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Δευτέρα 29 Φεβρουαρίου 2016
Best Masking Sound For Tinnitus
Tinnitus is a condition often described as a “ringing” or “buzzing” sound in the ears. Tinnitus can be continuous or intermittent, and the sound may be loud or soft and subtle. The condition is fairly common, and many people simply adjust to the ongoing sounds in their ears without huge difficulty. For some people, however, the condition can be very loud and extreme. It can interfere with normal hearing, even though the Tinnitus is not necessarily causing the hearing loss.
Searching For Relief
Tinnitus can appear for many reasons. The top cause is exposure to loud noise, like gunshots or loud machinery. Infections and ear blockages can also bring on the condition. Some medications, including aspirin and antidepressants, can bring on Tinnitus. For some people the sound can be continuous and go on through the night, causing sleep loss. This can bring on a vicious circle, as fatigue and stress are also thought to be linked to Tinnitus.
There is no known cure for Tinnitus at this time, but some people have found relief by listening to another sound that helps block the sound. This is called a “masking sound.” The best masking sound for Tinnitus may vary for different people, but here are a few sounds that are said to work well to alleviate the symptoms of tinnitus.
Sound Therapies
Finding the best masking sound for Tinnitus is an important part of therapy for this condition. The best masking sound for Tinnitus, whether it is the sound of rainfall, a relaxing ocean surf sound, or the quiet sound of general “white noise,” can work in several ways to ease the anxiety that Tinnitus can bring on in a patient.
The best masking sound for Tinnitus is one that can completely cover the sound inside the ear, or at least enough to be a distraction. The element of distraction is important as it can ease symptoms of the condition immediately. The sound masking treatment also helps to train the patient’s brain in a way that makes it tune out the Tinnitus sound. The American Tinnitus Association calls this brain training a way of “classifying” the sound as an “unimportant” (and thus easier to ignore) sound. The ATA also refers to a neuromodulation effect that comes with sound masking, as the masking sounds can help relieve hyperactivity in the brain that is also thought to bring on Tinnitus.
Today there are many options for masking sounds, ranging from peaceful ocean sounds to nature sounds to white noise, or white noise without high frequencies. Masking sounds can be played from a special player or even put in ear pieces.
The good news is that masking sounds do bring relief and they bring it in a way that is low cost and has no side effects. That’s a great bit of news for Tinnitus sufferers everywhere, to be sure.
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Compressive sensing with a spherical microphone array
A wave expansion method is proposed in this work, based on measurements with a spherical microphone array, and formulated in the framework provided by Compressive Sensing. The method promotes sparse solutions via ℓ1-norm minimization, so that the measured data are represented by few basis functions. This results in fine spatial resolution and accuracy. This publication covers the theoretical background of the method, including experimental results that illustrate some of the fundamental differences with the “conventional” least-squares approach. The proposed methodology is relevant for source localization, sound field reconstruction, and sound fieldanalysis.
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Differential Group Delay of the Frequency Following Response Measured Vertically and Horizontally
Abstract
The frequency following response (FFR) arises from the sustained neural activity of a population of neurons that are phase locked to periodic acoustic stimuli. Determining the source of the FFR noninvasively may be useful for understanding the function of phase locking in the auditory pathway to the temporal envelope and fine structure of sounds. The current study compared the FFR recorded with a horizontally aligned (mastoid-to-mastoid) electrode montage and a vertically aligned (forehead-to-neck) electrode montage. Unlike previous studies, envelope and fine structure latencies were derived simultaneously from the same narrowband stimuli to minimize differences in cochlear delay. Stimuli were five amplitude-modulated tones centered at 576 Hz, each with a different modulation rate, resulting in different side-band frequencies across stimulus conditions. Changes in response phase across modulation frequency and side-band frequency (group delay) were used to determine the latency of the FFR reflecting phase locking to the envelope and temporal fine structure, respectively. For the FFR reflecting phase locking to the temporal fine structure, the horizontal montage had a shorter group delay than the vertical montage, suggesting an earlier generation source within the auditory pathway. For the FFR reflecting phase locking to the envelope, group delay was longer than that for the fine structure FFR, and no significant difference in group delay was found between montages. However, it is possible that multiple sources of FFR (including the cochlear microphonic) were recorded by each montage, complicating interpretations of the group delay.
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Compressive sensing with a spherical microphone array
A wave expansion method is proposed in this work, based on measurements with a spherical microphone array, and formulated in the framework provided by Compressive Sensing. The method promotes sparse solutions via ℓ1-norm minimization, so that the measured data are represented by few basis functions. This results in fine spatial resolution and accuracy. This publication covers the theoretical background of the method, including experimental results that illustrate some of the fundamental differences with the “conventional” least-squares approach. The proposed methodology is relevant for source localization, sound field reconstruction, and sound fieldanalysis.
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Pulse-spreading harmonic complex as an alternative carrier for vocoder simulations of cochlear implantsa)
Noise- and sine-carrier vocoders are often used to acoustically simulate the information transmitted by a cochlear implant(CI). However, sine-waves fail to mimic the broad spread of excitation produced by a CI and noise-bands contain intrinsic modulations that are absent in CIs. The present study proposes pulse-spreading harmonic complexes (PSHCs) as an alternative acoustic carrier in vocoders. Sentence-in-noise recognition was measured in 12 normal-hearing subjects for noise-, sine-, and PSHC-vocoders. Consistent with the amount of intrinsic modulations present in each vocoder condition, the average speech reception threshold obtained with the PSHC-vocoder was higher than with sine-vocoding but lower than with noise-vocoding.
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