Periodicity differences segregate concurrent sounds only under idealized quiet conditions

Evidence

A difference in periodicity between simultaneous complex sounds is a strong segregation cue under quiet, anechoic conditions (Brokx and Nooteboom 1982 ). However, noise and reverberation can both degrade speech intelligibility under realistic “cocktail-party” listening conditions (Nabelek 1993 ; Culling et al. 1994 , 2003 ). Neurophysiological studies of concurrent-sound segregation have concentrated on harmonic complex sounds, with a fundamental-frequency difference (ΔF0), heard under idealized (quiet, anechoic) conditions (e.g., Palmer 1990 ; Keilson et al. 1997 ; Larsen et al. 2008 ). We examine the effects of noise and reverberation, separately, on periodicity-based neural segregation of ΔF0 concurrent vowels, with and without simulated intonation, in the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN); the first processing station in the auditory brain stem. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5026

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth later chasing: to what degree does the VCN’s periodicity segregation survive the degradation that defeats it at the behavioral level?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5026
• XREF: connects to: Perfectly synchronized voices are acoustically indistinguishable from one voice — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 418; Listeners segregate mixed sounds into separate sources using many cues; Auditory stream segregation thresholds depend on note rate and frequency separation (+1 more)