• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.55-60
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• 2011

Although sound intensity is considered as one of important factors in auditory processing, its neural mechanism in auditory neurons with limited dynamic range of firing rates is still unclear. In this study, we examined the effect of sound intensity adaptation on the change of glucose metabolism in a rat brain using [F-18] micro positron emission tomography (PET) neuroimaging technique. In the experiment, broadband white noise sound was given for 30 minutes after the [F-18]FDG injection in order to explore the functional adaptation of rat brain into the sound intensity levels. Nine rats were scanned with four different sound intensity levels: 40 dB, 60 dB, 80 dB, 100 dB sound pressure level (SPL) for four weeks. When glucose uptake during the adaptation of a high intensity sound level (100 dB SPL) was compared with that during adaptation to a low intensity level (40 dB SPL) in the experiment, the former induced a greater uptake at bilateral cochlear nucleus, superior olivary complexes and inferior colliculi in the auditory pathway. Expectedly, the metabolic activity in those areas linearly increased as the sound intensity level increased. In contrast, significant decrease interestingly occurred in the bilateral auditory cortices: The activities of auditory cortex proportionally decreased with higher sound intensities. It may reflect that the auditory cortex actively down-regulates neural activities when the sound gets louder.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.2378-2387
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• 2017

Violinists learn to make better sounds by hearing and evaluating their own playing though numerous practice. This study proposes a new method of auditory feedback, which mimics this violinists' step and verifies its efficiency using experiments. Making the desired sound quality of a violin is difficult without auditory feedback even though an expert violinist plays. An algorithm for controlling a robot arm of violin playing robot is determined based on correlations with bowing speed, bowing force, and sound point that determine the sound quality of a violin. The bowing speed is estimated by the control command of the robot arm, where the bowing force and the sound point are recognized by using a two-axis load cell and a photo interrupter, respectively. To improve the sound quality of a violin playing robot, the sounds information is obtained by auditory feedback system applied Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) to the sounds from a violin. This study suggests Gaussian-Harmonic-Quality (GHQ) uses sounds' clarity, accuracy, and harmonic structure in order to decide sound quality, objectively. Through the experiments, the auditory feedback system improved the performance quality by the robot accordingly, changing the bowing speed, bowing force, and sound point and determining the quality of robot sounds by GHQ sound quality evaluation system.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.174-179
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: The integration of auditory-visual speech information improves speech perception; however, if the auditory system input is disrupted due to hearing loss, auditory and visual inputs cannot be fully integrated. Additionally, temporal coincidence of auditory and visual input is a significantly important factor in integrating the input of these two senses. Time delayed acoustic pathway caused by the signal passing through digital signal processing. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effects of hearing loss and hearing aid digital delay circuit on sound-induced flash illusion. Subjects and Methods: A total of 13 adults with normal hearing, 13 with mild to moderate hearing loss, and 13 with moderate to severe hearing loss were enrolled in this study. Subsequently, the sound-induced flash illusion test was conducted, and the results were analyzed. Results: The results showed that hearing aid digital delay and hearing loss had no detrimental effect on sound-induced flash illusion. Conclusions: Transmission velocity and neural transduction rate of the auditory inputs decreased in patients with hearing loss. Hence, the integrating auditory and visual sensory cannot be combined completely. Although the transmission rate of the auditory sense input was approximately normal when the hearing aid was prescribed. Thus, it can be concluded that the processing delay in the hearing aid circuit is insufficient to disrupt the integration of auditory and visual information.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2006

As is commonly said, music is 'language of emotions.' It is because sound is a plentiful modality to communicate the human sensibility information. However, most researches of auditory displays were focused on improving efficiency on user's performance data such as performance time and accuracy. Recently, many of researchers in auditory displays acknowledge that individual preference and sensible satisfaction may be a more important factor than the performance data. On this ground, in the present study we constructed the sound sensibility dimensions ('Pleasure', 'Complexity', and 'Activity') and systematically examined the attributes of sound on the sensibility dimensions and analyzed the meanings. As a result, sound sensibility dimensions depended on each sound attributes , and some sound attributes interact with one another. Consequently, the results of the present study will provide the useful possibilities of applying the affective influence in the field of auditory displays needing the applications of the sensibility information according to the sound attributes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.1009-1009
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• 2003

VIPER a new tool for the VIsual PERception of sound quality and for sound design will be presented. Requirement for the visualization of sound quality is a signal analysis modeling the information processing of the ear. The first step of the signal processing implemented in VIPER, calculates an auditory spectrogram by a filter bank adapted to the time- and frequency resolution of the human ear. The second step removes redundant information by extracting time- and frequency contours from the auditory spectrogram in analogy to contours of the visual system. In a third step contours and/or auditory spectrogram can be resynthesised confirming that only aurally relevant information were extracted. The visualization of the contours in VIPER allows intuitively to grasp the important components of a signal. Contributions of parts of a signal to the overall quality can be easily auralized by editing and resynthesising the contours or the underlying auditory spectrogram. Resynthesis of time contours alone allows e.g. to auralize impulsive components separately from the tonal components. Further processing of the contours determines tonal parts in form of tracks. Audible differences between two versions of a sound can be visually inspected in VIPER through the help of auditory distance spectrograms. Applications are shown for the sound design of several interior noises of cars.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.883-889
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• 2011

