Enhancement, adaptation, and the binaural system.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2008-06-01; 123(6): 4412-4420
DOI: 10.1121/1.2902177
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1. J Acoust Soc Am. 2008 Jun;123(6):4412-20. doi: 10.1121/1.2902177.
Enhancement, adaptation, and the binaural system.
Serman M(1), Semal C, Demany L.
Author information:
(1)Laboratoire Mouvement, Adaptation, Cognition (UMR CNRS 5227), BP 63,
Université Bordeaux 2, 146 Rue Leo Saignat, F-33076 Bordeaux, France.
In a test sound consisting of a burst of pink noise, an arbitrarily selected
target frequency band can be “enhanced” by the previous presentation of a similar
noise with a spectral notch in the target frequency region. As a result of the
enhancement, the test sound evokes a pitch sensation corresponding to the pitch
of the target band. Here, a pitch comparison task was used to assess enhancement.
In the first experiment, a stronger enhancement effect was found when the test
sound and its precursor had the same interaural time difference (ITD) than when
they had opposite ITDs. Two subsequent experiments were concerned with the
audibility of an instance of dichotic pitch in binaural test sounds preceded by
precursors. They showed that it is possible to enhance a frequency region on the
sole basis of ITD manipulations, using spectrally identical test sounds and
precursors. However, the observed effects were small. A major goal of this study
was to test the hypothesis that enhancement originates at least in part from
neural adaptation processes taking place at a central level of the auditory
system. The data failed to provide strong support for this hypothesis.
DOI: 10.1121/1.2902177
PMID: 18537392 [Indexed for MEDLINE]