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Superposition of masking releases

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Abstract

We are constantly exposed to a mixture of sounds of which only few are important to consider. In order to improve detectability and to segregate important sounds from less important sounds, the auditory system uses different aspects of natural sound sources. Among these are (a) its specific location and (b) synchronous envelope fluctuations in different frequency regions. Such a comodulation of different frequency bands facilitates the detection of tones in noise, a phenomenon known as comodulation masking release (CMR). Physiological as well as psychoacoustical studies usually investigate only one of these strategies to segregate sounds. Here we present psychoacoustical data on CMR for various virtual locations of the signal by varying its interaural phase difference (IPD). The results indicate that the masking release in conditions with binaural (interaural phase differences) and across-frequency (synchronous envelope fluctuations, i.e. comodulation) cues present is equal to the sum of the masking releases for each of the cues separately. Data and model predictions with a simplified model of the auditory system indicate an independent and serial processing of binaural cues and monaural across-frequency cues, maximizing the benefits from the envelope comparison across frequency and the comparison of fine structure across ears.

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Notes

  1. An asynchronous onset and offset of the signal and masker is commonly referred to as a fringe condition. Hatch et al. (1995) compared a synchronous condition with a condition where the signal was gated while the masker was presented continuously. The latter continuous-masker condition may be regarded as a condition with an infinite fringe. They reported a gating effect of up to 6 dB on the amount of CMR depending on the number and the bandwidth of the masker bands. For a condition comparable to the one used in the present study, they measured a gating effect of 3 dB on average for five bands and a bandwidth of 20 Hz. However, they derived the CMR comparing the threshold for the comodulated condition with a condition where only the signal-centred band was present. McFadden and Wright (1992) showed that the effect of an asynchronous onset for signal and masker is considerably larger (by several decibels) when the CMR is calculated relative to the signal-centred-band only condition than when the CMR is determined calculating the difference between uncorrelated and the comodulated condition as in the present study. Thus, it is unlikely that the asynchronous gating of signal and masker had an influence on the magnitude of CMR in the present study.

  2. The IPD of 144° originates from a geometrical approximation of the travel distance of the sound wave, resulting in a number of multiples of \(\frac{1}{25}\pi\). The intermediate IPD between 0° and 144° were generated by halving this IPD.

  3. Another approach commonly used in psychoacoustic models is to calculate the signal-plus-noise-to-noise ratio, i.e. the ratio of the model output for the combination of signal and noise and for the noise alone. If this ratio exceeds a certain critical value, the signal is assumed to be detected (Fletcher 1940; Ewert and Dau 2000; Oxenham 2001; Plack et al. 2002). To adapt such an approach to a 3AFC procedure as used here, one can use model output of the signal interval compared to the maximum of the output to the noise intervals (Ernst and Verhey 2006).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the action editor for many helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (International Graduate School for “Neurosensory Science and Systems” GRK 591 and SFB TR31).

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  1. International Graduate School for Neurosensory Science and Systems, Carl von Ossietzky University, 26111, Oldenburg, Germany

    Bastian Epp & Jesko L. Verhey

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  1. Bastian Epp
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Correspondence to Bastian Epp.

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Action Editor: Israel Nelken

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Epp, B., Verhey, J.L. Superposition of masking releases. J Comput Neurosci 26, 393–407 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-008-0118-2

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