Effects Of Interaural Time Differences Research Articles

Normative Study of the Binaural Interaction Component of the Human Auditory Brainstem Response as a Function of Interaural Time Differences.

The binaural interaction component (BIC) of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) is obtained by subtracting the sum of the monaural right and left ear ABRs from the binaurally evoked ABR. The result is a small but prominent negative peak (herein called "DN1"), indicating a smaller binaural than summed ABR, which occurs around the latency of wave V or its roll-off slope. The BIC has been proposed to have diagnostic value as a biomarker of binaural processing abilities; however, there have been conflicting reports regarding the reliability of BIC measures in human subjects. The objectives of the current study were to: (1) examine prevalence of BIC across a large group of normal-hearing young adults; (2) determine effects of interaural time differences (ITDs) on BIC; and (3) examine any relationship between BIC and behavioral ITD discrimination acuity. Subjects were 40 normal-hearing adults (20 males and 20 females), aged 21 to 48 years, with no history of otologic or neurologic disorders. Midline ABRs were recorded from electrodes at high forehead (Fz) referenced to the nape of the neck (near the seventh cervical vertebra), with Fpz (low forehead) as the ground. ABRs were also recorded with a conventional earlobe reference for comparison to midline results. Stimuli were 90 dB peSPL biphasic clicks. For BIC measurements, stimuli were presented in a block as interleaved right monaural, left monaural, and binaural stimuli with 2000+ presentations per condition. Four measurements were averaged for a total of 8000+ stimuli per analyzed waveform. BIC was measured for ITD = 0 (simultaneous bilateral) and for ITDs of ±500 and ±750 µs. Subjects separately performed a lateralization task, using the same stimuli, to determine ITD discrimination thresholds. An identifiable BIC DN1 was obtained in 39 of 40 subjects at ITD = 0 µs in at least one of two measurement sessions, but was seen in lesser numbers of subjects in a single session or as ITD increased. BIC was most often seen when a subject was relaxed or sleeping, and less often when they fidgeted or reported neck tension, suggesting myogenic activity as a possible factor in disrupting BIC measurements. Mean BIC latencies systematically increased with increasing ITD, and mean BIC amplitudes tended to decrease. However, across subjects, there was no significant relationship between the amplitude or latency of the BIC and behavioral ITD thresholds. Consistent with previous studies, measurement of the BIC was time consuming and a BIC was sometimes difficult to obtain in awake normal-hearing subjects. The BIC will thus continue to be of limited clinical utility unless stimulus parameters and measurement techniques can be identified that produce a more robust response. Nonetheless, modulation of BIC characteristics by ITD supports the concept that the ABR BIC indexes aspects of binaural brainstem processing and thus may prove useful in selected research applications, e.g. in the examination of populations expected to have aberrant binaural signal processing ability.

Effect of interaural time difference on the respective frequencies within spatially segregated sounds

Effect of interaural time difference on the respective frequencies within spatially segregated sounds

Aging effects on the binaural interaction component of the auditory brainstem response in the Mongolian gerbil: Effects of interaural time and level differences

The effect of interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) on wave 4 of the binaural and summed monaural auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) as well as on the DN1 component of the binaural interaction component (BIC) of the ABR in young and old Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) was investigated. Measurements were made at a fixed sound pressure level (SPL) and a fixed level above visually detected ABR threshold to compensate for individual hearing threshold differences. In both stimulation modes (fixed SPL and fixed level above visually detected ABR threshold) an effect of ITD on the latency and the amplitude of wave 4 as well as of the BIC was observed. With increasing absolute ITD values BIC latencies were increased and amplitudes were decreased. ILD had a much smaller effect on these measures. Old animals showed a reduced amplitude of the DN1 component. This difference was due to a smaller wave 4 in the summed monaural ABRs of old animals compared to young animals whereas wave 4 in the binaural-evoked ABR showed no age-related difference. In old animals the small amplitude of the DN1 component was correlated with small binaural-evoked wave 1 and wave 3 amplitudes. This suggests that the reduced peripheral input affects central binaural processing which is reflected in the BIC.

Effects of phase difference on the binaural perceiving intensity

It is well known fact that human localize the direction of sound source in transverse plane according to interaural time difference in low frequency and interaural level difference on high frequency. In this research, we tested possibility for interaural time difference to be interpreted as interaural level difference when it is perceived by brain. To test the hypothesis, we used sinusoidal wave and commercial music to study the effect of interaural time difference on the perception of loudness. Each sound sample was regulated to have interaural time difference and given to 9 subjects. Subjects were asked to answer which side was louder. For sinusoidal waves, more than 60% of subjects answered side with earlier sound arrival was louder. The effect of interaural time difference on interaural level difference was larger when it interaural time difference was given to lower frequencies. Music samples were regulated with 100 and 500 interaural time difference and 100% of subjects answered side with earlier sound arrival was louder. Results from the experiments imply the possibility for interaural time difference interpretation by interaural level difference on localization of sound sources.

Effects of age and hearing loss on stream segregation based on interaural time differences.

