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Blind football players use head movements to accurately identify sound location when trapping a ball. Accurate sound localization is likely important for motor learning of ball trapping in blind football. However, whether head movements affect the acquisition of ball-trapping skills remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined the effect of head movements on skill acquisition during ball trapping. Overall, 20 sighted male college students were recruited and assigned to one of the following two groups: the conventional training group, where they were instructed to move leftward and rightward to align their body with the ball’s trajectory, and the head-movement-focused group, where they were instructed to follow the ball with their faces until the ball touched their feet, in addition to the conventional training instructions. Both groups underwent a 2-day training for ball trapping according to the specific instructions. The head-movement-focused group showed a decrease in errors in ball trapping at near distances and with larger downward head rotations in the sagittal plane compared to the conventional training group, indicating that during the skill acquisition training for ball trapping, the sound source can be localized more accurately using larger head rotations toward the ball. These results may help beginner-level players acquire better precision in their movements while playing blind football.

In this article, we introduce a biomimetic audiomorphic device that captures the neurobiological architecture and computational map inside the auditory cortex of barn owl known for its exceptional hunting ability in complete darkness using auditory cues. The device consists of multiple split-gates with nanogaps on a semiconducting MoS 2 channel connected to the source/drain contacts for imitating the spatial map of coincidence detector neurons and tunable RC circuits for imitating the interaural time delay neurons following the Jeffress model of sound localization. Furthermore, we use global back-gating capability to demonstrate neuroplasticity to capture behavioral and/or adaptation related changes in the barn owl. Finally, the virtual source model for current transport is combined with finite element COMSOL multiphysics simulations to explain and project the performance of the biomimetic audiomorphic device. We find that the precision of the biomimetic device can supersede the barn owl by orders of magnitude. Biomimetic audiomorphic functionalities can be implemented in solid-state devices including 2D materials. Here, the authors fabricate a device based on multiple split gates with nano-gaps on a single semiconducting MoS 2 channel that captures the neurobiological architecture and computational map inside the auditory cortex of barn owl.

Intense low-frequency (LF) sound exposure transiently alters hearing thresholds and other markers of cochlear sensitivity, and for these changes the term ‘Bounce phenomenon’ (BP) has been coined. Under the BP, hearing thresholds slowly oscillate for several minutes involving both stages of hyper- and hyposensitivity and it is reasonable to assume that the perception of sounds at levels well above threshold will also be affected. Here, we evaluated the effect of the BP on auditory lateralisation in healthy human subjects. Sound lateralisation crucially depends on the processing of either interaural level- or time differences (ILDs and ITDs, respectively), depending on the spectral content of the sound. The ILD needed to perceive a virtual sound source in the middle of the head was tracked across time. Measurements were carried out without and with a previous exposure to an intense LF-sound in the left ear, to elicit the BP. In 65% of the recordings, significant time-variant deviations from the perceived midline were observed after cessation of the LF-sound. In other words, a binaural stimulus perceived in the middle moved perceptually to the side and often back to the middle after presentation of the intense LF-sound. This means that intense LF-sound exposure can lead to a biasing of ILD-based sound localisation.

The “cocktail party problem” requires us to discern individual sound sources from mixtures of sources. The brain must use knowledge of natural sound regularities for this purpose. One much-discussed regularity is the tendency for frequencies to be harmonically related (integer multiples of a fundamental frequency). To test the role of harmonicity in real-world sound segregation, we developed speech analysis/synthesis tools to perturb the carrier frequencies of speech, disrupting harmonic frequency relations while maintaining the spectrotemporal envelope that determines phonemic content. We find that violations of harmonicity cause individual frequencies of speech to segregate from each other, impair the intelligibility of concurrent utterances despite leaving intelligibility of single utterances intact, and cause listeners to lose track of target talkers. However, additional segregation deficits result from replacing harmonic frequencies with noise (simulating whispering), suggesting additional grouping cues enabled by voiced speech excitation. Our results demonstrate acoustic grouping cues in real-world sound segregation. Harmonicity is associated with a single sound source and may be a useful cue with which to segregate the speech of multiple talkers. Here the authors introduce a method for perturbing the constituent frequencies of speech and show that violating harmonicity degrades intelligibility of speech mixtures.

The integration of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs is fundamental to neuronal processing. In the mammalian auditory brainstem, neurons compare excitatory and inhibitory inputs from the ipsilateral and contralateral ear, respectively, for sound localization. However, the temporal precision and functional roles of inhibition in this integration process are unclear. Here, we demonstrate by in vivo recordings from the lateral superior olive (LSO) that inhibition controls spiking with microsecond precision throughout high frequency click trains. Depending on the relative timing of excitation and inhibition, neuronal spike probability is either suppressed or—unexpectedly—facilitated. In vitro conductance-clamp LSO recordings establish that a reduction in the voltage threshold for spike initiation due to a prior hyperpolarization results in post-inhibitory facilitation of otherwise sub-threshold synaptic events. Thus, microsecond-precise differences in the arrival of inhibition relative to excitation can facilitate spiking in the LSO, thereby promoting spatial sensitivity during the processing of faint sounds. Binaural cue processing in auditory brainstem relies on the precise temporal relationship between excitatory and inhibitory inputs. Here the authors provide direct evidence that sub-millisecond precise inhibition can tune sensitivity to input processing in the lateral superior olive via post inhibitory facilitation.

