Cochlear compression may protect AM detection against added background noise

Evidence

To understand Hall et al.’s results, we must first consider how a fluctuating masker may provide benefits to a listener. A fluctuating masker has “dips” or “valleys” in the waveform. These dips provide brief epochs in time that have high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), compared with the waveform peaks, and a listener with normal hearing can take advantage of these dips to detect a signal (Buus, 1985). Steady maskers do not have pronounced dips and therefore do not provide opportunities for dip listening. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 551 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Specifically, we describe an experiment designed to examine how the loss of cochlear compression affects the recognition of relatively soft syllables occurring in the presence of louder, flanking syllables of varying levels. The aim is to reveal the role of cochlear compression in multi-speaker environments or those with disruptive background noise. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4046 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Faster-fluctuating sounds trigger less cochlear compression, trading sensitivity for better dynamic encoding — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3637; Cochlear neuropathy and gain loss may push AM detection in opposite directions — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5873; Cochlear gain loss can compensate for temporal coding deficits in AM detection — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5904 (+3 more)

Related

• Lost cochlear compression degrades speech formant coding in hearing-impaired listeners (similarity 0.90)
• Compression loss most impairs recognition when a syllable is relatively quieter than its neighbors. (similarity 0.86)
• Cochlear compression protects modulation detection from masking noise (similarity 0.86)
• More cochlear compression loss predicts less degradation from added masking noise (similarity 0.86)
• Faster-fluctuating sounds trigger less cochlear compression, trading sensitivity for better dynamic encoding (similarity 0.85)
• Quiet-versus-narrowband-masked AM threshold differences can isolate temporal coding from cochlear compression (similarity 0.85)
• Loss of peripheral compression alone impairs recognition of low-level syllables between louder ones (similarity 0.84)
• Loss of cochlear compression alone impairs hearing soft syllables amid louder ones (similarity 0.84)
• Cochlear gain loss can compensate for temporal coding deficits in AM detection (similarity 0.84)
• Cochlear neuropathy and gain loss may push AM detection in opposite directions (similarity 0.84)
• Cochlear compression loss paradoxically enhances perceived modulation depth (similarity 0.84)
• Cochlear suppression is essential for coding complex sounds but poorly characterized in hearing loss (similarity 0.83)
• A narrowband masker selectively taxes temporal coding in hearing-impaired listeners (similarity 0.83)
• Normal-hearing listeners exploit temporal dips in fluctuating maskers to detect signals. (similarity 0.82)
• Cochlear gain loss can compensate for neural coding deficits (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Normal-hearing listeners exploit temporal dips in fluctuating maskers to detect signals. #corroborates (0.82) — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 551
• Loss of cochlear compression alone impairs hearing soft syllables amid louder ones #complicates (0.80) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4046
• Lost cochlear compression degrades speech formant coding in hearing-impaired listeners #complicates (0.78)