. Narins, Daniel A. Llano, Gunther K. H. Zupanc
Summary: This special issue of the Journal of Comparative Physiology A commemorates the life and work of Albert (Al) S. Feng, a pioneer in the field of neuroethology of auditory systems. It includes 15 articles written by friends, students, and colleagues, many of whom have become leading experts themselves in this field. Their contributions provide a comprehensive overview of bioacoustics in amphibians and mammals (including bats) and aim to inspire a new generation of scientists to advance our understanding of brain mechanisms of acoustic perception.
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY A-NEUROETHOLOGY SENSORY NEURAL AND BEHAVIORAL PHYSIOLOGY
(2023)
Editorial Material
Neurosciences
Serge Charpak
Summary: In this study, the authors utilize simultaneous electrophysiological and fUS measurements to quantify the relationship between firing and fUS signals in awake mice.
Article
Acoustics
Monica L. Folkerts, Erin M. Picou, G. Christopher Stecker
Summary: Spectral weighting of sound localization cues in the presence of competing noise was measured. The results showed that the perceptual weight was highest for components within the interaural time difference (ITD) dominance region, with a shift towards lower-frequency components in all competing noise conditions. These findings contradict previous studies suggesting a shift towards higher frequencies, but support the idea that low-frequency ITD cues are least disrupted by competing noise.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2023)
Review
Neurosciences
Matthias Staib, Sascha Fruhholz
Summary: The study found that the temporal voice area (TVA) shows similar neural responses to textural sound patterns (TSPs) as to natural voice and non-voice sounds, partially explaining activation patterns typically observed during voice processing. This suggests that the human voice area does not only process higher-order voice information, but also evaluates the perceptual and acoustic quality of non-voice sounds, responding to them with a voice-like processing pattern when detecting some rudimentary perceptual similarity with voices.
PROGRESS IN NEUROBIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Cell Biology
Haifu Li, Jian Wang, Guilong Liu, Jinfeng Xu, Weilong Huang, Changbao Song, Dijia Wang, Huizhong W. Tao, Li Zhang, Feixue Liang
Summary: Research suggests that sound information is processed in the brain through onset and offset pathways, with specific neurons playing a crucial role in encoding the precise timing of sound onset and offset. This precise encoding of sound duration is essential for auditory perception.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Michaela Warnecke, Ruth Y. Litovsky
Summary: The study found that sensitivity to sound motion is not influenced by speech intelligibility, but does show a clear difference for original noise and speech stimuli. Acoustic chimaera with speech-like ENVs induce a strong bias in listeners to report sounds as stationary, suggesting that sound content may be prioritized over sound motion.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Zhi-Tong Fan, Zi-Hui Zhao, Mridula Sharma, Joaquin T. Valderrama, Qian-Jie Fu, Jia-Xing Liu, Xin Fu, Huan Li, Xue-Lei Zhao, Xin-Yu Guo, Luo-Yi Fu, Ning-Yu Wang, Juan Zhang
Summary: The study aimed to investigate the cortical auditory-evoked potential induced by a change of continuous sound stimulation, specifically the acoustic change complex (ACC), and its relationship with the change of sound location and the behavioral measure of localization. The results showed that ACC can be successfully elicited by changing the horizontal sound location, with an increase in elicitation rate and amplitude as the location change increased. The direction of sound location change had no significant effect on the ACC peak amplitudes or latencies. Furthermore, the ACC test showed a higher sound location discrimination threshold compared to the minimum audible angle (MAA) threshold, suggesting that ACC can be used as an objective method to evaluate sound localization ability.
FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Michaela Mueller, Hongmei Hu, Mathias Dietz, Barbara Beiderbeck, Dardo N. Ferreiro, Michael Pecka
Summary: The ability to localize a sound source is crucial for communication and navigation, and hearing impairments can negatively affect sound localization. Cochlear implants have been successful in restoring many hearing capabilities, but sound localization with bilateral cochlear implants remains poor. This study investigates the reasons behind this and finds that electrical stimulation from cochlear implants alters the input statistics of the binaural processing stage, leading to diminished ITD sensitivity. A computational model predicts that electrical stimulation affects spatial sensitivity, making adjacent source locations inseparable. The findings suggest that the temporal hyper-precision of inputs induced by electrical stimulation may be a central problem underlying the reduced ITD sensitivity in cochlear implant users.
FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Mariam Alzaher, Kuzma Strelnikov, Mathieu Marx, Pascal Barone
Summary: The ability to localize sounds is disrupted in patients with Unilateral Hearing Loss (UHL) due to alteration in binaural cues integration. However, some patients are able to compensate for this deficit using adaptive strategies. This study explored the neural correlates underlying this adaptation by measuring the mismatch negativity (MMN) in UHL patients with different binaural performance clusters. The results showed that MMN can serve as a neural marker to reflect spatial adaptation in patients with UHL.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Daniel Schmid, Timo Oess, Heiko Neumann
Summary: Conventional processing of sensory input often results in redundant information and unnecessary resource consumption. Neuromorphic computing, inspired by biology, introduces distributed event-based hardware to challenge these conventions. This study proposes a generic approach to map biologically inspired neural networks onto neuromorphic hardware for lateral auditory sound source localization (SSL). By modeling the neural mechanisms of SSL and transforming them into spike-based components, the proposed approach allows for successful implementation on different platforms, as demonstrated by experiments on synthetic and real-world data.
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Daniel Wallace, Jordan Cheer
Summary: This article discusses the creation of a private sound zone using a loudspeaker array and the importance of maintaining privacy by masking leaked speech with noise. It highlights the impact of ambient noise on designing a private audio system and proposes using a combination of background noise and an additional masker to reduce acoustic contrast requirements.
COMPUTER SPEECH AND LANGUAGE
(2022)
Editorial Material
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
G. Christopher Stecker
Summary: Active exploration can influence how the brain processes auditory space, as shown by a new study that explores the dynamic properties of neural activity coding for combinations of sound identity and location during active sensing.
Article
Otorhinolaryngology
Olivier Peetermans, Bieke Dobbels, Griet Mertens, Julie Moyaert, Raymond van de Berg, Olivier Vanderveken, Paul Van de Heyning, Angelica Perez Fornos, Nils Guinand, Marc J. W. Lammers, Vincent Van Rompaey
Summary: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of bilaterally (partially) absent vestibular function on sound localization skills during static conditions. The results showed that patients with bilateral vestibulopathy had slightly worse static sound localization skills compared to healthy controls, but the difference was very small and likely due to impaired cognitive function. The vestibular system does not seem to play a significant role in sound localization during static conditions, and subjective reporting of speech perception, spatial hearing, and quality of life were not strongly correlated with localization scores.
EUROPEAN ARCHIVES OF OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Bjorn Herrmann, Burkhard Maess, Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Summary: This study investigates the effects of age on neural responses to different types of modulations, such as amplitude and frequency modulations. The results show that older adults have stronger neural synchronization but weaker sustained neural activity compared to younger adults. This indicates age differences in the sensitivity of the auditory system to features present in speech and other natural sounds.
Article
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Yonghua Zhang, Xiaotong Tu, Saqlain Abbas, Hao Liang, Yue Huang, Xinghao Ding
Summary: This paper introduces the application of acoustic beamforming methods based on microphone arrays in sound source localization. Traditional methods suffer from poor spatial resolution. Researchers have attempted model-based and deep network-based methods to improve the resolution of the beamforming map. However, model-based methods have high computational complexity and rely on user-determined parameters, while deep network-based methods may struggle with generalization and generating the beamforming map directly. The paper proposes a new method to solve the inverse problem of sound imaging and further designs a deep neural network model that achieves real-time and high-resolution mapping of acoustic sources, demonstrating strong generalization capability.