The neural mechanisms that support speech discrimination in noisy conditions are poorly understood. In quiet conditions, spike timing information appears to be used in the discrimination of speech sounds. In this study, we evaluated the hypothesis that spike timing is also used to distinguish between speech sounds in noisy conditions that significantly degrade neural responses to speech sounds....

Ginkgo biloba (EGb 761) as a phytotherapeutic agent used in otoneurology, psychiatry, and ophthalmology. We studied the efficacy of therapy with EGb 761 in 72 patients (44 male and 28 female) with chronic cochleovestibular disorders. We used pure-tone audiology, measuring pure-tone average, speech reception threshold, and speech discrimination score. Then we used craniocorpography to measure la...

We deployed the Multiple Necessary Cues (MNC) discrimination task to see if pigeons can simultaneously attend to four different dimensions of complex visual stimuli. Specifically, we trained nine pigeons (Columba livia) on a go/no go discrimination to peck only 1 of 16 compound stimuli created from all possible combinations of two stimulus values from four separable visual dimensions: shape (ci...

Human speech-like noise (HSLN) is a kind of bubble noise generated by superimposing independent speech signals typically more than one thousand times. Since the basic feature of HSLN varies from that of overlapped speech to stationary noise with keeping long time spectra in the same shape, we investigate perceptual discrimination of speech from stationary noise and its acoustic correlates using...

The effect of Pavlovian discrimination training with two stimuli upon subsequent learning of an operant discrimination involving those stimuli was studied. After preliminary lever press training, the lever was removed and thirsty rats received noncontingent pairings between S(1) (a tone or a clicker) and water reinforcements, whereas S(2) (a clicker or a tone) occurred always without reinforcem...

Birds have excellent spatial acuity and colour vision compared to other vertebrates while spatial contrast sensitivity is relatively poor for unknown reasons. Contrast sensitivity describes the detection of gratings of varying spatial frequency. It is unclear whether bird brightness discrimination between large uniform fields is poor as well. Here we show that budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulat...

Underwater, the contrast between object and background is much larger reduced with increasing distance between object and observer than in air. For marine predators, such as pinnipeds, it would therefore be advantageous to possess a high sensitivity for brightness differences, since this would increase the distance at which prey can be detected visually. Few studies have examined the brightness...