Task-relevant spatialized auditory cues enhance attention orientation and peripheral target detection in natural scenes

Concurrent auditory stimuli have been shown to enhance detection of abstract visual targets in experimental setups with little ecological validity. We presented 11 participants, wearing an eye-tracking device, with a visual detection task in an immersive audiovisual environment replicating a real-world environment. The participants were to fixate on a visual target and to press a key when they were confident of having detected the target. The visual world was accompanied by a task-relevant or task-irrelevant spatialized sound scene with different onset asynchronies. Our findings indicate task-relevant auditory cues to aid in orienting to and detecting a peripheral but not central visual target. The enhancement is amplified with an increasing amount of audio lead

Audiovisual Reproduction in Surrounding Display: Effect of Spatial Width of Audio and Video

Moniaistinen havaitseminen perustuu informaation yhdistämiseen eri aistikanavista siten, että yhdistetty aistimus tuottaa enemmän tietoa ympäröivästä maailmasta kuin aistimusten käsitteleminen erillisinä. Tämän seurauksena vanhat laatumittarit yhteen aistiin perustuville järjestelmille eivät toimi arvioitaessa monimutkaisempia audiovisuaalisia järjestelmiä, ja uusien laatumittareiden kehittäminen on tarpeellista. Tässä työssä audiovisuaalista havaitsemista tutkittiin immersiivisen audiovisuaalisen näytön avulla. Näyttö koostui 226 laajasta videokuvasta ja 20 kaiuttimella toteutetusta 3D äänentoistosta. Tutkimuksen tavoite oli tarkkailla kuulon ja näön vuorovaikutusta, kun kuvan- ja äänentoiston avaruudellista laajuutta rajoitettiin. Subjektiivinen laatuarviointi toteutettiin käyttäen diskreettiä näytteenhuonontumaskaalaa (DCR) havaitun laadun heikkenemisen arviointiin neljän eri videosisällön kanssa, kun äänen- ja kuvantoiston leveyttä rajoitettiin. Tämän lisäksi osallistujilta kerättiin vapaita kuvauksia heidän antamiinsa laatuarviointeihin vaikuttaneista seikoista. Osallistujien yksilölliset taipumukset kokea uppoutumista arvioitiin ennen koetta kyselylomakkeen avulla. Tulokset osoittavat, että videon leveys on määräävä tekijä arvioitaessa havaittua laadun heikkenemistä. Myös äänenleveydellä oli merkitystä, kun videonleveys oli suurimmillaan. Taipumus kokea uppoutumista ei ollut merkittävä tekijä laadun kannalta tässä tutkimuksessa. Videosisällön merkitys oli vähäinen. Vapaille kuvauksille suoritettu rajoitettu korrespondenssianalyysi ehdottaa huonoon havaittuun laatuun vaikuttaviksi tekijöiksi äänen väärän tulosuunnan, rajoitetun videonleveyden ja puuttuvan tärkeän sisällön.Multimodal perception strives to integrate information from multiple sensorial channels into a unified experience, that contains more information than just the sum of the separate unimodal percepts. As a result, traditional quality metrics for unimodal services cannot reflect the perceived quality in multimodal situations, and new quality estimation methods are needed. In this work, audiovisual perception was studied with an immersive audiovisual display. The audiovisual display consisted of a video screen with field of view of 226 and 3D sound reproduction with 20 loudspeakers. The aim of the study was to observe the crossmodal interaction of auditory and visual modalities, when the spatial widths of audio and video reproduction were limited. A subjective study was organized, where the overall perceived degradation of the stimuli was evaluated with Degradation Category Rating in four different types of audiovisual content. In addition, free descriptions of the most prominent degrading factors were collected. The participants' individual tendencies to experience immersion were screened prior to the experiment with a questionnaire. The results show that video width is the dominant element in defining the degradation of a stimulus. Also audio width had an impact when the video width was at maximum. Individual tendency to experience immersion was not found to have significant impact on perceived degradation in this study. Slight content effects were observed. Constrained correspondence analysis of the free description data suggests the reasons for highest perceived degradation to be caused by wrong audio direction, reduced video width and missing essential content

3D sound can have a negative impact on the perception of visual content in audiovisual reproductions