The effect of interaural time differences (ITDs) on obligatory stream segregation for successive tone bursts was investigated for older listeners with normal hearing (ONH) and hearing loss (OHL), by measuring the threshold for detecting a rhythmic irregularity in an otherwise isochronous sequence of interleaved "A" and "B" tones. The A and B tones had equal but opposite ITDs from 0 to 0.5 ms. For some of the ONH listeners, the threshold increased with increasing ITD, but no OHL listener showed an effect of ITD. It is concluded that hearing loss reduces the potency of ITDs in inducing obligatory stream segregation.

Objective and subjective measures of pure-tone stream segregation based on interaural time differences

The effect of interaural time differences (ITDs) on stream segregation for successive tone bursts was investigated. Obligatory stream segregation was inferred from the threshold for detecting a rhythmic irregularity in an otherwise isochronous sequence of interleaved “A” and “B” tones (task 1). Subjective stream segregation was evaluated by requiring listeners to indicate whether they heard one or two streams during presentation of a 30-s long sequence (task 2). The A and B tones had equal but opposite ITDs and had the same or different frequencies of 500 and/or 707 Hz. The ITDs ranged from 0 to 2 ms in study 1, and from 0 to 0.5 ms in study 2. Sensitivity on task 1 was poor in both studies when A and B had different frequencies, and was little affected by ITD. Thresholds for the same-frequency conditions worsened somewhat with increasing ITD up to 0.5 ms and then (for study 1) flattened off. There was a small increase in subjective streaming as the ITD was increased up to 0.5 ms, but little streaming for larger ITDs (study 1). We conclude that ITD, at most, has weak effects in producing obligatory and subjective stream segregation.

Spatial cues alone produce inaccurate sound segregation: The effect of interaural time differences

To clarify the role of spatial cues in sound segregation, this study explored whether interaural time differences (ITDs) are sufficient to allow listeners to identify a novel sound source from a mixture of sources. Listeners heard mixtures of two synthetic sounds, a target and distractor, each of which possessed naturalistic spectrotemporal correlations but otherwise lacked strong grouping cues, and which contained either the same or different ITDs. When the task was to judge whether a probe sound matched a source in the preceding mixture, performance improved greatly when the same target was presented repeatedly across distinct distractors, consistent with previous results. In contrast, performance improved only slightly with ITD separation of target and distractor, even when spectrotemporal overlap between target and distractor was reduced. However, when subjects localized, rather than identified, the sources in the mixture, sources with different ITDs were reported as two sources at distinct and accurately identified locations. ITDs alone thus enable listeners to perceptually segregate mixtures of sources, but the perceived content of these sources is inaccurate when other segregation cues, such as harmonicity and common onsets and offsets, do not also promote proper source separation.

Effects of interaural time differences in fine structure and envelope on lateral discrimination in electric hearing

Bilateral cochlear implant (CI) listeners currently use stimulation strategies which encode interaural time differences (ITD) in the temporal envelope but which do not transmit ITD in the fine structure, due to the constant phase in the electric pulse train. To determine the utility of encoding ITD in the fine structure, ITD-based lateralization was investigated with four CI listeners and four normal hearing (NH) subjects listening to a simulation of electric stimulation. Lateralization discrimination was tested at different pulse rates for various combinations of independently controlled fine structure ITD and envelope ITD. Results for electric hearing show that the fine structure ITD had the strongest impact on lateralization at lower pulse rates, with significant effects for pulse rates up to 800 pulses per second. At higher pulse rates, lateralization discrimination depended solely on the envelope ITD. The data suggest that bilateral CI listeners benefit from transmitting fine structure ITD at lower pulse rates. However, there were strong interindividual differences: the better performing CI listeners performed comparably to the NH listeners.

Effects of interaural time differences on the responses of chinchilla inferior colliculus neurons to consonant-vowel syllables

The responses of 100 inferior colliculus neurons to syllables differing in voice onset time (VOT) presented binaurally were studied. As in a previous study of monaural responses (Chen et al., 1996), the responses consisted of 1–3 response ‘components’, referred to as release responses, VOT responses or vowel responses. The discharge rate of all response components could vary cyclically with the interaural time difference (ITD). The maximal rate often occurred at an ITD around +0.2 ms (contralateral ear leading). Response frequencies (RF) based on the periodicity of the delay curves varied with the characteristic frequency (CF) and VOT. RF also varied across response components. Overall, RF was correlated with the ‘most effective frequency’, the spectral component with the highest amplitude, relative to the tuning curve. VOT response latency for a given syllable could change by a few ms with ITD, but those changes were small, relative to the range of latencies observed over the entire range of VOTs. Changes in ITD produced large changes in the overall shape of the peristimulus time histogram. There was no relation between the histogram shape and perceptual consonant categories.

