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Updated: May 17, 2025

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Temporal integration and stream segregation because of differences in base tones
Ken Suzutani1, Tetsuya Shiga1, Hiroshi Hoshino1
1Department of Neuropsychiatry, Fukushima Medical University.
Background:
Humans live surrounded by many sounds and have the ability to filter out various background sounds. It involves stream segregation and temporal integration. When the reference frequency is set to 3000 Hz, stream segregation will precede temporal integration when the frequency difference is 1000 Hz or larger; however, there is no report that examines whether the threshold of frequency difference at which stream segregation occurs before temporal integration is similar to different base tones.
Methods:
We created 10 blocks of tone sequences in which high tones and low tones were alternated with a constant stimulus onset asynchrony of 120 ms. In the first group (group A), the frequency of base tones was fixed at 3000 Hz. In the second group (group B), the frequency of base tones was fixed at 2000 Hz. The frequency of pair tones was set at 3000, 2750, 2500, 2250, and 2000 Hz in each block, respectively presented with six blocks of alternating high tones and low tones.
Results:
In group A, the mean voltage in response to omission was significantly lower than the mean voltage in response to opposite tones except in the fifth block. On the other hand, in group B, the mean voltage in response to omission was significantly lower than the mean voltage in response to opposite tones in all blocks.
Conclusions:
Our results indicated that whether a temporal window of integration or stream segregation is preferred depends on the base tone's Hz.
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