An experimental test of chronic traffic noise exposure on parental behaviour and reproduction in zebra finches

Chronic traffic noise is increasingly recognised as a potential hazard to wildlife. Various songbird species, for example, have been shown to breed poorly in traffic noise exposed habitats. However, identifying whether noise is causal in this requires experimental approaches. We here tested whether experimental exposure to chronic traffic noise affected parental behaviour and reproductive success in offspring number and growth in an important model of avian development, the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). In a counterbalanced repeated-measures design, breeding pairs experienced continuous playbacks of one of two types of highway noise that previous spatial choice tests had shown to be neutral (control) or aversive. We monitored offspring development and parental feeding rates and nest attendance. Parental nest attendance was positively correlated with feeding effort and was higher in the aversive than in the control sound treatment and this effect was more pronounced for parents attending larger broods. However, neither noise condition affected offspring number, growth or body mass. There was also an absence of an effect of noisy conditions on these reproductive parameters when we combined our data with two other comparable studies in the same species in a meta-analysis. We discuss whether the increased parental engagement is a potential compensatory strategy that alleviated direct noise effects on the chicks. However, impaired parent-offspring or within-pair communication could also have increased parents’ nest attendance time. Future work is required to test these possible explanations and investigate potential long-term costs of increased parental engagement.

Does bedtime music listening improve subjective sleep quality and next-morning well-being in young adults? A randomized cross-over trial

Previous research has found that young adults exhibit patterns of poor sleep, and that poor sleep is associated with a host of negative psychological consequences. One potential intervention to improve sleep quality is listening to music at bedtime. While there exist previous works investigating the efficacy of listening to music as a form of sleep aid, these works have been hindered by statistically weak designs, a lack of systematic investigation of critical characteristics of music which may affect its efficacy, and limited generalizability. In light of the limitations in the existing literature, a 15-day randomized cross-over trial was carried out with 62 young adults. Participants completed five nights of bedtime listening to each condition (happy music vs. sad music vs. pink noise, which acted as an active control condition) over three weeks. Upon awakening each morning, participants rated their subjective sleep quality, current stress, positive and negative affective states, and current life satisfaction. Frequentist and Bayesian multilevel modeling revealed that happy and sad music was both beneficial for subjective sleep quality and next-morning well-being, compared to the pink noise condition; potential nuances are discussed. The current study bears potential practical applications for healthcare professionals and lay individuals.

Vocal plasticity in harbour seal pups

Vocal plasticity can occur in response to environmental and biological factors, including conspecifics' vocalizations and noise. Pinnipeds are one of the few mammalian groups capable of vocal learning, and are therefore relevant to understanding the evolution of vocal plasticity in humans and other animals. Here, we investigate the vocal plasticity of harbour seals ( Phoca vitulina ), a species with vocal learning abilities observed in adulthood but not puppyhood. To evaluate early mammalian vocal development, we tested 1–3 weeks-old seal pups. We tailored noise playbacks to this species and age to induce seal pups to shift their fundamental frequency ( f 0 ), rather than adapt call amplitude or temporal characteristics. We exposed individual pups to low- and high-intensity bandpass-filtered noise, which spanned—and masked—their typical range of f 0 ; simultaneously, we recorded pups' spontaneous calls. Unlike most mammals, pups modified their vocalizations by lowering their f 0 in response to increased noise. This modulation was precise and adapted to the particular experimental manipulation of the noise condition. In addition, higher levels of noise induced less dispersion around the mean f 0 , suggesting that pups may have actively focused their phonatory efforts to target lower frequencies. Noise did not seem to affect call amplitude. However, one seal showed two characteristics of the Lombard effect known for human speech in noise: significant increase in call amplitude and flattening of spectral tilt. Our relatively low noise levels may have favoured f 0 modulation while inhibiting amplitude adjustments. This lowering of f 0 is unusual, as most animals commonly display no such f 0 shift. Our data represent a relatively rare case in mammalian neonates, and have implications for the evolution of vocal plasticity and vocal learning across species, including humans. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part I)’.

