Estimating loudness growth from tone-burst evoked responses.
Several studies have investigated the relationship between click-evoked auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and loudness growth in human listeners. While some of these studies have reported promising results, showing a correlative relationship between click ABR and loudness growth as a function of level, additional studies are necessary to determine if similar results can be obtained with frequency-specific stimuli and more specific details of the loudness function can be derived from ABR recordings. The aims of this study, therefore, were to (1) develop a fully objective procedure that segments specific features of evoked, tone-burst ABR recordings, (2) investigate the feasibility of using information derived from these recordings for estimating frequency-specific loudness-growth functions, and (3) determine to what extent the loudness-growth estimation performance through ABR can be improved by controlling for residual noise levels and parametric fitting. Results from eight normal-hearing listeners using 1- and 4-kHz stimuli show that the average mean-square error of the loudness-growth estimation obtained through the procedure is comparable to that of standard psychoacoustical procedures used to estimate loudness growth. The data set has been made publicly available at www.physionet.org.
Silva
Ikaro
I
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. ikarosilva@ieee.org
Epstein
Michael
M
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D055815:Young Adult