Can auditory objects be subitized?

In vision, humans have the ability to mentally 'tag' approximately four objects, allowing us to monitor, attend, and interact with them. As a consequence, we can rapidly and accurately enumerate up to four objects – a process known as subitizing. Here, we investigate whether a similar ability exists for tagging auditory stimuli and find that only two or three auditory stimuli can be enumerated with high accuracy. We assess whether this high accuracy indicates the existence of an auditory subitizing mechanism, and if it is influenced by factors known to influence visual subitizing. Based on accuracy, Experiments 1 and 2 reveal a potential auditory subitizing mechanism only when stimuli are spatially separated, as is the case for visual subitizing. Experiment 3 failed to show any evidence of auditory subitizing when objects were separated in time, rather than space. All three experiments provide only limited evidence for an age-related decline in auditory enumeration of small numbers of objects. This suggests that poor auditory tagging does not contribute significantly to older adults’ difficulties in multi-talker conversations. We hypothesize that although auditory subitizing might occur, it is restricted to approximately two spatially-separated objects due to the difficulty of parsing the auditory scene into its constituent parts

Hierarchical Processing of Auditory Objects in Humans

This work examines the computational architecture used by the brain during the analysis of the spectral envelope of sounds, an important acoustic feature for defining auditory objects. Dynamic causal modelling and Bayesian model selection were used to evaluate a family of 16 network models explaining functional magnetic resonance imaging responses in the right temporal lobe during spectral envelope analysis. The models encode different hypotheses about the effective connectivity between Heschl's Gyrus (HG), containing the primary auditory cortex, planum temporale (PT), and superior temporal sulcus (STS), and the modulation of that coupling during spectral envelope analysis. In particular, we aimed to determine whether information processing during spectral envelope analysis takes place in a serial or parallel fashion. The analysis provides strong support for a serial architecture with connections from HG to PT and from PT to STS and an increase of the HG to PT connection during spectral envelope analysis. The work supports a computational model of auditory object processing, based on the abstraction of spectro-temporal “templates” in the PT before further analysis of the abstracted form in anterior temporal lobe areas

Auditory Spatial Layout

All auditory sensory information is packaged in a pair of acoustical pressure waveforms, one at each ear. While there is obvious structure in these waveforms, that structure (temporal and spectral patterns) bears no simple relationship to the structure of the environmental objects that produced them. The properties of auditory objects and their layout in space must be derived completely from higher level processing of the peripheral input. This chapter begins with a discussion of the peculiarities of acoustical stimuli and how they are received by the human auditory system. A distinction is made between the ambient sound field and the effective stimulus to differentiate the perceptual distinctions among various simple classes of sound sources (ambient field) from the known perceptual consequences of the linear transformations of the sound wave from source to receiver (effective stimulus). Next, the definition of an auditory object is dealt with, specifically the question of how the various components of a sound stream become segregated into distinct auditory objects. The remainder of the chapter focuses on issues related to the spatial layout of auditory objects, both stationary and moving

Echoes of the spoken past: how auditory cortex hears context during speech perception.

What do we hear when someone speaks and what does auditory cortex (AC) do with that sound? Given how meaningful speech is, it might be hypothesized that AC is most active when other people talk so that their productions get decoded. Here, neuroimaging meta-analyses show the opposite: AC is least active and sometimes deactivated when participants listened to meaningful speech compared to less meaningful sounds. Results are explained by an active hypothesis-and-test mechanism where speech production (SP) regions are neurally re-used to predict auditory objects associated with available context. By this model, more AC activity for less meaningful sounds occurs because predictions are less successful from context, requiring further hypotheses be tested. This also explains the large overlap of AC co-activity for less meaningful sounds with meta-analyses of SP. An experiment showed a similar pattern of results for non-verbal context. Specifically, words produced less activity in AC and SP regions when preceded by co-speech gestures that visually described those words compared to those words without gestures. Results collectively suggest that what we 'hear' during real-world speech perception may come more from the brain than our ears and that the function of AC is to confirm or deny internal predictions about the identity of sounds