Early evoked brain activity underlies auditory and audiovisual speech recognition deficits in schizophrenia

ObjectivesPeople with Schizophrenia (SZ) show deficits in auditory and audiovisual speech recognition. It is possible that these deficits are related to aberrant early sensory processing, combined with an impaired ability to utilize visual cues to improve speech recognition. In this electroencephalography study we tested this by having SZ and healthy controls (HC) identify different unisensory auditory and bisensory audiovisual syllables at different auditory noise levels.MethodsSZ (N = 24) and HC (N = 21) identified one of three different syllables (/da/, /ga/, /ta/) at three different noise levels (no, low, high). Half the trials were unisensory auditory and the other half provided additional visual input of moving lips. Task-evoked mediofrontal N1 and P2 brain potentials triggered to the onset of the auditory syllables were derived and related to behavioral performance.ResultsIn comparison to HC, SZ showed speech recognition deficits for unisensory and bisensory stimuli. These deficits were primarily found in the no noise condition. Paralleling these observations, reduced N1 amplitudes to unisensory and bisensory stimuli in SZ were found in the no noise condition. In HC the N1 amplitudes were positively related to the speech recognition performance, whereas no such relationships were found in SZ. Moreover, no group differences in multisensory speech recognition benefits and N1 suppression effects for bisensory stimuli were observed.ConclusionOur study shows that reduced N1 amplitudes relate to auditory and audiovisual speech processing deficits in SZ. The findings that the amplitude effects were confined to salient speech stimuli and the attenuated relationship with behavioral performance, compared to HC, indicates a diminished decoding of the auditory speech signals in SZs. Our study also revealed intact multisensory benefits in SZs, which indicates that the observed auditory and audiovisual speech recognition deficits were primarily related to aberrant auditory speech processing.HighlightsSpeech processing deficits in schizophrenia related to reduced N1 amplitudes Audiovisual suppression effect in N1 preserved in schizophrenia Schizophrenia showed weakened P2 components in specifically audiovisual processing

The Emotional Effect of Background Music on Selective Attention of Adults

Daily activities can often be performed while listening to music, which could influence the ability to select relevant stimuli while ignoring distractors. Previous studies have established that the level of arousal of music (e.g., relaxing/stimulating) has the ability to modulate mood and affect the performance of cognitive tasks. The aim of this research was to explore the effect of relaxing and stimulating background music on selective attention. To this aim, 46 healthy adults performed a Stroop-type task in five different sound environments: relaxing music, stimulating music, relaxing music-matched noise, stimulating music-matched noise, and silence. Results showed that response times for incongruent and congruent trials as well as the Stroop interference effect were similar across conditions. Interestingly, results revealed a decreased error rate for congruent trials in the relaxing music condition as compared to the relaxing music-matched noise condition, and a similar tendency between relaxing music and stimulating music-matched noise. Taken together, the absence of difference between background music and silence conditions suggest that they have similar effects on adult’s selective attention capacities, while noise seems to have a detrimental impact, particularly when the task is easier cognitively. In conclusion, the type of sound stimulation in the environment seems to be a factor that can affect cognitive tasks performance.

O003 The impact of wind farm noise in a laboratory setting on objective and subjective sleep efficiency

Introduction Well-controlled studies of wind farm noise (WFN) on sleep are lacking despite complaints and known effects of other noise types on sleep. This laboratory-based study investigated the impact of continuous full-night WFN exposure replicated from field recordings on polysomnography-measured (objective) and sleep diary-determined (subjective) sleep efficiency compared to a quiet control night. Methods Based on residential location and self-report data, 50 participants were categorised into three groups (14 living <10km from a wind farm and self-reporting sleep disturbance; 19 living <10km from a wind farm and self-reporting no sleep disturbance and 18 controls living in a quiet rural area). Participants underwent full in-laboratory polysomnography during exposure to continuous WFN (25 dB(A)) throughout the night and a quiet control night (background noise 19 dB(A)) in random order. Group and noise condition effects were examined via linear mixed model analysis. Results Participants (30 females) were aged (mean±SD) 54.9±17.6 range: 18–80 years. Sleep efficiency in the control condition was (median [interquartile range]) objective: 85.5 [77.4 to 91.2]%; subjective: 85.7 [69.2 to 92.7]%) versus the WFN condition (objective: 86.1 [78.6 to 91.7]% subjective: 85.8 [66.2 to 93.8]%) with no significant main or interaction effects of group or noise condition (all p’s >0.05). Conclusion These results do not support that WFN at 25 dB(A) significantly impacts objective or subjective sleep efficiency in participants with or without prior WFN exposure or self-reported WFN-related sleep disturbance. Further analyses to investigate potential sleep micro-structural changes remain warranted.

