Search results for "auditor"
showing 10 items of 737 documents
Statistical language learning in neonates revealed by event-related brain potentials
2009
Abstract Background Statistical learning is a candidate for one of the basic prerequisites underlying the expeditious acquisition of spoken language. Infants from 8 months of age exhibit this form of learning to segment fluent speech into distinct words. To test the statistical learning skills at birth, we recorded event-related brain responses of sleeping neonates while they were listening to a stream of syllables containing statistical cues to word boundaries. Results We found evidence that sleeping neonates are able to automatically extract statistical properties of the speech input and thus detect the word boundaries in a continuous stream of syllables containing no morphological cues. …
Processing of prosodic changes in natural speech stimuli in school-age children.
2012
Speech prosody conveys information about important aspects of communication: the meaning of the sentence and the emotional state or intention of the speaker. The present study addressed processing of emotional prosodic changes in natural speech stimuli in school-age children (mean age 10 years) by recording the electroencephalogram, facial electromyography, and behavioral responses. The stimulus was a semantically neutral Finnish word uttered with four different emotional connotations: neutral, commanding, sad, and scornful. In the behavioral sound-discrimination task the reaction times were fastest for the commanding stimulus and longest for the scornful stimulus, and faster for the neutra…
Large-scale brain networks emerge from dynamic processing of musical timbre, key and rhythm
2012
We investigated the neural underpinnings of timbral, tonal, and rhythmic features of a naturalistic musical stimulus. Participants were scanned with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while listening to a stimulus with a rich musical structure, a modern tango. We correlated temporal evolutions of timbral, tonal, and rhythmic features of the stimulus, extracted using acoustic feature extraction procedures, with the fMRI time series. Results corroborate those obtained with controlled stimuli in previous studies and highlight additional areas recruited during musical feature processing. While timbral feature processing was associated with activations in cognitive areas of the cerebel…
Cognitive vs. affective listening modes and judgments of music - An ERP study
2010
The neural correlates of processing deviations from Western music rules are relatively well known. Less is known of the neural dynamics of top-down listening modes and affective liking judgments in relation with judgments of tonal correctness. In this study, subjects determined if tonal chord sequences sounded correct or incorrect, or if they liked them or not, while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was measured. The last chord of the sequences could be congruous with the previous context, ambiguous (unusual but still enjoyable) or harmonically inappropriate. The cognitive vs. affective listening modes were differentiated in the event-related potential (ERP) responses already before the end…
Discrimination of tonal and atonal music in congenital amusia: The advantage of implicit tasks
2016
International audience; Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of music perception and production, which has been attributed to a major deficit in pitch processing. While most studies and diagnosis tests have used explicit investigation methods, recent studies using implicit investigation approaches have revealed some unimpaired pitch structure processing in congenital amusia. The present study investigated amusic individuals' processing of tonal structures (e.g., musical structures respecting the Western tonal system) via three different questions. Amusic participants and their matched controls judged tonal versions (original musical excerpts) and atonal versions (with manipula…
Low-Frequency Therapeutic Ultrasound with Varied Duty Cycle: Effects on the Ischemic Brain and the Inner Ear
2009
Sonothrombolysis is a promising modality for acute stroke treatment. In vitro data suggest a duty cycle dependence of sonothrombolytic efficacy of low-frequency applications. The aim of our study was to examine its impact on safety issues in a rat model of middle cerebral artery occlusion. Rats were exposed to transcranial 60-kHz ultrasound with varied duty cycles. To determine effects on the inner ear, the acoustic threshold was determined in additional healthy animals (acoustic evoked potentials). A short duty cycle (20%) resulted in significant adverse effects (ischemic volume, hemorrhage, functional outcome), which was not observed in longer duty cycle (80%). Continuous-wave insonation …
Metabolic changes in vestibular and visual cortices in acute vestibular neuritis
2004
Five right-handed patients with a right-sided vestibular neuritis were examined twice with fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography while lying supine with eyes closed: once during the acute stage (mean, 6.6 days) and then 3 months later when central vestibular compensation had occurred. Regional cerebral glucose metabolism (rCGM) was significantly increased (p <0.001 uncorrected) during the acute stage in multisensory vestibular cortical and subcortical areas (parietoinsular vestibular cortex in the posterior insula, posterolateral thalamus, anterior cingulate gyrus [Brodmann area 32/24], pontomesencephalic brainstem, hippocampus). Simultaneously, there was a significant rCGM decrea…
Expressive timing facilitates the neural processing of phrase boundaries in music: Evidence from event-related potentials
2013
The organization of sound into meaningful units is fundamental to the processing of auditory information such as speech and music. In expressive music performance, structural units or phrases may become particularly distinguishable through subtle timing variations highlighting musical phrase boundaries. As such, expressive timing may support the successful parsing of otherwise continuous musical material. By means of the event-related potential technique (ERP), we investigated whether expressive timing modulates the neural processing of musical phrases. Musicians and laymen listened to short atonal scale-like melodies that were presented either isochronously (deadpan) or with expressive tim…
Sudden sensorineural hearing loss: is there a relationship between routine haematological parameters and audiogram shapes?
2016
Objective: To investigate the relationship between haematological routine parameters and audiogram shapes in patients affected by sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL). Design: A retrospective study. All patients were divided into four groups according to the audiometric curve and mean values of haematological parameters (haemoglobin, white blood cell, neutrophils and lymphocytes relative count, platelet count, haematocrit, prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, fibrinogen and neutrophil-to-lymphocite ratio) of each group were statistically compared. The prognostic role of blood profile and coagulation test was also examined. Study sample: A cohort of 183 SSNHL patient…
Temporal weights in loudness: Investigation of the effects of background noise and sound level
2019
Previous research has consistently shown that for sounds varying in intensity over time, the beginning of the sound is of higher importance for the perception of loudness than later parts (primacy effect). However, in all previous studies, the target sounds were presented in quiet, and at a fixed average sound level. In the present study, temporal loudness weights for a time-varying narrowband noise were investigated in the presence of a continuous bandpass-filtered background noise and the average sound levels of the target stimuli were varied across a range of 60 dB. Pronounced primacy effects were observed in all conditions and there were no significant differences between the temporal w…