Intensity-invariance of fine time structure in basilar-membrane click responses: implications for cochlear mechanics

Basilar-membrane and auditory-nerve responses to impulsive acoustic stimuli, whether measured directly in response to clicks or obtained indirectly using cross- or reverse-correlation and/or Fourier analysis, manifest a striking symmetry: near-invariance with stimulus intensity of the fine time structure of the response over almost the entire dynamic range of hearing. This paper explores the origin and implications of this symmetry for cochlear mechanics. Intensity-invariance is investigated by applying the EQ-NL theorem [de Boer, Aud. Neurosci. 3, 377-388 (1997)] to define a family of linear cochlear models in which the strength of the active force generators is controlled by a real-valued, intensity-dependent parameter, gamma (with 0 < or = gamma < or = 1). The invariance of fine time structure is conjectured to imply that as gamma is varied the poles of the admittance of the cochlear partition remain within relatively narrow bands of the complex plane oriented perpendicular to the real frequency axis. Physically, the conjecture implies that the local resonant frequencies of the cochlear partition are nearly independent of intensity. Cochlear-model responses, computed by extending the model obtained by solution of the inverse problem in squirrel monkey at low sound levels [Zweig, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 1229-1254 (1991)] with three different forms of the intensity dependence of the partition admittance, support the conjecture. Intensity-invariance of cochlear resonant frequencies is shown to be consistent with the well-known "half-octave shift," describing the shift with intensity in the peak (or best) frequency of the basilar-membrane frequency response. Shifts in best frequency do not arise locally, via changes in the underlying resonant frequencies of the partition, but globally through the intensity dependence of the driving pressure. Near-invariance of fine time structure places strong constraints on the mechanical effects of force generation by outer hair cells. In particular, the symmetry requires that the feedback forces generated by outer hair cells (OHCs) not significantly affect the natural resonant frequencies of the cochlear partition. These results contradict many, if not most, cochlear models, in which OHC forces produce significant changes in the reactance and resonant frequencies of the partition.     

Time-domain analysis of auditory-nerve-fiber firing rates

Time-domain analysis of firing-rate data from over 200 fibers from the auditory nerve of cat has been used to estimate the formants of the synthetic-syllable stimuli. Distinct groups of fibers are identified based on intervals between peaks in the fiber firing rates. The large extent of some of these groups--over an octave in terms of characteristic frequency--and the lack of short intervals in the longer-interval groups suggest that the behavior of the nonlinear cochlear filters for these signals is effectively wideband with steep high-frequency cutoffs. The measured intervals within each group are very similar, and correspond to the period of the formant that dominates the group's response. These intervals are used to estimate the dynamic speech formants. The overall formant estimates are better than those of the previous spectral analyses of the neural data, and the details of lower-formant dynamics are tracked more precisely. The direct temporal representation of the formant in contrasted with the diffuse spectral representation, the dependence of spectral peaks on nonformant parameters, and the distortion of the spectrum by rectification. It is concluded that a time-domain analysis of the responses to complex stimuli can be an important addition to frequency-domain analysis for neural data, cochlear models, and machine processing of speech.     

超声兰姆波的时频分析

声-超声方法在被测板件厚度较小时,板中传播的超声波模式主要是多模式的兰姆波。由于兰姆波的复杂性,声-超声方法回避了对信号进行进一步深入的分析,而采用所谓“应力波因子”对材料中能量耗散进行相对度量。当多模式与频散同时存在时,信号的识别异常困难,本文采用时-频分析的方法对声-超声信号进行了分离,只需一次测量就可满足分析要求。通过对兰姆波信号的伪Wigner-Ville分布进行时频重排和图像特征提取,能够精确地获得兰姆波的局部群速度频散曲线。     

Medial olivocochlear efferent inhibition of basilar-membrane responses to clicks: evidence for two modes of cochlear mechanical excitation

