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Updated: May 11, 2026

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Human brain detects short-time nonlinear predictability in the temporal fine structure of deterministic chaotic
1Center for Integrated Human Brain Science, Brain Research Institute, University of Niigata, 1-757 Asahimachi, Niigata, 951-8585, Japan. itoh@bri.niigata-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
Deterministic nonlinear dynamical processes are ubiquitous in nature. Chaotic sounds generated by such processes may appear irregular and random in waveform, but these sounds are mathematically distinguished from random stochastic sounds in that they contain deterministic short-time predictability in their temporal fine structures. We show that the human brain distinguishes deterministic chaotic sounds from spectrally matched stochastic sounds in neural processing and perception. Deterministic chaotic sounds, even without being attended to, elicited greater cerebral cortical responses than the surrogate control sounds after about 150 ms in latency after sound onset. Listeners also clearly discriminated these sounds in perception. The results support the hypothesis that the human auditory system is sensitive to the subtle short-time predictability embedded in the temporal fine structure of sounds.
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