Acoustic Hearing Can Interfere With Single-Sided Deafness Cochlear-Implant Speech Perception.

OBJECTIVES: Cochlear implants (CIs) restore some spatial advantages for speech understanding in noise to individuals with single-sided deafness (SSD). In addition to a head-shadow advantage when the CI ear has a better signal-to-noise ratio, a CI can also provide a binaural advantage in certain situations, facilitating the perceptual separation of spatially separated concurrent voices. While some bilateral-CI listeners show a similar binaural advantage, bilateral-CI listeners with relatively large asymmetries in monaural speech understanding can instead experience contralateral speech interference. Based on the interference previously observed for asymmetric bilateral-CI listeners, this study tested the hypothesis that in a multiple-talker situation, the acoustic ear would interfere with rather than improve CI speech understanding for SSD-CI listeners. DESIGN: Experiment 1 measured CI-ear speech understanding in the presence of competing speech or noise for 13 SSD-CI listeners. Target speech from the closed-set coordinate response-measure corpus was presented to the CI ear along with one same-gender competing talker or stationary noise at target-to-masker ratios between -8 and 20 dB. The acoustic ear was presented with silence (monaural condition) or with a copy of the competing speech or noise (bilateral condition). Experiment 2 tested a subset of 6 listeners in the reverse configuration for which SSD-CI listeners have previously shown a binaural benefit (target and competing speech presented to the acoustic ear; silence or competing speech presented to the CI ear). Experiment 3 examined the possible influence of a methodological difference between experiments 1 and 2: whether the competing talker spoke keywords that were inside or outside the response set. For each experiment, the data were analyzed using repeated-measures logistic regression. For experiment 1, a correlation analysis compared the difference between bilateral and monaural speech-understanding scores to several listener-specific factors: speech understanding in the CI ear, preimplantation duration of deafness, duration of CI experience, ear of deafness (left/right), acoustic-ear audiometric thresholds, and listener age. RESULTS: In experiment 1, presenting a copy of the competing speech to the acoustic ear reduced CI speech-understanding scores for target-to-masker ratios ≥4 dB. This interference effect was limited to competing-speech conditions and was not observed for a noise masker. There was dramatic intersubject variability in the magnitude of the interference (range: 1 to 43 rationalized arcsine units), which was found to be significantly correlated with listener age. The interference effect contrasted sharply with the reverse configuration (experiment 2), whereby presenting a copy of the competing speech to the contralateral CI ear significantly improved performance relative to monaural acoustic-ear performance. Keyword condition (experiment 3) did not influence the observed pattern of interference. CONCLUSIONS: Most SSD-CI listeners experienced interference when they attended to the CI ear and competing speech was added to the acoustic ear, although there was a large amount of intersubject variability in the magnitude of the effect, with older listeners particularly susceptible to interference. While further research is needed to investigate these effects under free-field listening conditions, these results suggest that for certain spatial configurations in a multiple-talker situation, contralateral speech interference could reduce the benefit that an SSD-CI otherwise provides.

The fluctuating masker benefit for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners with equal audibility at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio.

Normal-hearing (NH) listeners can extract and integrate speech fragments from momentary dips in the level of a fluctuating masker, yielding a fluctuating-masker benefit (FMB) for speech understanding relative to a stationary-noise masker. Hearing-impaired (HI) listeners generally show less FMB, suggesting a dip-listening deficit attributable to suprathreshold spectral or temporal distortion. However, reduced FMB might instead result from different test signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), reduced absolute audibility of otherwise unmasked speech segments, or age differences. This study examined the FMB for nine age-matched NH-HI listener pairs, while simultaneously equalizing audibility, SNR, and percentage-correct performance in stationary noise. Nonsense syllables were masked by stationary noise, 4- or 32-Hz sinusoidally amplitude-modulated noise (SAMN), or an opposite-gender interfering talker. Stationary-noise performance was equalized by adjusting the response-set size. Audibility was equalized by removing stimulus components falling below the HI absolute threshold. HI listeners showed a clear 4.5-dB reduction in FMB for 32-Hz SAMN, a similar FMB to NH listeners for 4-Hz SAMN, and a non-significant trend toward a 2-dB reduction in FMB for an interfering talker. These results suggest that HI listeners do not exhibit a general dip-listening deficit for all fluctuating maskers, but rather a specific temporal-resolution deficit affecting performance for high-rate modulated maskers.

Role of intracranial cavities in avian directional hearing.

