Hearing

Deepu V.

January 10, 2016

Deepu V. () Hearing January 10, 2016 1 / 17

Anatomy of the ear

Range of hearing 20Hz − 20kHz

Most responsive in the range
200Hz − 5600Hz
Similar to other mammals and
shares properties with birds’
auditory system
Bigger mammals are more
responsive to lower sounds
vice versa for small animals
(sheep 42.5 kHz, dog 44kHz,
bats 200kHz )
Three parts
1

1
”Blausen gallery 2014”. Wikiversity Journal of Medicine.
DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 20018762. -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blausen 0328 EarAnatomy.png
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Outer Ear

Pinna funnels the sound wave to ear canal

Helps in localization
Asymmetric shape resolves sounds from front and back
Ear canal is around 2.7cm long with first resonance 3kHz

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Middle Ear

Eardrum with air filled cavity

with three tiny ossicular bones
Malleus (hammer), Incus
(anvil), Stapes (stirrup)
Transmit the vibrations in air to
the fluid in inner ear
Vibrating area of eardrum
55mm2 , contact area of stapes
3.2mm2

2
”Blausen gallery 2014”. Wikiversity Journal of Medicine.
DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 20018762.
Deepu V. () Hearing January 10, 2016 4 / 17
Inner Ear

Cochlea filled with a gelatinous

fluid has around 2.5 turns
transforms mechanical vibrations
at oval window to electrical
excitation
Walls of cochlea are hard bone
→ vibrations cause oscillations
in flexible cochlear membranes
Cochlea has a cross sectional
base of 4mm2 that tapers to
1mm2 at the apex
3

3
By Cochlea-crosssection.png:Oarih at en.wikipedia derivative work: Fred the
Oyster [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) ], from
Wikimedia Commons
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Basillar membrane (BM)

Stiff and thin at the basal end;

complaint and massive at apex
Each location has a
characteristic frequency (CF)
Basal end has a higher CF and
apex end has a low CF
Traveling wave reaches a
maximum amplitude at the
point where CF matches input
frequency

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Electrical activity

Basillar membrane contains

30,000 sensory hair cells, where
auditory nerve terminates
BM vibrations cause bending
and shearing forces on hair cells
The tension on hair cells alters
electrical conductance and
releases of a chemical substance
Causes attached neuron to
“fire”
The frequency information in
low frequencies is provided by
the neuron that fires and rate of
firing
Deepu V. () Hearing January 10, 2016 7 / 17
Electrical activity

Each nerve fiber follows a tuning

curve → sound intensity to raise
its firing rate above random
Resembles band pass filters with
approximately constant Q
Neurons have a latency period
of 1 − 3ms
Low frequencies, neuron could
fire on each half-cycle of
sinusoidal vibration
above 4 − 5kHz phase locking
disppears, frequency information
is only present in the position

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Sound Perception

Auditory Thresholds
Pitch Perception
Masking

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Auditory Psychophysics

Concerned with resolving power of audition

How well listeners can discriminate two closely spaced events
Generally listeners are good with telling whether two sounds are same
AX or AXB or ABX tests

Deepu V. () Hearing January 10, 2016 10 / 17

Auditory Thresholds

Sounds of frequency below 1kHz

or above 5kHz require more SPL
Minimum intensity known as
auditory or hearing threshold
Auditory threshold is similar
across speech spectrum
Loudness is measured in phons
Pain threshold is around 120 dB

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Just Noticeable Difference (JND)

Acoustic value at which 75% of the responses are different is selected

as JND
JND for frequency is 1 − 3Hz for < 1kHz
Higher at higher frequencies (100Hz at 8kHz)
JND is higher if sound is brief or weak

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Pitch Perception

Pitch
A sound is said to have a certain pitch if it can be reliably matched to a
tone by adjusting the tonal frequency

Timing theory holds that fundamental frequency is perceived in terms

of time-sync neural firings
Space theory says spectral information is located via BM locations
Telephone no frequency below 300Hz, but you can perceive a pitch of
100Hz
Pitch is regarded as perceived repetition frequency of a periodic sound
determined by positions of about eight lowest harmonics

Deepu V. () Hearing January 10, 2016 13 / 17

Masking

Perception of one sound is obscured by presence of another

Simultaneous sounds cause frequency masking – generally a lower
frequency masks a lower amplitude higher frequency
Sounds delayed with respect to one another can cause temporal
masking of one or both
Nonlinear phenomenon – response is not sum of response of individual
freq.

Deepu V. () Hearing January 10, 2016 14 / 17

Frequency Masking

Characterized in terms of
masking thresholds
Tone can mask tone/noise —
noise masks tone
Tone masking tone is more
complicated. There is also the
question about beat frequency

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Critical Bands

Frequency range in psycho acoustic experiments when a stimulus is

made from narrow band to wideband
Based on a set of neurons firing for a set of frequencies
Linear at lower frequency and logarithmic (Constant Q) in the upper
frequency (> 1kHz )
An approximation of mapping between the two scales is

z = 13 tan−1 (0.76f /kHz) + 3.5 tan−1 (f /7.5kHz)2 (1)

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Temporal Masking

Noise siganl will mask an ensuing tone burse in the same critical band
if the noise has sufficient energy
Backward masking also occurs (with much short delays )

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