Approaches to the cortical analysis of auditory objects

We describe work that addresses the cortical basis for the analysis of auditory objects using ‘generic’ sounds that do not correspond to any particular events or sources (like vowels or voices) that have semantic association. The experiments involve the manipulation of synthetic sounds to produce systematic changes of stimulus features, such as spectral envelope. Conventional analyses of normal functional imaging data demonstrate that the analysis of spectral envelope and perceived timbral change involves a network consisting of planum temporale (PT) bilaterally and the right superior temporal sulcus (STS). Further analysis of imaging data using dynamic causal modelling (DCM) and Bayesian model selection was carried out in the right hemisphere areas to determine the effective connectivity between these auditory areas. Specifically, the objective was to determine if the analysis of spectral envelope in the network is done in a serial fashion (that is from HG to PT to STS) or parallel fashion (that is PT and STS receives input from HG simultaneously). Two families of models, serial and parallel (16 in total) that represent different hypotheses about the connectivity between HG, PT and STS were selected. The models within a family differ with respect to the pathway that is modulated by the analysis of spectral envelope. After the models are identified, Bayesian model selection procedure is then used to select the ‘optimal’ model from the specified models. The data strongly support a particular serial model containing modulation of the HG to PT effective connectivity during spectral envelope variation. Parallel work in neurological subjects addresses the effect of lesions to different parts of this network. We have recently studied in detail subjects with ‘dystimbria’: an alteration in the perceived quality of auditory objects distinct from pitch or loudness change. The subjects have lesions of the normal network described above with normal perception of pitch strength but abnormal perception of the analysis of spectral envelope change

On the Emergence and Awareness of Auditory Objects

How do humans successfully navigate the sounds of music and the voice of a friend in the midst of a noisy cocktail party? Two recent articles inPLoS Biology provide psychoacoustic and neuronal clues about where to search for the answers

Source separation with one ear : proposition for an anthropomorphic approach

Abstract : We present an example of an anthropomorphic approach, in which auditory-based cues are combined with temporal correlation to implement a source separation system. The auditory features are based on spectral amplitudemodulation and energy information obtained through 256 cochlear filters. Segmentation and binding of auditory objects are performed with a two-layered spiking neural network. The first layer performs the segmentation of the auditory images into objects, while the second layer binds the auditory objects belonging to the same source. The binding is further used to generate a mask (binary gain) to suppress the undesired sources fromthe original signal. Results are presented for a double-voiced (2 speakers) speech segment and for sentences corrupted with different noise sources. Comparative results are also given using PESQ (perceptual evaluation of speech quality) scores. The spiking neural network is fully adaptive and unsupervised

Reduced object related negativity response indicates impaired auditory scene analysis in adults with autistic spectrum disorder

Auditory Scene Analysis provides a useful framework for understanding atypical auditory perception in autism. Specifically, a failure to segregate the incoming acoustic energy into distinct auditory objects might explain the aversive reaction autistic individuals have to certain auditory stimuli or environments. Previous research with non-autistic participants has demonstrated the presence of an Object Related Negativity (ORN) in the auditory event related potential that indexes pre-attentive processes associated with auditory scene analysis. Also evident is a later P400 component that is attention dependent and thought to be related to decision-making about auditory objects. We sought to determine whether there are differences between individuals with and without autism in the levels of processing indexed by these components. Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to measure brain responses from a group of 16 autistic adults, and 16 age- and verbal-IQ-matched typically-developing adults. Auditory responses were elicited using lateralized dichotic pitch stimuli in which inter-aural timing differences create the illusory perception of a pitch that is spatially separated from a carrier noise stimulus. As in previous studies, control participants produced an ORN in response to the pitch stimuli. However, this component was significantly reduced in the participants with autism. In contrast, processing differences were not observed between the groups at the attention-dependent level (P400). These findings suggest that autistic individuals have difficulty segregating auditory stimuli into distinct auditory objects, and that this difficulty arises at an early pre-attentive level of processing

What Are Auditory Objects?

Forthcoming in European Review of Philosophy, 7Our auditory experience involves the experience of auditory objects sequences of distinct sounds, or parts of sounds, that are experienced as grouped together into a single sound or stream or sounds. In this paper I argue that argue that we cannot explain what it is to experience an auditory object in purely auditory terms; rather, to experience an auditory object as such is to experience a sequence of sounds as having been produced by the same source

Virtual acoustics displays

The real time acoustic display capabilities are described which were developed for the Virtual Environment Workstation (VIEW) Project at NASA-Ames. The acoustic display is capable of generating localized acoustic cues in real time over headphones. An auditory symbology, a related collection of representational auditory 'objects' or 'icons', can be designed using ACE (Auditory Cue Editor), which links both discrete and continuously varying acoustic parameters with information or events in the display. During a given display scenario, the symbology can be dynamically coordinated in real time with 3-D visual objects, speech, and gestural displays. The types of displays feasible with the system range from simple warnings and alarms to the acoustic representation of multidimensional data or events