The Sensory Consequences of Speaking: Parametric Neural Cancellation during Speech in Auditory Cortex

When we speak, we provide ourselves with auditory speech input. Efficient monitoring of speech is often hypothesized to depend on matching the predicted sensory consequences from internal motor commands (forward model) with actual sensory feedback. In this paper we tested the forward model hypothesis using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. We administered an overt picture naming task in which we parametrically reduced the quality of verbal feedback by noise masking. Presentation of the same auditory input in the absence of overt speech served as listening control condition. Our results suggest that a match between predicted and actual sensory feedback results in inhibition of cancellation of auditory activity because speaking with normal unmasked feedback reduced activity in the auditory cortex compared to listening control conditions. Moreover, during self-generated speech, activation in auditory cortex increased as the feedback quality of the self-generated speech decreased. We conclude that during speaking early auditory cortex is involved in matching external signals with an internally generated model or prediction of sensory consequences, the locus of which may reside in auditory or higher order brain areas. Matching at early auditory cortex may provide a very sensitive monitoring mechanism that highlights speech production errors at very early levels of processing and may efficiently determine the self-agency of speech input

Auditory processing in individuals with auditory neuropathy

BACKGROUND: Auditory neuropathy is a disorder characterized by no or severely impaired auditory brainstem responses in presence of normal otoacoustic emissions and/or cochlear microphonics. Speech perception abilities in these individuals are disproportionate to their hearing sensitivity and reported to be dependent on cortical evoked potentials and temporal processing abilities. The disproportionate loss of auditory percept in presence of normal cochlear function is suggestive of impairment of auditory neural synchrony. METHODS: We studied the auditory evoked potentials and psychophysical abilities in 14 adults with auditory neuropathy to characterize their perceptual capabilities. Psychophysical tests included measurement of open set speech identification scores, just noticeable difference for transition duration of syllable /da/ and temporal modulation transfer function. Auditory evoked potentials measures were, recording of P(1)/N(1), P(2)/N(2 )complex and mismatch negativity (MMN). RESULTS: Results revealed a significant correlation between temporal processing deficits and speech perception abilities. In majority of individuals with auditory neuropathy P(1)/N(1), P(2)/N(2 )complex and mismatch negativity could be elicited with normal amplitude and latency. None of the measured evoked potential parameters correlated with the speech perception scores. Many of the subjects with auditory neuropathy showed normal MMN even though they could not discriminate the stimulus contrast behaviorally. CONCLUSION: Conclusions drawn from the study are 1. Individuals with auditory neuropathy have severely affected temporal processing. 2. The presence of MMN may not be directly linked to presence of behavioral discrimination and to speech perception capabilities at least in adults with auditory neuropathy

Bubble formation regimes in forced co-axial air-water jets

We report a detailed experimental characterization of the periodic bubbling regimes that take place in an axisymmetric air-water jet when the inner air stream is forced by periodic modulations of the pressure at the upstream air feeding chamber. When the forcing pressure amplitude is larger than a critical value, the bubble formation process is controlled by the forcing frequency, leading to the formation of nearly monodisperse bubbles whose volume is reduced as the forcing rate increases. We reveal the existence of two different breakup modes, M1 and M2, under effective forcing conditions. The bubble formation in mode M1 resembles the natural bubbling process, featuring an initial radial expansion of an air ligament attached to the injector, whose initial length is smaller than the wavelength of a small interfacial perturbation induced by the oscillating air flow rate. The expansion stage is followed by a ligament collapse stage, which begins with the formation of an incipient neck that propagates downstream while collapsing radially inwards, leading to the pinch-off of a new bubble. These two stages take place faster than in the unforced case due to the air flow modulation induced by the forcing system. The breakup mode M2 takes place with an intact ligament longer than one disturbance wavelength, whereby the interface already presents a local necking region at pinch-off, and leads to the formation of bubbles from the tip of an elongated air filament without an expansion stage.This work has been supported by the Spanish MINECO and European Funds under projects DPI2017-88201-C3-2-R and DPI2017- 88201-C3-3-R . JRR wants to acknowledge the Spanish MINECO for the financial support provided by the Fellowship BES-2015-07132

Electrodynamic loudspeaker linearization using a low complexity pth-Order inverse nonlinear filter

Nonlinear distortions are very challenging to tackle in electromechanical loudspeakers. They are observed in large signals mode, where high amplitude stimulus drives different components of the transducer to operate in their nonlinear region, resulting in harmonic and intermodulation distortions in the reproduced sounds. Many linearization schemes have been proposed to address this problem, they operate by pre-distorting the input signal before exciting the loudspeaker, in the aim of radiating distortion-free sound waves. In this work, we are interested in the performance evaluation of a low computational complexity feedforward linearization structure which is based on the pth order inverse of a one-dimension Volterra model of the driver. The scheme is designed to compensate for the 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortions. We will study the effect of varying the input voltage amplitude on the harmonic distortions reduction performance. A lumped-parameters model with parameters of a real driver will be used for the evaluation

Spectromorphology and spatiomorphology of sound shapes: Audio-rate AEP and DBAP panning of spectra

Explorations of a new mapping strategy for spectral spatial-isation demonstrate a concise and flexible control of both spatiomorphology and spectromorphology. With the crea-tion of customized software by the author for audio-rate histograms, spectral processing function smoothing, spec-tral centroid width modulation, audio-rate distance-based amplitude panning, audio-rate ambisonic equivalent pan-ning, a growing library of audio trajectory functions, and an assortment of spectral transformation functions, this article tries to explain the rationale of this process

SIMULATION AND MODELING OF AN ACOUSTICALLY FORCED MODEL ROCKET INJECTOR

A numerical and experimental study was performed to assess the capability of the Loci-CHEM CFD solver in simulating dynamic interaction between hydrogen-oxygen turbulent diffusion flames and periodic pressure waves. Previous experimental studies involving a single-element shear-coaxial model injector revealed an unusual flame-acoustic interaction mechanism affecting combustion instability characteristics. To directly compare the simulation and experiments, various models in the present solver were examined and additional experiments conducted. A customized mesh and corresponding boundary conditions were designed and developed, closely approximating the experimental setup. Full 3-D simulations were conducted using a hybrid RANS/LES framework with appropriate chemistry and turbulence models. The results were compared for both reacting and non-reacting flows that were excited at various forcing frequencies representing both resonant and non-resonant behaviors. Although a good qualitative agreement was obtained for the most part, there was a significant discrepancy in simulating the flame-acoustic interaction behavior observed under non-resonant forcing conditions