Sex differences in auditory processing vary across estrous cycle

In humans, females process a sound’s harmonics more robustly than males. As estrogen regulates auditory plasticity in a sex-specific manner in seasonally breeding animals, estrogen signaling is one hypothesized mechanism for this difference in humans. To investigate whether sex differences in harmonic encoding vary similarly across the reproductive cycle of mammals, we recorded frequency-following responses (FFRs) to a complex sound in male and female rats. Female FFRs were collected during both low and high levels of circulating estrogen during the estrous cycle. Overall, female rodents had larger harmonic encoding than male rodents, and greater harmonic strength was seen during periods of greater estrogen production in the females. These results argue that hormonal differences, specifically estrogen, underlie sex differences in harmonic encoding in rodents and suggest that a similar mechanism may underlie differences seen in humans.

An influence of characteristics of amplitude fluctuation on detectability of alert sound of electric powered vehicles

The motor sound on electric powered vehicle is quiet at low speeds. Thus, pedestrians have difficulty detecting the vehicles approaching them under urban noise. Although the vehicles were designed to play an alert sound to solve this problem, it has not been solved yet. Our previous studies found that characteristics of amplitude fluctuation, fluctuation frequency, non-periodic fluctuation and amplitude envelope, are effective to make them detect approaching vehicles. However, those studies were investigated under only a specific actual environment, weren't examined validity of detectability in those studies. Here, this paper investigates under another actual environment, examine the validity. Investigations were carried out by using synthesized complex sounds which were designed to have periodic and non-periodic amplitude fluctuations. Those complex sounds have characteristics of amplitude fluctuations in gasoline powered vehicle. Amplitude envelopes such as modulation wave in amplitude-modulated sound were set for deviations for time and amplitude, and amplitude-modulated complex sounds were synthesized using sine wave, sawtooth wave, and rectangle wave. Then, their effects on detectability by pedestrians were assessed in another actual environment. The results found that amplitude fluctuation enhances the ability with which people detect approaching electric powered vehicles in case of some complex sound.

Artistic reconstruction of the folklore text in the works of Yu. Illienko (on the example of a film-apologue “A well for the thirsty ones”)

The topicality. The factors that influence the disclosure nature of the director’s and composer’s creative concept are the leading artistic polystylistic tendencies — stylistic layers and trailblazing experiments in the formation of sound-timbre and visualized combinations, where ancient intonations together with modern sound formation and video performance create new sound and performance realities. The purpose. To determine the role of artistic reconstruction of the folklore text and the specifics of their artistic embodiment in the film parable “A well for the thirsty ones” by the popular Ukrainian film director Yu. Illienko; to determine the specifics of the embodiment of the signs of cultural codes in the musical-sound score of the film by composer L. Hrabovskyi. The methodology. The culturological approach applied in revealing the issues of the article made it possible to consider the peculiarities of the drama and musical-sound score of Yu. Illienko’s film “A well for the thirsty ones” in a broad cultural context. The interpretive approach helped to highlight the importance of cultural codes of the folklore text, the specifics of their embodiment in the director’s idea through the artistic reconstruction of the folklore text. The results. Yu. Illienko and L. Hrabovskyi, addressing the folk song tradition, create a new intonation world, embodied in separate “emergings” of female solo singing (verses of the ballad one by one are strung like beads throughout the picture), in lamentations, in incantations, in children’s amusements when playing on pots, that intersperse with a general, very concise and minimalist sound score of the film. The characteristic and figural semantics of the musical-sound background of the film is saturated with active rhythmics, complex sound palette of combination of electronic sounds with natural ones, which demonstrates the author’s (at the choice of director and composer) special sound complex. Folklore texts in the film create a single hypertext, which is manifested at the appropriate levels — auditory, visual and dramatic. The novelty. The article considers for the first time the specifics of the embodiment of artistic reconstruction of a folklore text as the basis of the drama of Yu. Illienko’s film “A well for the thirsty ones” and defines sense forming and semantic role of the embodiment of the cultural codes signs in the musical-sound score of the film by composer L. Hrabovskyi. The practical significance. The artistic reconstruction of the folklore text in the film is based on the introduction of polystylistic tendencies and features of sound (timbre) thinking into the cinematographic process. Prospects for further study of this issue is the study of modern manifestations of artistic reconstruction of the folklore text, the processes of formation of semiotic space both in cinema and in culture in general.

