Hearing

What is frequency coding?

Frequency coding is the local resonance of the basilar membrane where specific sound
waves at specific frequency’s trigger specific locations on the basilar membrane.

In what form does sound reach the brain?

In pulse waves with same frequency as sound waves.

How can we percept a musical tone?

 From Physical properties: fundamental frequency, overtones, amplitude

 From Perceptual properties: pitch, timbre, loudness, duration
 Note: name of a pitch

Is the pitch of a sound related to the sound’s frequency?

The pitch of sound is determined by the frequency of vibration of the sound waves that
produce them. A high frequency (e.g., 880 Hz) is seen as a high pitch, while a low frequency
(e.g., 55 Hz) is regarded as a low pitch.

What is the difference and which are the similarities between harmonics 1 to 10 and pure
tones?

 Similarities: same melody and pitch

 Difference: timbre

What is the difference and what is the similarity between harmonics 4 to 10 and pure
tones?

 Similarity: same sequence of pitches

 Difference: no frequency in common with pure tone

What is the main similarity of the pure tones, harmonics 1 to 10 and harmonics 4 to 10?

They all share the same pattern periodicity

How do we define measure sound loudness?

In decibel

What is a decibel?

The decibel (dB) is a logarithmic unit that indicates the ration between:

 The power of a sound

 Human perception threshold at 2-4 kHz
What is stereo hearing (what are the parameters that influence horizontal and vertical
direction of sound)?

Stereo is what gives sound directionality.

 Horizontal Direction is based on:

1. Difference in amplitude (loudness)
2. Difference in phase (arrival time)
 Vertical direction is based on:
1. Deformation of pinna (earflap)

Which compress techniques are used by MP3 in order to reduce the data of a song?

 Joint stereo: often same information in left/right channels thus with joint stereo we
reduce the final size by using less bits for the side channel
 Huffman encoding: creates variable length codes on a whole number of bits. Most
frequently occurring information have shortest code. The decoding step is very fast
thus it allows to save 20% space on avarege
 Psycho-acoustic masking: this method filters out low amplitude sounds that are
played alongside with high amplitude sounds. When this occurs in a song the low
amplitude sounds can not be heard by the human ear thus this methods excludes
them.

Key notes:

• A sinusoid (harmonic) triggers a specific location of the basilar membrane

(frequency coding).
• Any periodic function can be expressed as superposition of harmonics (?????)
• We can ‘perceive’ the missing fundamental of a tone!!!!
• We can perceive the difference frequency (beat) of two tones.!!!!
• Loudness varies logarithmic with amplitude.!!!
• Perceptual thresholds are lowest for voice frequency. !!!
• Direction in horizontal plane is perceived based on amplitude and phase
differences.
• Direction in vertical plane is perceived based on (spectral) deformations by
earflap.
• MPEG compression makes use of perceptual properties (psycho-acoustic
masking).

Touch

What is touch and what are its main features?

Touch is a somatosensory system:

 Proprioception (the ability to be able to tell the relative position of body parts. For
example being able to touch the nose with your index finger while having eyes
closed)
 Cutaneous sense: any sense that is dependent on receptors in the skin. For example
pain, temperature, vibration etc.
Give some functions of touch?

 Feedback for motor coordination

 Warnings by touch and pain
 Motivation sexual activity

Name the systems that are used in haptic perception?

 Sensory system (touch,temperature)

 Motor system (moving fingers and hands)
 Cognitive system (processing information)

What is LORM glove ?

Communication and translation device for deafblind people.

Can we achieve navigation through touch ?

Yes

Key notes:

 Touch is important for motor coordination and pain warnings but can also be used
to communicate information
 Tactile interfaces can be used for spatial awareness, threat wanings, way finding and
crew communication

Multimodal Perception:

What configurations of sensory information do we have?

 Complementary (color and weight of an apple) where the sensors do not directly
depend on each other.
 Redundant (size and weight of an apple) where the different sensors present the
same information.

How does optimal sensory integration work?

It weighs the individual sensory estimates such that the total variance is minimal.

Do humans combine redundant sensory information optimally?

YES! Human brain takes into consideration reliability and uncertainty of each sensory
modality. However, there are situations where this is not possible because there is a conflict
between informations provided by each sensor. In these cases the brain may prioritize one
source of sensory over the other.

Give examples of when integration of iningruent sensory information can lead to illusions?

 Vision alters perceived location of sound source(screen speaker fusion)

 Vision alters speech perception (lipmovement causes ba to perceived as da)
 Visual lovation captures tactile location (Rubber hand experiment with hammer)
 Sound alters visual percept (There was some example where two sound beaps made
people think that a light flashed twice)
  Sound influences motion direction (moving sound captures dynamic random dot
pattern (for more see documentation))

What is the influence of vision on olfaction?

Shape and color (vision) can affect olfaction.

Do vision and touch take the same perception time?

NO. the influence of vision is stronger

How can memory (recognition and localization) be improved?

By using multi sensory learning. (vision-tactile)

Key notes:

 Sensory information can be complementary (color and weight of an apple), or

redundant (size and weight of an apple)
• Optimal sensory integration weighs the individual sensory estimates such that the
total variance is minimal.
• The integration of incongruent sensory information can lead to illusions (e.g. rubber
hand, flash-tap illusion, odor).
• Time (interval) perception can differ for vision and touch.
• Memory (recognition and localization) of objects improves with multisensory
(visual-tactile) learning.
• Visual, vestibular and cognitive cues integrate into the percept of the subjective
vertical.

Cross modal perception:

What is synesthesia?

Synesthesia is a naturally occurring condition where people experience information that is

usually experienced in one modality in a different modality (ELIZABETH SULSTON TASTES
NOTES AND THEY SAY I SHOULD STOP DOING DRUGS)

Give some examples where modern technology made synesthesia possible?

• Headset with camera example

• Blind mountain climber sees via video input fed to his tongue