Loudness at high sound levels arises from excitation spreading across adjacent frequency bands

Evidence

The output of the neuron to the auditory nerve is practically constant for signal levels above 50–60 dB, and the question then remains, how does our hearing analyse the loudness of sound at higher levels? A possible answer is that the cross-frequency spreading of the activation caused by loud sounds shown in Figure 7.12 is taken into account. With such an assumption, the auditory system analyses the auditory input across frequency and combines the excitation in several adjacent bands to form the loudness perception. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 789

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the loudness-model literature (e.g., Moore & Glasberg excitation pattern models) and to the reader’s broader reading on soundscape and acoustic perception.

Related

• Loudness above 60 dB is encoded by cross-frequency spread, not single-neuron rate (similarity 0.94)
• Loudness increases when sound energy spreads across critical bands to fire extra nerves (similarity 0.89)
• Loudness perception involves central mechanisms beyond cochlear vibration (similarity 0.88)
• Wide bandwidth noise sounds as loud as a narrower tone despite lower level (similarity 0.87)
• Loudness is the summed specific loudness across critical-band rates, not the raw spectral level (similarity 0.87)
• Widening a sound’s bandwidth beyond one critical band raises perceived loudness at unchanged intensity. (similarity 0.87)
• The brain processes sounds inside a critical band as a single lumped item. (similarity 0.86)
• Perceived loudness depends on frequency content and duration, not just sound pressure level (similarity 0.86)
• Loudness grows when sound energy spills beyond a single critical band (similarity 0.86)
• Auditory pathway neural activity linearly encodes perceived loudness, not sound level (similarity 0.86)
• Loudness perception requires a tenfold intensity increase to double (similarity 0.86)
• Loudness rises with bandwidth beyond the critical band despite falling pattern height (similarity 0.86)
• Loudness models estimate total neural activity since it cannot be measured directly (similarity 0.85)
• Loudness depends on more than physical sound intensity alone (similarity 0.85)
• Auditory bands from the same source are summed to compute total loudness (similarity 0.85)