Auditory Control Mechanism

A mathematical psychophysiological theory is developed for loudness level and loudness as a function of tonal duration. It is based on the psychophysical as well as neurophysiological evidences that the apparent temporal summation of acoustic energy are the results of neural summation at a higher level of the auditory system and of inhibitory interaction and feedback in the peripheral auditory system.The results as follows:1) Temporal decay of neural activity due to inhibitory feedback can counteract the effect of nonlinearity in the peripheral system to produce psychoacoustic characteristics that act as if it were an acoustic energy integrator.2) At the same time, inhibitory feedback substantially reduces the effect of temporal summation on loudness.3) Psychoacoustic characteristics of equal loudness summation as a function of tonal duration parallel these of a linear temporal integrator of acoustic energy can understand that is due to the effect of inhibitory feedback in the peripheral auditory system.