Marquardt, T;
Jurado, C;
(2018)
Amplitude Modulation May Be Confused with Infrasound.
Acta Acustica united with Acustica
, 104
(5)
pp. 825-829.
10.3813/AAA.919232.
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Abstract
Environmental infrasound is usually accompanied by low-frequency (LF) sounds. Considering that inner hair cell transduction equals half-wave rectification, activity of low-frequency auditory nerve fibres may be indistinguishable whether elicited by LF sound that is amplitude-modulated at an infrasonic rate, or LF sound that is superimposed onto infrasound that "biases" the basilar membrane position. We tested whether listeners are able to distinguish a 63-Hz carrier tone, amplitude modulated at 8 Hz, from a 63-Hz pure tone that was perceptually loudness-modulated by an 8-Hz biasing tone. Using a maximum-likelihood procedure, 12 participants first adjusted the intensity of the 8-Hz tone so that the perceived modulation of the pure tone matched a reference amplitude-modulated tone. Both stimuli types were then presented in random order, and participants had to identify presentations which contained the infrasound tone. About half the participants performed close to chance. The best had 81% correct. Experiments with a 125-Hz carrier tone gave similar results. Although performance may improve in a 2-interval discrimination task, this would not be representative of real listening conditions. Results suggest that slowly amplitude-modulated LF sounds may underlie complaints about environmental infrasound, where measured infrasound levels are well below sensation threshold.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | Amplitude Modulation May Be Confused with Infrasound |
Event: | 18th International Symposium on Hearing (ISH) |
Location: | Snekkersten, DENMARK |
Dates: | 10 June 2018 - 15 June 2018 |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.3813/AAA.919232 |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3813/AAA.919232 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | © 2018 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > The Ear Institute |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10060797 |
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