Robustness of rhythmic perception in audition

Acoustic rhythms are a fundamental feature in our acoustic environment, including in speech and music. Auditory perception could profit from entrainment of cortical neural oscillations to rhythmicity in the acoustic input, which aligns optimal oscillatory phase with critical auditory events. However, to what extent oscillatory phase modulates the efficiency of auditory perception is still unclear. 

Using an auditory detection paradigm, the current study investigates to what extent the detectability of a short target auditory signal varies as a function of its temporal alignment to different phases of a preceding carrier sound with a rhythmic amplitude modulation. In particular, we focus on the level of reproducibility of the potential phase effect across different individuals and the sensitivity of effect to variations of the experimental procedure. 

 

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