Conceptualizations of mammalian cochlear mechanics are based on basilar-membrane (BM) traveling waves that scale with frequency along the length of the cochlea, are amplified by outer hair cells (OHCs), and excite inner hair cells and auditory-nerve (AN) fibers in a simple way. However, recent experimental work has shown medial-olivocochlear (MOC) inhibition of AN responses to clicks that do not fit with this picture. To test whether this AN-initial-peak (ANIP) inhibition might result from hitherto unrecognized aspects of the traveling-wave or MOC-evoked inhibition, MOC effects on BM responses to clicks in the basal turns of guinea pig and chinchilla cochleae were measured. MOC stimulation inhibited BM click responses in a time and level dependent manner. Inhibition was not seen during the first half-cycle of the responses, but built up gradually, and ultimately increased the responses' decay rates. MOC stimulation also produced small phase leads in the response wave forms, but had little effect on the instantaneous frequency or the waxing and waning of the responses. These data, plus recent AN data, support the hypothesis that the MOC-evoked inhibitions of the traveling wave and of the ANIP response are separate phenomena, and indicate that the OHCs can affect at least two separate modes of excitation in the mammalian cochlea.     

Comparison of click responses of primary auditory fibers with minimum-phase predictions

Minimum-phase impulse responses were constructed from the frequency threshold-response curves of primary auditory fibers in the anesthetized cat. These impulse responses had many of the same characteristics as the experimental click responses. The two types of responses had similar inter-peak intervals as well as similar (+/- 1.5 ms) latencies to the principal mode and similar (+/- 1.0 ms) intervals from response onset to the principal mode.     

气液两相流波动信号的时频谱分析研究

为了研究气液两相流不同流型的动态特性,通过小波变换、希尔伯特-黄变换及自适应最优核三种时频方法对气液两相流动态差压信号进行处理.通过对时频谱的分析,可以清晰看出当流型从泡状流向弹状流、塞状流的转化过程中,信号的主要能量由15—35 Hz之间的频带向0—8 Hz频带转移,在弹状流时出现了两个谱峰.实验结果表明:希尔伯特-黄变换及自适应最优核方法的时频分辨率比小波分析高.基于自适应最优核方法的脊信息的提取,克服了模糊平面加窗效应的影响,对气液两相流动态信号表现出更高的时频分辨率,并增强了时频平面信息的可读性. 关键词： 气液两相流 流型识别 希尔伯特-黄变换 自适应最优核     

Time-frequency analysis of the dispersion of Lamb modes.

Accurate knowledge of the velocity dispersion of Lamb modes is important for ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation methods used in detecting and locating flaws in thin plates and in determining their elastic stiffness coefficients. Lamb mode dispersion is also important in the acoustic emission technique for accurately triangulating the location of emissions in thin plates. In this research, the ability to characterize Lamb mode dispersion through a time-frequency analysis (the pseudo-Wigner-Ville distribution) was demonstrated. A major advantage of time-frequency methods is the ability to analyze acoustic signals containing multiple propagation modes, which overlap and superimpose in the time domain signal. By combining time-frequency analysis with a broadband acoustic excitation source, the dispersion of multiple Lamb modes over a wide frequency range can be determined from as little as a single measurement. In addition, the technique provides a direct measurement of the group velocity dispersion. The technique was first demonstrated in the analysis of a simulated waveform in an aluminum plate in which the Lamb mode dispersion was well known. Portions of the dispersion curves of the A0, A1, S0, and S2 Lamb modes were obtained from this one waveform. The technique was also applied for the analysis of experimental waveforms from a unidirectional graphite/epoxy composite plate. Measurements were made both along and perpendicular to the fiber direction. In this case, the signals contained only the lowest order symmetric and antisymmetric modes. A least squares fit of the results from several source to detector distances was used. Theoretical dispersion curves were calculated and are shown to be in good agreement with experimental results.     

