A textbook of sensory physiology and sensory psychology, this volume presents the fundamentals of hearing necessary to the development and understanding of psychophysical concepts. Although the core of the book treats the data of sensory and nerve physiology and auditory psychophysics, the author also draws on the material of physical acoustics, anatomy, and neurology.

Recent advances in auditory neuroscience are characterized by a close interaction between neurophysiological findings, psychophysical effects and integrative models that attempt to bridge the gap between neuroscience and psychophysics. This volume introduces the latest developments in this quickly evolving interdisciplinary area. Tutorials by leading international scientists as well as more focused contributions by active researchers providing an invaluable summary of our current knowledge of psychophysics and auditory physiology and the main lines of research in this field. The book will be of interest to anyone involved in hearing research, including neuroscientists, behavioral scientists, acousticians and biophysicists.

Hearing: An Introduction to Psychological and Physiological Acoustics is concerned with the physiology and psychophysics of audition. It aims to introduce the new student to the sciences of hearing and to rekindle the interests of the experienced reader. The book begins with an overview of the auditory system. This is followed by separate chapters on theories of hearing; the routes over which sound is conducted to the inner ear; the cochlear mechanism; the auditory nerve and pathways; and psychoacoustic methods. Subsequent chapters cover the theory of signal detection; how sensitivity for one sound is affected by the presence of another sound; loudness; pitch; aspects of binaural hearing; and speech perception. This book provides both an introduction and a broad overview of the field of hearing science for the advanced undergraduate student or the postgraduate student in such disciplines as audiology and psychology. It should be an extremely useful guide to these students, as well as to those researchers who wish to refresh their knowledge of the field beyond their areas of specialization.

The present book contains the original papers and essential points of the general discussion of a meeting organized in a series of tri-annual conferences, initiated by Dr. R. Plomp with the meeting in Driebergen, The Netherlands, 1969. These symposia have tried to bring to\ether people from extreme fields in auditory research and to amalgamate their recent findings. This series of conferences has proven to be most successful and has attracted much attention by scientists in auditory research. The organizers have tried to maintain the character of the meeting with em phasis on discussion by precirculation of the full text of the papers and by re stricting the number of active contributions. Unfortunately, this forced us to reject a great number of submitted papers - in selection we attempted to compose a fair survey of certain fields of auditory research but leave others untreated. Because of the same reason the number of invited review papers had to be limited to three. The reader may decide whether or not this selection was adequate. We thank all those participants who attended the meeting inspite of the rejection of their paper. The authors have been responsible for text and typing of their manuscripts. The editors have not attempted to standardize the spelling.

This sixth edition has been thoroughly updated, with more than 200 references to articles & books published since 1996. The book describes the relationships between the characteristics of the sounds that enter the ear & the sensations that they produce.

During recent years auditory research has advanced quite rapidly in the area of experimental psychology as well as in that of physiology. Scientists working in both areas have in cornrnon the study of the process in HEARING, yet different scientific areas always tend to diverge. A SYMPOSIUM ON PSY CHOPHYSICAL MODELS AND PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTS IN HEARING was or ganized for the exchange of information and to stimulate dis cussion between research workers in psychoacoustics, neurophy siology, anatomy, morphology and hydromechanics. The basic aim of holding this syrnposium was to halt the divergence and to initiate the kind of multi-disciplinary research that will be need ed to elucidate the hearing process as a whole. The present proceedings comprise the papers, which were circulated to the participants two months before the syrnposium and discussed during the syrnposium, together with some cornrnents and additional re marks. These cornrnents and rernarks do not, however, represent the full discussions but only the parts available in written form. We have arranged the material in five sections: I. Structure and Neurobiology of the Inner Ear II. Cochlear Mechanisms III. Auditory Frequency Analysis IV. Auditory Time Analysis V. Nonlinear Effects Within the limits of a syrnposium, none of these topics could be treated comprehensively; moreover, most of the papers concerned problems having several aspects.

Experimentists in various disciplines, such as anatomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, psychophysics and psychology, have been carrying out their studies in order to increase our knowledge and understanding of sensory perception. To profit maximally from the results, obtained from these different viewpoints each should take the work of the others into account. The need for intensive communication is, therefore, ever present. In 1969, in the field of auditory research, this need resulted in P10mp's initiative to organizing an international symposium "Frequency analysis and periodicity perception in hearing". Considering the lively discussions and the numerous references in literature to the proceedings of this Driebergen symposium, the meeting clearly fulfilled its need. It was clear at the time that this sort of symposium should be held regularly. This resulted in meetings in 1972 (Eindhoven), 1974 (Tutzing) and 1977 (Keele). At the meeting in Keele it was agreed that the next one should be held in 1980, again in the Nether lands. With regard to the program, we decided to carryon the - now expande- tradition of including anatomy, physiology, psychophysics and the development of models in the program, but to pay more attention to the behavioural aspects of hearing at the same time. As a result, some contributions on animal behaviour have been included in the program. One of the great advantages of this sort of symposium is, that one has the opportunity of paying immediate attention to topics that are of current interest at the time.

The major aim of this book is to introduce the ways in which scientists approach and think about a phenomenon -- hearing -- that intersects three quite different disciplines: the physics of sound sources and the propagation of sound through air and other materials, the anatomy and physiology of the transformation of the physical sound into neural activity in the brain, and the psychology of the perception we call hearing. Physics, biology, and psychology each play a role in understanding how and what we hear. The text evolved over the past decade in an attempt to convey something about scientific thinking, as evidenced in the domain of sounds and their perception, to students whose primary focus is not science. It does so using a minimum of mathematics (high school functions such as linear, logarithmic, sine, and power) without compromising scientific integrity. A significant enrichment is the availability of a compact disc (CD) containing over 20 examples of acoustic demonstrations referred to in the book. These demonstrations, which range from echo effects and filtered noise to categorical speech perception and total more than 45 minutes, are invaluable resources for making the text come alive.