The brand sound of vehicle diesel engine is recently one of the important advantage strategies in the automotive company. Because various noise components masked under high frequency level can be audible in quieter driving situation. Many researches have been carried out for subjective and objective assessments on vehicle sounds and noises. In particular, the interior sound quality has been one of research fields that can give high quality feature to vehicle products. Vehicle interior noise above 500 Hz is usually controlled by sound package parts. The materials and geometries of sound package parts directly affect on this high frequency noise. This paper describes the sound quality evaluation method for the vehicle diesel engine noise to establish objective criteria for sound quality assessment. Considering the sensitivity of human hearing to impulsive sounds such as diesel noise, the human auditory mechanism was simulated by introducing temporal masking in the time domain. Furthermore, each of the human auditory organs was simulated by computer codes, providing reasonable analytical explanations of typical human hearing responses to diesel noise. This method finally provides the sound quality index of vehicle diesel engine noise that includes high frequency intermittent offensive sounds caused by impacting excitations of combustion and piston slap.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.167-179
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• 1999

The hearing mechanism is a complicated system. Sound is generated by a source that sends out air pressure or power. The pressure or power makes the sound waves. These waves reach the eardrum, or tympanic membrane, which vibrates at a rate and magnitude proportional to the nature of the sound waves. The tympanic membrane transforms this vibration into the mechanical energy in the middle ear, which in turn converts it to the hydraulic energy in the fluid of the inner ear. The hydraulic energy stimulates the sensory cells of the inner ear which send neuroelectrical impulses to the central auditory nervous system. The passive perception of auditory information starts just here. The listener gives attention to the speech sound, differentiates the sound from background noise, and integrates his experience with similar sounds. The listener then puts all of these aspects of audition into the context of the moment to identify the nature of sound. This has a major role in human communication. This paper provides an overview of the nature and characteristics of sound, the structure and function of the auditory system, and the way in which sound is processed by the auditory system.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.1-8
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• 2013

Focused on the fact that sound is one of the important sensory cues delivering situations such as impact, this paper proposes an auditory interaction design approach for virtual environment. Based on a few sampling of basic material sound for various materials such as steel, rubber, and glass, the proposed method enables design transformations of the basic sound by allowing modification of mode gains that characterize natural sound for the material. In real-time virtual environment, it also provides simulation of modified sound according to the change of impact situation's perceptual properties such as colliding objects' size, hardness, contacting area, and speed. The test results on cognition experiment for discriminating objects' materials and impact situation by sound showed the feasibility of proposed auditory interaction design method.

• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.287-301
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• 2002

Either in music or in language, sound plays its role by taking up the fixed multi-spaces in one's consciousness. Music space differs from auditory space whose aim Is to perceive the positions and identities of the outer things. While auditory space is based on the interests of the outer things, music space is based on the indifference. We discuss the notion of space because it is where symbols reside. Categorial perception about the phonemic restoration describes the ability of a listener how to use his own intelligence to acknowledge and fill the missing points; however, musical perception can be explained as a positive regression to avoid colloquial logic and danger of segmentation in the course of auditory experience and phonation acquisition by an infant. About the question on the difference of the listening to the language sound and other sound, auditory mechanism proceeds language sound the same as other types of sound. But there are another theories which claim that brain proceeds the farmer differently from the latter. The function of music has not been discovered as clear as that of language; music has much more meanings in comparison with language.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.174-179
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: The integration of auditory-visual speech information improves speech perception; however, if the auditory system input is disrupted due to hearing loss, auditory and visual inputs cannot be fully integrated. Additionally, temporal coincidence of auditory and visual input is a significantly important factor in integrating the input of these two senses. Time delayed acoustic pathway caused by the signal passing through digital signal processing. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effects of hearing loss and hearing aid digital delay circuit on sound-induced flash illusion. Subjects and Methods: A total of 13 adults with normal hearing, 13 with mild to moderate hearing loss, and 13 with moderate to severe hearing loss were enrolled in this study. Subsequently, the sound-induced flash illusion test was conducted, and the results were analyzed. Results: The results showed that hearing aid digital delay and hearing loss had no detrimental effect on sound-induced flash illusion. Conclusions: Transmission velocity and neural transduction rate of the auditory inputs decreased in patients with hearing loss. Hence, the integrating auditory and visual sensory cannot be combined completely. Although the transmission rate of the auditory sense input was approximately normal when the hearing aid was prescribed. Thus, it can be concluded that the processing delay in the hearing aid circuit is insufficient to disrupt the integration of auditory and visual information.