A phenomenological spiking model for octopus cells in the posterior–ventral cochlear nucleus

Octopus cells in the posteroventral cochlear nucleus exhibit characteristic onset responses to broad band transients but are little investigated in response to more complex sound stimuli. In this paper, we propose a phenomenological, but biophysically motivated, modeling approach that allows to simulate responses of large populations of octopus cells to arbitrary sound pressure waves. The model depends on only few parameters and reproduces basic physiological characteristics like onset firing and phase locking to amplitude modulations. Simulated responses to speech stimuli suggest that octopus cells are particularly sensitive to high-frequency transients in natural sounds and their sustained firing to phonemes provides a population code for sound level.

Cough Recognition Based on Mel-Spectrogram and Convolutional Neural Network

In daily life, there are a variety of complex sound sources. It is important to effectively detect certain sounds in some situations. With the outbreak of COVID-19, it is necessary to distinguish the sound of coughing, to estimate suspected patients in the population. In this paper, we propose a method for cough recognition based on a Mel-spectrogram and a Convolutional Neural Network called the Cough Recognition Network (CRN), which can effectively distinguish cough sounds.

A Novel Intelligent System Based on Adjustable Classifier Models for Diagnosing Heart Sounds

Background: As an efficient method, heart sounds (HSs) analysis by classifying the features extracted from the four-stage sequence consisting of the first heart sound (S1), second heart sound (S2), duration from S1 to S2 and duration from S2 to S1, has been widely used to diagnose heart disease and evaluate heart functions. However, the feature is difficult to be extracted with high accuracy due to the four stages segmented from HSs with low accuracy; the fixed classifiers achieved by training the features from the old samples cannot better fit the features from the new ones because they are not adjusted with the incremental features. Thus, a novel intelligent diagnostic system, the innovations of which are primarily reflected in the automatic feature extraction and adjustable classifier models, is proposed to realize the diagnosis of heart diseases with higher accuracy. Methods: The three stages of the proposed system are summarized as follows. In stage 1, the short time modified Hilbert transform (STMHT)-based curve is used to segment and extract the first complex sound (CS1) and second complex sound (CS2). In stage 2, the envelopes CS1FE and CS2FE for periods CS1 and CS2 are obtained via a novel method, and the frequency features are automatically extracted from CS1FE and CS2FE by setting different threshold value (Thv) lines. Finally, the principal component analysis (PCA)-based first three principal components γ1, γ2, and γ3 are determined as the diagnostic features. In stage 3, a Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based objective function fet(x) is generated. Then, the χ2 distribution for component k is determined by calculating the Mahalanobis distance from x to the class mean µk for component k, and the confidence region of component k is determined by adjusting the optimal confidence level βk and used as the criterion to diagnose HSs. Results: The performance evaluation was validated by sounds from online HS databases and clinical heart databases. The accuracy of the proposed method was compared to the accuracies of other well-known classifiers, and the highest classification accuracies of 99.43%, 98.93%, 99.13%, 99.85%, 98.62%, 99.67% and 99.91% in the detection of MR, MS, ASD, NM, AS, AR and VSD sounds were achieved by setting βk(k = 1,2,...,7) to 0.87,0.65,0.67,0.65,0.67,0.79 and 0.87, respectively. Conclusions: This proposed intelligent diagnosis system provides an efficient way to diagnose seven types of heart diseases. In addition, methods to manage the sounds (such as some ASD sounds) when CS1 and CS2 cannot be segmented and extracted via the STMHT method will be explored in the future to characterize the physical meanings of the frequency components and to build a model of the secondary curve in the frequency domain.

Complex Sound's Pitch and Tempo Perception: Psychological and Instructional Features

The study investigates features of complex sound's pitch and tempo perception depending on instructional set presence via the Likert scale and WAM test (wellbeing, activity, mood). Influence of objective complex sound characteristics (pitch and tempo) on a subjective evaluation of a music fragment, as well as the influence of instructional set (prior informing of a participant about objective differences between music fragments) on a subjective evaluation of a music fragment, were explored. The study looks at how people of different genders, whether they know how to play an instrument or have had musical education, perceive music. It was discovered that high pitch music was embraced as more fun, bright, light, and indecisive. Music with a higher tempo was also perceived as carefree, which is subjectively evaluated as less heavy and more fun. People with musical education background notice more differences between fragments with various pitches and tempos, specifically, they are capable of differentiating pitch and tempo changes better. In general, the study has shown that it is possible to manipulate objective characteristics of a complex sound in order to create widely acceptable subjective and psychological interpretation.