Responses in left inferior frontal gyrus are altered for speech-in-noise processing, but not for clear speech in autism

People with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulties with recognising what another person is saying in noisy conditions such as in a crowded classroom or a restaurant. The underlying neural mechanisms of this speech perception difficulty are unclear. In typically developed individuals, three cerebral cortex regions are particularly related to speech-in-noise perception: The left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the right insula and the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) (Alain et al., HBM, 2018). Here we tested whether responses in these cerebral cortex regions are altered in speech-in-noise perception in ASD. 17 adults with ASD and 17 typically developing controls (matched pairwise on age, sex and IQ) performed an auditory-only speech recognition task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Speech was presented either with noise (noise condition) or without noise (no noise condition, i.e., clear speech). In the left IFG, blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) responses were higher in the control compared to the ASD group for recognising speech-in-noise in comparison to clear speech. In the right insula and left IPL both groups had similar response magnitudes for the contrast between speech-in-noise and clear speech recognition. Additionally, we replicated previous findings that BOLD responses in speech-related and auditory brain regions (including bilateral superior temporal sulcus and Heschl’s gyrus) for clear speech were similar in both groups. Our findings show that in ASD, the processing of speech is particularly reduced under noisy conditions in the left IFG. Dysfunction of the IFG might be important in explaining restricted speech comprehension in noisy environments in ASD.

Distributed dynamic stochastic approximation algorithm over time-varying networks

In this paper, a distributed stochastic approximation algorithm is proposed to track the dynamic root of a sum of time-varying regression functions over a network. Each agent updates its estimate by using the local observation, the dynamic information of the global root, and information received from its neighbors. Compared with similar works in optimization area, we allow the observation to be noise-corrupted, and the noise condition is much weaker. Furthermore, instead of the upper bound of the estimate error, we present the asymptotic convergence result of the algorithm. The consensus and convergence of the estimates are established. Finally, the algorithm is applied to a distributed target tracking problem and the numerical example is presented to demonstrate the performance of the algorithm.

Power generator noise evaluation considering conversation audibility and improvement

Compact power generators are useful and convenient tools all over the world. The products are mainly set at around living space of human. Hence, the radiated noise should not disturb the human activities such as conversation. In this study, we then focused on the ease of conversation as the power generator noise performance and attempted to improve the performance. We firstly carried out subjective evaluate tests using recorded generator noise samples and reproduced Japanese syllables to evaluate the performance quantitatively from sound pressure of power generator noise. In the test, the participants answered the syllable they heard under the reproduced generator noise condition. And the correct answer rate of the presented syllable was calculated in each generator noise. The correct answer rate could be expressed well by using articulation index (AI) of each generator noise. Subsequently, the noise reduction target level of a portable generator satisfying the rate at 80% was set in each frequency band considering the influence of each frequency band on AI. Noise countermeasure was carried out to intake and exhaust parts having large contribution at the reduction target frequency bands. Finally, the noise could be decreased well and the AI cleared the target level.

The performance analysis of outdoor wireless network using quality of services method: A case study EFTENET network laboratory of Universitas Muhammadiyah Magelang

At present many of the clients connected in EFTENET still experience problems in delays in sending data when accessing data communication services. Therefore, a study was conducted to look at the performance of EFTENET's outdoor wireless services with the Quality of service method. The parameters used to measure are bandwidth, delay, packet lost and jitter which are then compared with the standardization version of Telecommunications and Internet Protocol Harmonization Over Network. From the results of the study concluded that outdoor wireless networks EFTENET has the category of "GOOD" degradation in the parameters of bandwidth, delay, jitter and geographical conditions between the transmitter and client. Data transmission delay occurs because the value of packet lost has the value of the "MEDIUM" degradation category. The value of packet lost is affected by a fairly high noise condition between the transmitter point and receiver so that the transmitted data is not received optimaly.