Presented at the 21st International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2015), July 6-10, 2015, Graz, Styria, Austria.There is reason to believe that sound interacts with visual attention mechanisms. Practical implications of that interaction have never been analyzed in the context of spatial sound design for audiovisual reproduction. The study reported here aimed to test if sound spatialization could affect eye movements and the processing of visual events in audiovisual scenes. We presented participants with audiovisual scenes of a metro station. The sound was either mono, stereo, or 3D. Participants wore eye tracking glasses during the experiment and their task was to count how many people entered the metro. In the divided attention task, participants had to count people entering 3 doors of the metro. In the selective attention task, participants had to count how many people entered the middle door alone. It was found that sound spatialization did not affect the divided attention task. But in the selective attention task participants counted less visual events with 3D sound. In that condition, the number of eye fixations and time spent in the visual area of interest were smaller. It is hypothesized that, in the case of divided attention, the attention is already disengaged and fluctuating, which could explain why sound did not have any additional effect. In the selective attention task, participants must remain concentrated in only one visual area and competing well-spatialized sounds in peripheral areas might have a negative impact. These results should be taken into consideration when designing sound spatialization algorithms and soundtracks

Treatment with Soluble Activin Type IIB Receptor Ameliorates Ovariectomy-Induced Bone Loss and Fat Gain in Mice

Introduction In postmenopausal osteoporosis, hormonal changes lead to increased bone turnover and metabolic alterations including increased fat mass and insulin resistance. Activin type IIB receptors bind several growth factors of the TGF-beta superfamily and have been demonstrated to increase muscle and bone mass. We hypothesized that ActRIIB-Fc treatment could improve bone and muscle mass, inhibit fat accumulation, and restore metabolic alterations in an ovariectomy (OVX) model of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Materials and Methods Female C57Bl/6 N mice were subjected to SHAM or OVX procedures and received intraperitoneal injections of either PBS or ActRIIB-Fc (5 mg/kg) once weekly for 7 weeks. Glucose and insulin tolerance tests (GTT and ITT, respectively) were performed at 7 and 8 weeks, respectively. Bone samples were analyzed with micro-computed tomography imaging, histomorphometry, and quantitative RT-PCR. Results Bone mass decreased in OVX PBS mice compared to the SHAM PBS group but ActRIIB-Fc was able to prevent these changes as shown by mu CT and histological analyses. This was due to decreased osteoclast numbers and function demonstrated by histomorphometric and qRT-PCR analyses. OVX induced adipocyte hypertrophy that was rescued by ActRIIB-Fc, which also decreased systemic adipose tissue accumulation. OVX itself did not affect glucose levels in GTT but ActRIIB-Fc treatment resulted in impaired glucose clearance in both SHAM and OVX groups. OVX induced mild insulin resistance in ITT but ActRIIB-Fc treatment did not affect this. Conclusion Our results reinforce the potency of ActRIIB-Fc as a bone-enhancing agent but also bring new insight into the metabolic effects of ActRIIB-Fc in normal and OVX mice.Peer reviewe

Audiovisual Database with 360 Video and Higher-Order Ambisonics Audio for Perception, Cognition, Behavior, and QoE Evaluation Research

Research into multi-modal perception, human cognition, behavior, and attention can benefit from high-fidelity content that may recreate real-life-like scenes when rendered on head-mounted displays. Moreover, aspects of audiovisual perception, cognitive processes, and behavior may complement questionnaire-based Quality of Experience (QoE) evaluation of interactive virtual environments. Currently, there is a lack of high-quality open-source audiovisual databases that can be used to evaluate such aspects or systems capable of reproducing high-quality content. With this paper, we provide a publicly available audiovisual database consisting of twelve scenes capturing real-life nature and urban environments with a video resolution of 7680x3840 at 60 frames-per-second and with 4th-order Ambisonics audio. These 360 video sequences, with an average duration of 60 seconds, represent real-life settings for systematically evaluating various dimensions of uni-/multi-modal perception, cognition, behavior, and QoE. The paper provides details of the scene requirements, recording approach, and scene descriptions. The database provides high-quality reference material with a balanced focus on auditory and visual sensory information. The database will be continuously updated with additional scenes and further metadata such as human ratings and saliency information.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted and presented at the 2022 14th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX). Database is publicly accessible at https://qoevave.github.io/database

Categorization of Natural Dynamic Audiovisual Scenes

Peer reviewe

Soluble activin type IIB receptor improves fracture healing in a closed tibial fracture mouse model