Influence of atomic-scale irregularities in fractal analysis of electrode surfaces

To clarify the vague points appeared in the literature, it was discussed that fractal analysis of electrode surfaces based on the concept of ‘diffusion toward electrode surfaces’ is only able to monitor surface roughness in scales larger than 10 nm. When inspecting fractality in atomic scale (and even up to 10 nm), electrochemical measurements are not reliable due to the presence of surface defects, which affect the electrochemical reaction. In other words, for fractal analysis of electrode surfaces, the diffusion layer width which acts as yardstick length, should be sufficiently large, incomparable to the scale of atomic inhomogeneities. To this aim, the experiment time should be sufficiently long or the diffusion coefficient should be sufficiently large.     

Fractal analysis of RF signals scattered by small-scale ionospheric irregularities

The fractal dimension as a characteristic of an experimental data series is considered. The correlation integral method is used for dimension calculation. It is shown that by the fractal dimension one can identify a variety of ionospheric processes even when the conventional spectral analysis fails. It is found that the realizations corresponding to volume scattering by natural and artificial irregularities have finite dimension, which is significantly different. A technique for preparing experimental data to be processed by the correlation integral method is developed. The influence of the data sampling rate and signal-to-noise ratio on the dimension is analyzed.Radioastronomical Institute, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Khar'kov. Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Radiofizika, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 557–565, June, 1995.     

Normal short-latency electrophysiological filtered click responses recorded from vertex and external auditory meatus.

We recorded normal electrophysiological responses to third-octave filtered clicks from external auditory meatus (EAM) and vertex electrodes referred to coupled earlobe electrodes (forehead ground). From both vertex and EAM, polarity-sensitive responses predominated at low frequencies and exhibited characteristics of both phase-locked neural responses (frequency-following response or FFR) and cochlear microphonics (CM). The FFR-like response predominated at the vertex site and the CM-like response predominated at EAM. At high frequencies, polarity-insensitive responses closely resembled rectangular-pulse click action potentials and brainstem evoked potentials, with clearly defined N1 and V peaks recorded from EAM and vertex, respectively. As frequency was lowered, the N1 and V peak latencies increased, the peaks broadened, and the latency-intensity curves steepened with greater prolongation occurring at lower click intensities. Lowering click frequency also shortened the N1-V interval and caused the plot of N1-V interval versus click intensity to become steeper. Plots of polarity-insensitive response amplitudes and thresholds against frequency revealed a high frequency bias for both N1 and V, but the V "frequency response" was flatter. A possible explanation of the shortened N1-V interval at low click frequencies based on this flatter V "Frequency response" is presented.     

分层介质半空间瑞利波的时频分析

对分层介质半空间瑞利波的频散特性,用一种时频分析方法——重排的平滑伪魏格纳维尔分布(RSPWVD,Reassignment of Smooth Pseudo-Wigner Ville Distribution)进行了分析和研究。对均匀半空间和两层介质半空间的理论和实验研究表明,由于层状介质中瑞利波的频散曲线存在多个模式,所获得的群速度频散曲线在不同的频段显示出来的模式是对应表面位移幅度占主导作用的模式。频散曲线的这种模式判定对利用层状半空间的瑞利波反演介质参数是必须预先了解的。     

Time-frequency analysis of transient dispersive waves: A comparative study

The goal in this work is to investigate the effectiveness of time-frequency representations for analysing dispersive waves by comparing the performance of three different methods. In particular, the smoothed pseudo-Wigner distribution, the continuous wavelet transform and the Hilbert-Huang transform are compared and evaluated in terms of their ability to analyse dispersive elastic waves. The waves under consideration are transient flexural ones generated by an impact in a beam. In view of the results of the comparative study, the advantages and shortcomings of each method are presented and discussed.     

