Midterm 2 Flashcards
(135 cards)
What is sound?
The air vibrates, and that information has to be transformed into a neural code to represent sound and speech
What is a pure tone?
A pure tone consists of only a single frequency. Its wave form is a pure sine wave
What is a complex tone?
A complex tone is a sound wave that repeats with a given pattern, BUT the pattern is not a sine wave
What is timbre?
Quality of auditory sensations produced by the tone of a sound wave. Two non-identical sounds can have the same loudness and pitch
What does timbre depend on?
Timbre depends on the frequency spectrum, the sound pressure and the temporal characteristics of the sound
What is a Shepard Tone?
An audio illusion that creates the feeling of consistent, never-ending rising/falling. The illusion is achieved by playing overlapping notes that are one octave apart
What is the human cochlea?
The cochlea is a hollow, spiral-shaped bone found in the inner ear that plays a key role in the sense of hearing and participates in the process of auditory transduction. Sound waves are transduced into electrical impulses that the brain can interpret as individual frequencies of sound
What is Tonotopy?
Tonotopic organization refers to the systematic topographical arrangement of neurons as a function of their response to tones of different frequencies
Where in Tonotopy found?
Along the basilar membrane in the ear and in the primary auditory cortex
Describe the neurons in the Secondary Auditory Cortex?
Neurons in the secondary auditory cortex represents a greater range of frequencies, loudness, location, and combinations of features
What is there a specialization for in the auditory region?
Speech, Music, and Voice Recognition
Describe the ventral stream?
WHAT you’re hearing. There’s some evidence that suggests there are selective processing regions (neurons) for some categories of sound
Describe the dorsal stream?
For where/how: Localization. There’s inter-aural time difference (loudness and timing): when your head is tilted, sound arrives at one ear before the other. Distortion: Sound will be more distorted if it occurs on the other side of your head
What is Overt Attention Eye Movements?
Head and eye movements can be employed to gaze directly at an item. This is often referred to as an overt shift of attention. It’s the most direct way to shift attention, but poor resolution in the periphery means that you are aware primarily of things near the center of gaze (fovea)
What is Covert Attention?
Attention directed to a location that is different from that on which the eyes are fixated
What is Endogenous attention?
Goal-driven attention is referred to as top-down or endogenous attention
What is Exogenous attention?
Stimulus-driven attention is referred to as bottom-up or exogenous attention, being driven by external events in the environment
Describe Exogenous (bottom-up) attention:
Feature/stimulus driven, “reflexive” or automatic, fast, and temporary
Describe Endogenous (Top-down)
Goal or experience driven, voluntary, slower, and can be persistent
Describe feature-based attention selection (hint: two):
“Preattentive” so single-feature, parallel, and versus. “Attentive” feautre integration and serial
Attention spreads….
Within objects more than between objects
What is the Cocktail Party problem?
The brain’s ability to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as when a party goer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room
What is the correlation between all sensory systems and attention?
All sensory systems can be influenced by attention, and attention influences perception. For example, distraction and pain
Why is a hypothesis a liability?
A hypothesis drives attention towards specific patterns of data, and leads to missing other patterns