Communications Biophysics

Contains research objectives, summary of research and reports on three research projects.National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 PO1 GM14940-06)National Institutes of Health (Grant 2 TOl GM01555-06)National Institutes of Health (Grant 1 ROl NS10737-01)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NGL 22-009-304)Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DAAB07-71-C-0300B-D Electrodyne Division, Becton Dickinson and Company (Grant)Boston City Hospital Purchase Order 1176-21-33

The auditory second filter

No abstract

The auditory second filter

No abstract

Level effects in psychophysical two-tone suppression

Measurements of psychophysical two-tone suppression in a number of subjects are described. Levels of the stimulus components (suppressee, L1, and suppressor, L2) were the primary experimental variables. In all experiments the pulsation threshold was used with the probe frequency fP fixed at the suppressee frequency f1. In an initial experiment f1 was fixed at 1 kHz. The suppressor frequency f2 ranged from 0.2 to 1.4 kHz. At appropriate levels all subjects showed significant suppression. Suppression was found to decrease to zero as f2 approached f1. The amount of suppression depended on both L1 and L2 in a way not accounted for by any of the current theories of two-tone suppression. At higher overall levels suppression became increasingly prominent. The amount of two-tone suppression in a given stimulus condition depended strongly on the subject. The maximum amount of suppression measured was about 35 dB. In a second experiment it was verified that suppression follows the same pattern at other frequencies f1 (0.5, 2, and 4 kHz). Data for equal f2/f1 ratios were quite similar. The two-tone suppression effect decreased in a noisy environment. Within a 20-dB range of signal-to-noise ratios the effect of noise changed from negligible to the virtually complete elimination of two-tone suppression