1. Neuroscience

Cortical adaptation to sound reverberation

  1. Aleksandar Z Ivanov  Is a corresponding author
  2. Andrew J King
  3. Ben DB Willmore  Is a corresponding author
  4. Kerry MM Walker  Is a corresponding author
  5. Nicol S Harper  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Oxford, United Kingdom
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75090
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Cite this article
  1. Aleksandar Z Ivanov
  2. Andrew J King
  3. Ben DB Willmore
  4. Kerry MM Walker
  5. Nicol S Harper
(2022)
Cortical adaptation to sound reverberation
eLife 11:e75090.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75090
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Abstract

In almost every natural environment, sounds are reflected by nearby objects, producing many delayed and distorted copies of the original sound, known as reverberation. Our brains usually cope well with reverberation, allowing us to recognize sound sources regardless of their environments. In contrast, reverberation can cause severe difficulties for speech recognition algorithms and hearing-impaired people. The present study examines how the auditory system copes with reverberation. We trained a linear model to recover a rich set of natural, anechoic sounds from their simulated reverberant counterparts. The model neurons achieved this by extending the inhibitory component of their receptive filters for more reverberant spaces, and did so in a frequency-dependent manner. These predicted effects were observed in the responses of auditory cortical neurons of ferrets in the same simulated reverberant environments. Together, these results suggest that auditory cortical neurons adapt to reverberation by adjusting their filtering properties in a manner consistent with dereverberation.

Data availability

We have provided our Matlab scripts for generating our model and figures on Github: https://github.com/PhantomSpike/DeReverb.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Aleksandar Z Ivanov

    Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    aleksandar.ivanov@dpag.ox.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  2. Andrew J King

    Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    Andrew J King, Senior editor, eLife.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5180-7179

  3. Ben DB Willmore

    Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    benjamin.willmore@dpag.ox.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2969-7572

  4. Kerry MM Walker

    Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    kerry.walker@dpag.ox.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1043-5302

  5. Nicol S Harper

    Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    nicol.harper@dpag.ox.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7851-4840

Funding

Wellcome Trust (WT108369/Z/2015/Z)

  • Andrew J King

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M010929/1)

  • Kerry MM Walker

Oxford University Press (Christopher Welch Scholarship)

  • Aleksandar Z Ivanov

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: Animal experimentation: The animal procedures were approved by the University of Oxford Committee on Animal Care and Ethical Review and were carried out under license from the UK Home Office, in accordance with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and in line with the 3Rs. Project licence PPL 30/3181 and PIL l23DD2122. All surgery was performed under general anesthesia (ketamine/medetomidine) and every effort was made to minimize suffering.

Copyright

© 2022, Ivanov et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Aleksandar Z Ivanov
  2. Andrew J King
  3. Ben DB Willmore
  4. Kerry MM Walker
  5. Nicol S Harper
(2022)
Cortical adaptation to sound reverberation
eLife 11:e75090.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75090

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75090

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