Effect of Monaural Versus Binaural Hearing AID Treatment
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On the basis of a questionnaire—for assessing the social hearing handicap—the effect of monaural and binaural hearing aid treatment was related to: (1) routine in using the hearing aid, (2) diagnosis, (3) hearing loss, and (4) patient's age. In comparable groups treated monaurally and binaurally a greater reduction of the social hearing handicap was obtained in all cases within the groups wearing binaural hearing aids.Keywords:
Monaural
Hearing aid
Several investigators have shown that monaural localization of sound sources on the median plane (MP) is inferior to binaural MP localization, causing speculation that two ears are necessary for MP localization, and further, that two ears may allow binaural processing of asymmetrical pinna filtering making localization of unfamiliar sounds possible. The purpose of the two experiments reported in this paper is (1) to test the hypothesis that binaural subjects can localize unfamiliar sounds more accurately than monaural subjects, and (2) to evaluate monaural localization accuracy after training. The results show that binaural and monaural subjects have similar difficulty in localizing unfamiliar sounds and show that monaural subjects can easily be trained to localize as well as they normally localize with two ears. The results indicate MP localization is fundamentally a monaural process.
Monaural
Median plane
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Monaural
Superior olivary complex
Interaural time difference
Auditory brainstem response
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It has been reported that monaural subjects can localize the sound image correctly [L.B.W. Jongkees, Acta OtoLaryngologica 465 (1957)]. It is supposed that training is an important factor in localization. The purpose of this investigation is to determine the effect of training on localization in the median plane. When normally binaural subjects are made monaural by occluding one of the ears, the localization errors increase at the beginning and decrease after temporary training. In this case, subjects can localize the sound image by discriminating the timbre according to the head-related transfer function depending on the direction. Also, it is found that binaural and permanently monaural subjects can localize the sound image correctly even at the first test. It is considered that monaural subjects have the possibility of correct sound localization as the same process of language recognition, and that the localization of binaural subjects is caused by a resultant from long training by the small interaural difference in the median plane as an easier process.
Monaural
Median plane
Timbre
Interaural time difference
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Early studies have shown that the localization of a sound source in the vertical plane can be accomplished with only a single ear, thus assumed the localization mechanism to be based on monaural cues. Such cues are induced by the pinna and consist of notches and peaks in the perceived spectrum which vary systematically with the elevation of sound sources. These processes pose several problems to the auditory system like identifying and extracting spectral cues on a neural level, as well as, distinguishing pinna induced peaks and notches from features already present in the source spectrum. Interestingly, at the stage of elevation estimate binaural information from both ears is already available and it seems plausible that the auditory system takes advantage of this information. Especially, since such a binaural integration can improve the localization performance dramatically as we demonstrate in the current study. For that, we first introduce a computational model architecture that takes advantage of binaural signal integration to localize sound sources in the median plane. Model performance is tested under different conditions which reveal that localization of monaural, as well as binaural inputs is best when the model is trained with binaural inputs. Furthermore, modeling results lead to the hypothesis that sound type specific prior information is taken into account to further improve localization quality. This deduced hypothesis about vertical sound source localization is confirmed in a behavioral experiment. Based on these results, we propose that elevation estimation of sound sources is facilitated by an early binaural signal integration and can incorporate sound type specific prior information for higher accuracy.
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SIGNAL (programming language)
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Previous studies on the advantages of binaural hearing have long been focused on sound localization and spatial stream segregation. The binaural advantages have also been observed in speech perception in reverberation. Both human speech and animal vocalizations contain temporal features that are critical for speech perception and animal communication. However, whether there are binaural advantages for sound temporal information processing in the central auditory system has not been elucidated. Gap detection threshold (GDT), the ability to detect the shortest silent interval in a sound, has been widely used to measure the auditory temporal resolution. In the present study, we determined GDTs of rat inferior collicular neurons under both monaural and binaural hearing conditions. We found that the majority of the inferior collicular neurons in adult rats exhibited binaural advantages in gap detection, i.e., better neural gap detection ability in binaural hearing conditions compared to monaural hearing condition. However, this binaural advantage in sound temporal information processing was not significant in the inferior collicular neurons of P14-21 and P22-30 rats. Additionally, we also observed age-related changes in neural temporal acuity in the rat inferior colliculus. These results demonstrate a new advantage of binaural hearing (i.e., binaural advantage in temporal processing) in the central auditory system in addition to sound localization and spatial stream segregation.
