title: Auditory frequency-following response: a neurophysiological measure for studying the "cocktail-party problem".
abstract: How do we recognize what one person is saying when others are speaking at the same time? The "cocktail-party problem" proposed by Cherry (1953) has puzzled scientific societies for half a century. This puzzle will not be solved without using appropriate neurophysiological investigation that should satisfy the following four essential requirements: (1) certain critical speech characteristics related to speech intelligibility are recorded; (2) neural responses to different speech sources are differentiated; (3) neural correlates of bottom-up binaural unmasking of responses to target speech are measurable; (4) neural correlates of attentional top-down unmasking of target speech are measurable. Before speech signals reach the cerebral cortex, some critical acoustic features are represented in subcortical structures by the frequency-following responses (FFRs), which are sustained evoked potentials based on precisely phase-locked responses of neuron populations to low-to-middle-frequency periodical acoustical stimuli. This review summarizes previous studies on FFRs associated with each of the four requirements and suggests that FFRs are useful for studying the "cocktail-party problem".
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Du
authors.forename: Lingzhi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xihong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*