Time-frequency analysis of the dispersive Rayleigh wave in stratified media

The dispersive characteristic of the Rayleigh wave propagating in a stratified media was analyzed by a time-frequency analysis method, the Reassignment of Smooth Pseudo-Wigner Ville Distribution (RSPWVD). Theoretical simulations and experiments were implemented for a homogeneous half-space and a two-layered half-space. It is indicated that the group velocity dispersion curves in different frequency ranges obtained by experimental result are all corresponding to the dominant modes in their surface displacement amplitudes. Such a mode identification of the multi-mode Rayleigh waves is required in inversing the medium parameters.     

Time-frequency analysis of linear and nonlinear otoacoustic emissions and removal of a short-latency stimulus artifact

Click-evoked otoacoustic emissions (CEOAEs) are commonly recorded as average responses to a repetitive click stimulus. If the click train has constant polarity, a linear average results; if it contains a sequence of clicks of differing polarity and amplitude, a nonlinear average can be calculated. The purpose of this study was to record both protocols from the same set of ears and characterize the differences between them. The major features of CEOAEs were similar under both protocols with the exception of a region spanning 0-5 ms in time and 0-2.2 kHz in frequency. It was assumed that the signal derived from the linear protocol was contaminated by stimulus artifact, and so a simple procedure was used--involving high-pass filtering and time-windowing--to remove components of this artifact. This procedure preserved the short-latency, high-frequency responses; it also produced a marked similarity in the time-frequency plots of recordings made under the two protocols. This result means it is possible to take advantage of the better signal-to-noise ratio of the linear data compared to its nonlinear counterpart. Additionally, it was shown that CEOAEs recorded under the linear protocol appear to be less dependent on the presence of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs).     

基于支持向量机的~(252)Cf中子裂变信号时频特征分析及识别

基于裂变中子(252Cf)对裂变链(235U系统)依存关系,在对252Cf中子裂变信号的测量原理及信号特点分析基础上,开展了基于支持向量机的中子裂变信号时频特征分析及识别研究工作。采用小波分解和去噪小波包分解方法,提取不同状态下随机核信号的时频能量特征,借助于统计学习理论的支持向量机(SVM)分类器原理进行训练和分类。研究结果表明:通过直接小波分解或去噪小波包分解,以获取核信号特征的方法是有效的;去噪小波包分解特征提取方式,较之直接小波分解特征提取方式更能反映中子裂变核系统的内部特征和规律;基于SVM核信号样本的分类,训练后的SVM分类器有着大于70%以上的正确率,且较好地克服了训练样本数较少的问题,验证了方法的可行性和有效性。     

频率分辨光学开关法行迹相位还原的时频分析

将小波变换分析光谱相位相干原理应用于频率分辨光学开关(FROG)行迹图的时间-频率分析，不需要传统的迭代算法，从对FROG行迹的脊的分析中，直接得到超短脉冲的相位.对于FROG行迹的脊变化平缓的脉冲得到了精确的相位. 关键词： 超短脉冲 相位重建     

Time-frequency analysis of the bistatic acoustic scattering from a spherical elastic shell

The development of low-frequency sonar systems, using, for instance, a network of autonomous systems in unmanned vehicles, provides a practical means for bistatic measurements (i.e., when the source and receiver are widely separated) allowing for multiple viewpoints of the target of interest. Time-frequency analysis, in particular, Wigner-Ville analysis, takes advantage of the evolution time dependent aspect of the echo spectrum to differentiate a man-made target, such as an elastic spherical shell, from a natural object of the similar shape. A key energetic feature of fluid-loaded and thin spherical shell is the coincidence pattern, also referred to as the mid-frequency enhancement (MFE), that results from antisymmetric Lamb-waves propagating around the circumference of the shell. This article investigates numerically the bistatic variations of the MFE with respect to the monostatic configuration using the Wigner-Ville analysis. The observed time-frequency shifts of the MFE are modeled using a previously derived quantitative ray theory by Zhang et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 1862-1874 (1993)] for spherical shell's scattering. Additionally, the advantage of an optimal array beamformer, based on joint time delays and frequency shifts is illustrated for enhancing the detection of the MFE recorded across a bistatic receiver array when compared to a conventional time-delay beamformer.