Monaural
Auditory System
Auditory perception
Interaural time difference
Psychoacoustics
Superior olivary complex
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Early studies have shown that the localization of a sound source in the vertical plane can be accomplished with only a single ear, thus assumed the localization mechanism to be based on monaural cues. Such cues are induced by the pinna and consist of notches and peaks in the perceived spectrum which vary systematically with the elevation of sound sources. These processes pose several problems to the auditory system like identifying and extracting spectral cues on a neural level, as well as, distinguishing pinna induced peaks and notches from features already present in the source spectrum. Interestingly, at the stage of elevation estimate binaural information from both ears is already available and it seems plausible that the auditory system takes advantage of this information. Especially, since such a binaural integration can improve the localization performance dramatically as we demonstrate in the current study. For that, we first introduce a computational model architecture that takes advantage of binaural signal integration to localize sound sources in the median plane. Model performance is tested under different conditions which reveal that localization of monaural, as well as binaural inputs is best when the model is trained with binaural inputs. Furthermore, modeling results lead to the hypothesis that sound type specific prior information is taken into account to further improve localization quality. This deduced hypothesis about vertical sound source localization is confirmed in a behavioral experiment. Based on these results, we propose that elevation estimation of sound sources is facilitated by an early binaural signal integration and can incorporate sound type specific prior information for higher accuracy.
Monaural
SIGNAL (programming language)
Median plane
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Early studies have shown that the localization of a sound source in the vertical plane can be accomplished with only a single ear, thus assumed the localization to be based on monaural cues. Such cues are induced by the pinna and consist of notches and peaks in the perceived spectrum which vary systematically with the elevation of sound sources. This process poses several problems to the auditory system like identifying and extracting spectral cues on a neural level, as well as, distinguishing pinna induced peaks and notches from features already present in the source spectrum.
Interestingly, at the stage of elevation estimate binaural information from both ears is already available and it seems plausible that the auditory system takes advantage of this information. Especially, since such a binaural integration can improve the localization performance dramatically as we demonstrate in this study with a computational model of binaural signal integration for sound source localization in the vertical plane.
In line with previous findings of vertical localization, modeling results show that the auditory system can perform monaural as well as binaural sound source localization. This task is facilitated by a previously learned map of elevation spectra based on binaural signals. Binaural localization is by far more accurate than monaural localization, however, when prior information about the perceived sound is integrated localization performance is restored. Thus, we propose that elevation estimation of sound sources is facilitated by an early binaural signal integration and can incorporate sound type specific prior information for higher accuracy.
Monaural
SIGNAL (programming language)
Median plane
Horizontal plane
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In order to evaluate the callosal involvement in sound localization, the present study examined the response accuracy of acallosal and early callosotomized subjects to monaural and binaural auditory targets presented in three‐dimensional space. In these subjects, bilateral localization cues, such as interaural time and level differences, are integrated at the cortical and subcortical levels without the additional support of the callosal commissure. Because acallosal and early‐callosotomized subjects have developed with this reduced source of binaural activation of cortical cells, they might have perfected their ability to use monaural sound localization cues. This hypothesis was tested by assessing localization performance under both binaural and monaural listening conditions. Five subjects with callosal agenesis, one callosotomized subject operated early in life and 19 control subjects were asked to localize broad‐band noise bursts (BBNBs) of fixed intensity in the horizontal plane in an anechoic chamber. BBNBs were delivered through randomly selected loudspeakers. Two conditions were tested: (i) localization of a stationary sound source; and (ii) localization of a moving sound source. Listeners had to report the apparent stimulus location by pointing to its perceived position on a graduated perimeter. The results indicated that the acallosal subjects were less accurate than controls, but only in the binaural moving sound condition. More interestingly, in the monaural testing conditions, some of the acallosal subjects and the early‐callosotomized subject performed significantly better than control subjects. This suggests that, because of the absence of the corpus callosum, these subjects compensate for their reduced access to cortically determined binaural cues by making more efficient use of monaural cues.
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Anterior commissure
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Localization of simultaneous sound sources in natural environments with only two microphones is a challenging problem. Reverberation degrades performance of localization based exclusively on directional cues. We present an approach that integrates monaural and binaural analysis to improve localization of multiple speech sources in noisy and reverberant environments. Our approach incorporates pitch-based monaural processing to perform simultaneous organization of voiced speech. We propose a probabilistic framework to jointly perform localization and sequential organization using binaural cues. We evaluate our system on multi-source speech mixtures in the presence of reverberation and diffuse noise and compare it to two localization approaches that do not incorporate monaural cues. Results indicate that our system can accurately localize multiple sources in very challenging conditions.
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Monaural
Superior olivary complex
Interaural time difference
Auditory brainstem response
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