STUDIES OF HUMAN SOUND LOCALIZATION

人类声音定位的研究

• 批准号: 6270087
• 负责人: Frederic L Wightman
• 金额: $ 21.35万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-03-01 至 1999-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6270087
• 关键词: auditory discrimination; auditory pathways; auditory stimulus; binaural hearing; computational neuroscience; external ear; head movements; human subject; neural information processing; neurophysiology; psychoacoustics; sound frequency; sound perception; stimulus /response

For many organisms sound localization is a matter of survival. For humans, such a claim would be an overstatement. However, there can be no denying the importance of sound localization in human life. It subserves our ability to segregate target and competing messages in noisy environments, which is an essential component of normal communication. When that ability is degraded, as with many types of hearing loss, communication is significantly disrupted. The long-term goal of this project is a complete understanding of the mechanisms and processes of human sound localization. Extensive research suggests that the apparent position of a sound is determined by three primary acoustical cues: interaural time differences, interaural level differences, and pinna filtering effects. There are circumstances in which one or more of the cues may be ambiguous or unreliable, such as listening to a narrowband sound or to an unfamiliar sound. In these cases listeners must either use additional cues or weight the primary cues differently. A major focus of this project is the extraction and use of the additional cues, and the alternative weighting strategies. Specifically, the project will investigate the use of localization cues derived from small head movements and the role of a listener's knowledge of or expectations about specific stimulus characteristics. In the proposed experiments human listeners will estimate the apparent positions of sounds presented in either a free sound field or the virtual free-field produced by delivering computer- synthesized sound over headphones. In virtual free-field, head position is monitored with a magnetic tracker so that the stimuli can be appropriately modified in real time. A listener's knowledge of or expectations about the stimuli is manipulated by changing the between- stimuli and within-stimulus variance of the stimulus spectrum. Additional empirical studies will investigate the stimulus features that govern the separability of individual sources in auditory space. In these latter experiments, listeners will indicate the apparent positions of two independent sources in a virtual free-field. Stimulus parameters such amplitude envelope coherence, onset-offset asynchrony, and spectral overlap will be manipulated to assess their importance for successful source segregation. In addition to the empirical work, the project will evaluate a neural network model of sound localization. The model is a single hidden-layer, single output layer network based on a radial basis function architecture. Neural network models are attractive since training and learning, which are thought to be important in human sound localization, are explicitly incorporated in the models.

对于许多生物来说，声音定位是生存的问题。 为了 人类，这样的主张将是一个夸大其词。 但是，可能没有 否认声音本地化在人类生活中的重要性。 它沿着 我们在噪音中隔离目标和竞争信息的能力 环境，这是普通通信的重要组成部分。 当该能力降解时，就像多种类型的听力损失一样， 沟通受到严重破坏。 这个长期目标 项目是对机制和过程的完全理解 人类声音本地化。 广泛的研究表明明显 声音的位置由三个主要的声学提示确定： 播出时间差异，跨层间差异和PINNA 过滤效果。 在某些情况下，一个或多个 提示可能是模棱两可的或不可靠的，例如听窄带 声音或陌生的声音。 在这些情况下，听众必须使用 额外的提示或对主要提示的重量不同。 主要重点 该项目是提取和使用其他提示，以及 替代加权策略。 具体而言，该项目将 调查使用源自小型运动的本地化提示的使用 以及听众对特定的知识或期望的作用 刺激特征。 在拟议的实验中，人类听众 将估计免费的声音的明显位置 声场或通过交付计算机生成的虚拟自由场 - 综合耳机的声音。 在虚拟自由场，头部位置 用磁跟踪器监测，以便刺激可以是 实时适当修改。 听众的知识或 通过改变 - 刺激频谱的刺激和刺激方差。 额外的 经验研究将研究控制的刺激特征 听觉空间中各个来源的可分离性。 在这些后者 实验，听众将指示两个的明显位置 虚拟自由场中的独立来源。 刺激参数 振幅信封相干性，起点异步和光谱 重叠将被操纵以评估其成功的重要性 源隔离。 除了经验工作，该项目还将 评估声音定位的神经网络模型。 该模型是 基于径向的单个隐藏层单输出层网络 功能体系结构。 神经网络模型很有吸引力，因为 培训和学习，认为这在人类声音中很重要 本地化已明确合并到模型中。