Neurons encode information in the timing of their spikes in addition to their firing rates. Spike timing is particularly precise in the auditory nerve, where action potentials phase lock to sound with sub-millisecond precision, but its behavioral relevance remains uncertain. We optimized machine learning models to perform real-world hearing tasks with simulated cochlear input, assessing the precision of auditory nerve spike timing needed to reproduce human behavior. Models with high-fidelity phase locking exhibited more human-like sound localization and speech perception than models without, consistent with an essential role in human hearing. However, the temporal precision needed to reproduce human-like behavior varied across tasks, as did the precision that benefited real-world task performance. These effects suggest that perceptual domains incorporate phase locking to different extents depending on the demands of real-world hearing. The results illustrate how optimizing models for realistic tasks can clarify the role of candidate neural codes in perception. Ears encode sound with precisely timed spikes, but the perceptual role of this temporal coding remains uncertain. Here, the authors report that high-fidelity temporal coding is necessary for neural network models to reproduce human-like auditory behavior.

Locating honking vehicles is crucial for controlling arbitrary honking and reducing environmental noise. However, traditional methods for honking vehicle localization, which utilize sound source localization technology, suffer from inaccuracies and limited detection range due to the multipath effects of sound propagation and environmental noise interference. To address these challenges, an auditory-visual cooperative perception (AVCP) method for honking vehicle localization is proposed, and a detailed workflow of this method is presented. In the AVCP method workflow, the Emphasized Channel Attention, Propagation, and Aggregation in Time-Delay Neural Network (ECAPA-TDNN) is used to recognize honking vehicle models from captured audio signals, as different vehicle models exhibit distinct horn sound characteristics. Subsequently, YOLO v9 is employed to detect vehicles and recognize their corresponding models in the images captured by the camera. Thus, among the vehicles detected and identified using YOLO v9, the honking vehicle is determined as the one whose model matches the vehicle model recognized by ECAPA-TDNN. Additionally, experiments with simulated and public datasets were conducted to evaluate the performance of the AVCP method for honking vehicle localization. The experimental results show that the AVCP method is less susceptible to environmental noise and can more accurately identify and locate vehicles from greater distances compared to traditional methods based on sound source localization technology.

Understanding the factors that determine if a person can successfully learn a novel sensory skill is essential for understanding how the brain adapts to change, and for providing rehabilitative support for people with sensory loss. We report a training study investigating the effects of blindness and age on the learning of a complex auditory skill: click-based echolocation. Blind and sighted participants of various ages (21–79 yrs; median blind: 45 yrs; median sighted: 26 yrs) trained in 20 sessions over the course of 10 weeks in various practical and virtual navigation tasks. Blind participants also took part in a 3-month follow up survey assessing the effects of the training on their daily life. We found that both sighted and blind people improved considerably on all measures, and in some cases performed comparatively to expert echolocators at the end of training. Somewhat surprisingly, sighted people performed better than those who were blind in some cases, although our analyses suggest that this might be better explained by the younger age (or superior binaural hearing) of the sighted group. Importantly, however, neither age nor blindness was a limiting factor in participants’ rate of learning (i.e. their difference in performance from the first to the final session) or in their ability to apply their echolocation skills to novel, untrained tasks. Furthermore, in the follow up survey, all participants who were blind reported improved mobility, and 83% reported better independence and wellbeing. Overall, our results suggest that the ability to learn click-based echolocation is not strongly limited by age or level of vision. This has positive implications for the rehabilitation of people with vision loss or in the early stages of progressive vision loss.

While vision-based localization techniques have been widely studied for small autonomous unmanned vehicles (SAUVs), sound-source localization capabilities have not been fully enabled for SAUVs. This paper presents two novel approaches for SAUVs to perform three-dimensional (3D) multi-sound-sources localization (MSSL) using only the inter-channel time difference (ICTD) signal generated by a self-rotating bi-microphone array. The proposed two approaches are based on two machine learning techniques viz., Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) and Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) algorithms, respectively, whose performances were tested and compared in both simulations and experiments. The results show that both approaches are capable of correctly identifying the number of sound sources along with their 3D orientations in a reverberant environment.

This study directly compared the performance of a contralateral routing of signal (CROS)/bilateral routing of signal (BiCROS) and a soft-band bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) in patients with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and assessed the relationship between hearing aid benefits and personal factors. Participants with unilateral SNHL were prospectively enrolled in the study and were tested under the following three conditions: unaided, with CROS/BiCROS, and with soft-band BAHA. Sound localization, consonant, hearing in noise, and psychoacoustic tests were performed. Pseudobinaural benefits (e.g., squelch, summation, and head shadow effect) were obtained in both the CROS/BiCROS and soft-band BAHA conditions and compared to the unaided condition. Sound localization ability was not improved in either the CROS/BiCROS condition or soft-band BAHA condition. Rather, sound localization ability was significantly decreased in the CROS/BiCROS setting. A CROS/BiCROS hearing aid and a soft-band BAHA provided additional benefit for speech-in-noise perception when target speech was directed to the impaired ear side. The CROS/BiCROS hearing aid was superior to the soft-band BAHA one in decreasing the head shadow effect, but it appeared to have a negative effect when the noise was delivered to the better ear. The positive and negative effects of CROS/BiCROS for localization and speech perception were significantly correlated with personal factors such as age, hearing threshold in the better ear, and unaided psychoacoustic performances. Despite the lack of device acclimatization, we believe that this study provides counseling information for hearing aid clinics to use in the context of patients with unilateral SNHL.