Fractures still present a significant burden to patients due to pain and periods of unproductivity. Numerous growth factors have been identified to regulate bone remodeling. However, to date, only the bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are used to enhance fracture healing in clinical settings. Activins are pleiotropic growth factors belonging to the TGF-beta superfamily. We and others have recently shown that treatment with recombinant fusion proteins of activin receptors greatly increases bone mass in different animal models by trapping activins and other ligands thus inhibiting their signaling pathways. However, their effects on fracture healing are less known. Twelve-week old male C57Bl mice were subjected to a standardized, closed tibial fracture model. Animals were divided into control and treatment groups and were administered either PBS control or a soluble activin type IIB receptor (ActRIIB-Fc) intraperitoneally once a week for a duration of two or four weeks. There were no significant differences between the groups at two weeks but we observed a significant increase in callus mineralization in ActRIIB-Fc-treated animals by microcomputed tomography imaging at four weeks. Bone volume per tissue volume was 60%, trabecular number 55% and bone mineral density 60% higher in the 4-week calluses of the ActRIIB-Fc-treated mice (p<0.05 in all). Biomechanical strength of 4-week calluses was also significantly improved by ActRIIBFc treatment as stiffness increased by 64% and maximum force by 45% (p<0.05) compared to the PBS-injected controls. These results demonstrate that ActRIIB-Fc treatment significantly improves healing of closed long bone fractures. Our findings support the previous reports of activin receptors increasing bone mass but also demonstrate a novel approach for using ActRIIB-Fc to enhance fracture healing.Peer reviewe

Towards the Perception of Sound Source Directivity Inside Six-Degrees-of-Freedom Virtual Reality

Sound source directivity is a measure of the distribution of sound, propagating from a source object. It is an essential component of how we perceive acoustic environments, interactions and events. For six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DoF) virtual reality (VR), the combination of binaural audio and complete freedom of movement introduces new influencing elements into how we perceive source directivity. This preliminary study aims to explore if factors attributed to 6- DoF VR have an impact on the way we perceive changes of simple sound source directivity. The study is divided into two parts. Part I comprises of a control experiment in a non-VR monaural listening environment. The task is to ascertain difference limen between reference and test signals using a method of adjustment test. Based on the findings in Part I, Part II implements maximum attenuation thresholds on the same sound source directivity patterns using the same stimuli in 6-DoF VR. Results indicate that for critical steady-state signals, factors introduced by 6-DoF VR potentially mask our ability to detect loudness differences. Further analysis of the behavioral data acquired during Part II provides more insight into how subjects assess sound source directivity in 6-DoF VR

Enhanced Immersion for Binaural Audio Reproduction of Ambisonics in Six-Degrees-of-Freedom: The Effect of Added Distance Information

The immersion of the user is of key interest in the reproduction of acoustic scenes in virtual reality. It is enhanced when movement is possible in six degrees-of-freedom, i.e., three rotational plus three translational degrees. Further enhancement of immersion can be achieved when the user is not only able to move between distant sound sources, but can also move towards and behind close sources. In this paper, we employ a reproduction method for Ambisonics recordings from a single position that uses meta information on the distance of the sound sources in the recorded acoustic scene. A subjective study investigates the benefit of said distance information. Different spatial audio reproduction methods are compared with a multi-stimulus test. Two synthetic scenes are contrasted, one with close sources the user can walk around, and one with far away sources that can not be reached. We found that for close or distant sources, loudness changing with the distance enhances the experience. In case of close sources, the use of correct distance information was found to be important

Treatment with Soluble Activin Type IIB Receptor Ameliorates Ovariectomy-Induced Bone Loss and Fat Gain in Mice

IntroductionIn postmenopausal osteoporosis, hormonal changes lead to increased bone turnover and metabolic alterations including increased fat mass and insulin resistance. Activin type IIB receptors bind several growth factors of the TGF-beta superfamily and have been demonstrated to increase muscle and bone mass. We hypothesized that ActRIIB-Fc treatment could improve bone and muscle mass, inhibit fat accumulation, and restore metabolic alterations in an ovariectomy (OVX) model of postmenopausal osteoporosis.Materials and MethodsFemale C57Bl/6 N mice were subjected to SHAM or OVX procedures and received intraperitoneal injections of either PBS or ActRIIB-Fc (5 mg/kg) once weekly for 7 weeks. Glucose and insulin tolerance tests (GTT and ITT, respectively) were performed at 7 and 8 weeks, respectively. Bone samples were analyzed with micro-computed tomography imaging, histomorphometry, and quantitative RT-PCR.ResultsBone mass decreased in OVX PBS mice compared to the SHAM PBS group but ActRIIB-Fc was able to prevent these changes as shown by mu CT and histological analyses. This was due to decreased osteoclast numbers and function demonstrated by histomorphometric and qRT-PCR analyses. OVX induced adipocyte hypertrophy that was rescued by ActRIIB-Fc, which also decreased systemic adipose tissue accumulation. OVX itself did not affect glucose levels in GTT but ActRIIB-Fc treatment resulted in impaired glucose clearance in both SHAM and OVX groups. OVX induced mild insulin resistance in ITT but ActRIIB-Fc treatment did not affect this.ConclusionOur results reinforce the potency of ActRIIB-Fc as a bone-enhancing agent but also bring new insight into the metabolic effects of ActRIIB-Fc in normal and OVX mice.</p