Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Central auditory masking by an illusory tone

Electronic data

  • journal.pone.0075822

    Rights statement: © 2013 Plack et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

    Final published version, 669 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Central auditory masking by an illusory tone

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Close
Article numbere75822
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>11/09/2013
<mark>Journal</mark>PLoS ONE
Issue number9
Volume8
Number of pages7
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Many natural sounds fluctuate over time. The detectability of sounds in a sequence can be reduced by prior stimulation in a process known as forward masking. Forward masking is thought to reflect neural adaptation or neural persistence in the auditory nervous system, but it has been unclear where in the auditory pathway this processing occurs. To address this issue, the present study used a "Huggins pitch" stimulus, the perceptual effects of which depend on central auditory processing. Huggins pitch is an illusory tonal sensation produced when the same noise is presented to the two ears except for a narrow frequency band that is different (decorrelated) between the ears. The pitch sensation depends on the combination of the inputs to the two ears, a process that first occurs at the level of the superior olivary complex in the brainstem. Here it is shown that a Huggins pitch stimulus produces more forward masking in the frequency region of the decorrelation than a noise stimulus identical to the Huggins-pitch stimulus except with perfect correlation between the ears. This stimulus has a peripheral neural representation that is identical to that of the Huggins-pitch stimulus. The results show that processing in, or central to, the superior olivary complex can contribute to forward masking in human listeners.

Bibliographic note

© 2013 Plack et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.