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Neurobiology

Modulation minimizes masking

Nature volume 397, pages 108–109 (1999)Cite this article

The ability to distinguish auditory signals from background noises is important for many organisms to detect — and avoid becoming — prey. This ability was probably also significant during evolution, and on page 154 of this issue Nelken et al.1 suggest how the auditory system may have evolved to exploit the properties of natural sounds.

Laboratory studies of auditory masking have traditionally used background sounds (maskers) such as white noise, which contains a range of different frequencies. Such noise fluctuates randomly in intensity, and these fluctuations are independent in different frequency regions. For example, if white noise is passed through two band-pass filters, one centred at 500 Hz and the other at 2,000 Hz, the output of the two filters will show independent, random fluctuations in intensity. More recently, ‘comodulated’ maskers have been used, in which the fluctuations in intensity are correlated in different frequency regions. These can be created by amplitude modulating a white noise with a low-frequency noise. The low-frequency modulator causes the amplitude of the noise to fluctuate slowly in an irregular way, and the pattern of fluctuation is the same in all frequency regions.

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Figure 1: Frequency responses at six different points along the basilar membrane in the inner ear8.
Figure 2: Thresholds for detecting a 1,000-Hz tone as a function of the bandwidth of a noise masker2.

References

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  1. The Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK

    Brian C. J. Moore

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  1. Brian C. J. Moore
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Moore, B. Modulation minimizes masking. Nature 397, 108–109 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16353

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