Electrophysiological characteristic of the cerebral cortex of the gerbil

The effect of interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) on wave 4 of the binaural and summed monaural auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) as well as on the DN1 component of the binaural interaction component (BIC) of the ABR in young and old Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) was investigated. Measurements were made at a fixed sound pressure level (SPL) and a fixed level above visually detected ABR threshold to compensate for individual hearing threshold differences. In both stimulation modes (fixed SPL and fixed level above visually detected ABR threshold) an effect of ITD on the latency and the amplitude of wave 4 as well as of the BIC was observed. With increasing absolute ITD values BIC latencies were increased and amplitudes were decreased. ILD had a much smaller effect on these measures. Old animals showed a reduced amplitude of the DN1 component. This difference was due to a smaller wave 4 in the summed monaural ABRs of old animals compared to young animals whereas wave 4 in the binaural-evoked ABR showed no age-related difference. In old animals the small amplitude of the DN1 component was correlated with small binaural-evoked wave 1 and wave 3 amplitudes. This suggests that the reduced peripheral input affects central binaural processing which is reflected in the BIC.

1810 Effect of interaural time difference on neural activity patterns of the guinea pig auditory cortex observed by optical recording

Long-latency responses to bidirectional reversals in the laterality of a sound image were recorded from vertex with left and right earlobe references simultaneously. Laterality reversal stimuli with regular ISIs of 3 sec were obtained by alternating between +1 msec and −1 msec the interaural delay (ID) of dichotically presented 70 c/sec continous click trains. Monaural presentation of this temporal modulation did not evoke any potential or any sensation whereas, when dichotically presented, the same ID modulation was perceived as laterality reversals. Evoked potentials from 9 right-handed volunteers with normal hearing were evaluated. The recorded laterality reversal auditory evoked potentials (LRAEPs) consisted, characteristically, of a negative and a positive wave with average peak latencies of 160 msec and 260 msec, respectively. Statistical analysis indicated significant dependence of the response parameters on the direction of the sound image shifts, but the laterality of the earlobe reference did not prove to be important. The appropriateness of the stimulus parameters employed was discussed from the viewpoint of dynamic systems analysis. By contrasting with the monaural auditory off-responses recorded from the same subjects, it was demonstrated that the laterality reversal responses we obtained did not seem to be non-specific ‘rest-to-motion’ responses to any change in the acoustic background. Similarities and differences between these laterality reversal responses and various ERP components in the same latency range were also discussed. It is concluded that the LRAEPs introduced in this communication can be used in assessing the functional integrity and studying the dynamics of the neurophysiological system that accomplishes sound lateralization using cues of interaural time disparity (ITD).

Effect of interaural time differences on middle-latency and late auditory evoked magnetic fields

To determine if interaural time differences (ITDs) in binaural stimuli affect the middle-latency auditory evoked fields (AEFs) in the same manner as they affect the N100m deflection, neuromagnetic responses were recorded over the whole head using a 122-channel SQUID magnetometer. Binaural stimuli were lateralized to three positions, left, midline, and right, on the basis of ITDs. The N100m was significantly larger to stimuli with contralaterally-leading ITDs than to stimuli with no, or with ipsilaterally-leading ITDs. Neither the P30m nor the P50m deflections of the middle-latency response were significantly affected by ITD, although the P30m showed a tendency, similar to but smaller than that of N100m, to be larger to stimuli with contralaterally-leading ITDs. In some subjects, the source location of the P50m was anterior and inferior to the sources of the P30m and N100m, which are generated in the superior surface of the temporal lobe. Sound-related muscular artifacts were seen in the posterior recording channels of one subject, and the contribution of this activity to the signals over the temporal area was determined.

Intra- and extracranially recorded auditory evoked potentials in the cat. II. Effects of interaural time and intensity differences

The effects of interaural time differences and interaural intensity differences on binaural interactions in the brain-stem evoked response (BSER) and auditory field potentials (AFPs) in superior olive and inferior colliculus were studied. Interaural time differences of up to ±2048 μsec and interaural intensity differences of up to ±30 dB were used. Binaural interactions were studied for waves P4 and P5 of the BSER and the corresponding AFP components. When binaural interactions were present (wave P4 and subsequent waves), the dichotic potential was less than the sum of left and right evoked potentials. At zero interaural intensity difference the maximum binaural interaction was seen at zero interaural time difference. When an interaural intensity difference was present, maximum interaction was shifted away from zero interaural time difference such that left louder gave maximal interaction at right lead and vice versa. The time intensity trading values for this shift were between 9 and 20 μsec/dB. The trading ratios for the superior olive wave P4 component and BSER P4/P5 were in the same range, i.e., no extra effects could be seen in the BSER postsynaptic to the superior olive. These time intensity trading ratios correspond to those of medial superior olive cells but not to those of lateral superior olive cells (Caird and Klinke 1983). We suggest that these binaural effects are produced by binaural mechanisms in the medial superior olive and that the lateral superior olive does not significantly contribute to the BSER. The inferior colliculus AFP slow wave binaural interactions do not correspond to those of the BSER.

Interaural amplitude effects in binaural hearing.

The interaural amplitude difference, which will compensate the effect of interaural time difference for lateralization of a binaural image, has been further investigated with binaural transients low-pass filtered in order to minimize the risk of interference from multiple images arising with wide-band transients. Arguing from the effects observed, it is shown that if properties of cochlear neural responses found in the experimental animal are applicable in the human, a simple basis for explaining the main effects of amplitude difference in binaural listening would be available.