Whereas it is clear from anatomical studies that all birds have complex interaural canals connecting their middle ears, the effect of interaural coupling on directional hearing has been disputed. A reason for conflicting results in earlier studies may have been that the function of the tympanic ear and hence of the interaural coupling is sensitive to variations in the intracranial air pressure. In awake birds, the middle ears and connected cavities are vented actively through the pharyngotympanic tube. This venting reflex seems to be suppressed in anesthetized birds, leading to increasingly lower pressure in the interaural cavities, stiffening the eardrums, and displacing them medially. This causes the sensitivity, as well as the interaural coupling, to drop. Conversely, when the middle ears are properly vented, robust directional eardrum responses, most likely caused by internal coupling, have been reported. The anatomical basis of this coupling is the 'interaural canal,' which turns out to be a highly complex canal and cavity system, which we describe for the zebra finch. Surprisingly, given the complexity of the interaural canals, simple models of pipe-coupled middle ears fit the eardrum directionality data quite well, but future models taking the complex anatomy into consideration should be developed.

Lingual articulation in songbirds.

Lingual articulation in humans is one of the primary means of vocal tract resonance filtering that produces the characteristic vowel formants of speech. In songbirds, the function of the tongue in song has not been thoroughly examined, although recent research has identified the oropharyngeal-esophageal cavity as a resonance filter that is actively tuned to the frequency of the song. In northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis), the volume of this cavity is inversely proportional to the frequency of the song above 2 kHz. However, cardinal song extends below this range, leaving the question of whether and how the vocal tract is tracking these low frequencies. We investigated the possible role of the tongue in vocal tract filtering using X-ray cineradiography of northern cardinals. Below 2 kHz, there was prominent tongue elevation in which the tip of the tongue was raised until it seemed to touch the palate. These results suggest that tongue elevation lowers the resonance frequency below 2 kHz by reducing the area of the passage from the oral cavity into the beak. This is consistent with a computational model of the songbird vocal tract in which resonance frequencies are actively adjusted by both changing the volume of the oropharyngeal-esophageal cavity and constricting the opening into the beak.

Light-dependent orientation responses in animals can be explained by a model of compass cue integration.

The magnetic compass sense of animals is currently thought to be based on light-dependent processes like the proposed radical pair mechanism. In accordance, many animals show orientation responses that depend on light. However, the orientation responses depend on the wavelength and irradiance of monochromatic light in rather complex ways that cannot be explained directly by the radical pair mechanism. Here, a radically different model is presented that can explain a vast majority of the complex observed light-dependent responses. The model put forward an integration process consisting of simple lateral inhibition between a normal functioning, light-independent magnetic compass (e.g. magnetite based) and a vision based skylight color gradient compass that misperceives compass cues in monochromatic light. Integration of the misperceived color compass cue and the normal magnetic compass not only explains most of the categorically different light-dependent orientation responses, but also shows a surprisingly good fit to how well the animals are oriented (r-values) under light of different wavelength and irradiance. The model parsimoniously suggests the existence of a single magnetic sense in birds (probably based on magnetic crystals).

Measurements and predictions of hooded crow (Corvus corone cornix) call propagation over open field habitats.

In a study of hooded crow communication over open fields an excellent correspondence is found between the attenuation spectra predicted by a "turbulence-modified ground effect plus atmospheric absorption" model, and crow call attenuation data. Sound propagation predictions and background noise measurements are used to predict an optimal frequency range for communication ("sound communication window") from an average of crow call spectra predicted for every possible combination of the sender/receiver separations 300, 600, 900, and 1200 m and heights 3,6,9 m thereby creating a matrix assumed relevant to crow interterritorial communication. These predictions indicate an optimal frequency range for sound communication between 500 Hz and 2 kHz. Since this corresponds to the frequency range in which crow calls have their main energy and crow hearing in noise is particularly sensitive, it suggests a specific adaptation to the ground effect. Sound propagation predictions, together with background noise measurements and hearing data, are used to estimate the radius of the hooded crow active space. This is found to be roughly 1 km in moderately windy conditions. It is concluded that the propagation modeling of the sort introduced here could be used for assessing the impact of human noise on animal communication.

Comodulation detection differences in the hooded crow (Corvus corone cornix), with direct comparison to human subjects.

Envelope modulations have been shown important in determining the effectiveness of masking noises. For example, the threshold for detecting a signal flanked by maskers is lower if the maskers and the signal are modulated with different envelopes, rather than the same envelope (comodulation). This threshold change is called the comodulation detection difference (CDD). CDDs were studied in two wild-caught hooded crows, using a 1.5 kHz signal and two maskers at 0.9 and 2.1 kHz, presented at an overall level of 55 dB SPL (re 20 microPa). For direct comparison with human psychophysics, three human subjects were tested in the same setup. CDDs averaged 15 dB for the two crow subjects and 11 dB for the human subjects. The species difference between average CDDs was insignificant. The significance of the CDD effect in a natural setting is discussed.