Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton

Knowledge and understanding
• Having successfully completed the module, you will be able to describe the basic methods used for electrophysiological and psychophysical measurement. You will understand the principles underlying those methods.

Cognitive (thinking) skills
• Having successfully completed the module, you will be able to evaluate alternative basic approaches for use with individuals, synthesising information from a variety of sources. You will be able to identify common problems of measurement when they occur.

Practical, subject specific skills
• Having successfully completed the module, you will be able to select appropriate methods for use with individuals with hearing difficulty.

Key transferable skills
• Having successfully completed the module, you will have gained a better understanding of electrophysiological and psychophysical measurement in general.

• Introduce you to the basic methods used for electrophysiological and psychophysical measurement in neuroscience • Enable you to develop skills to critically evaluate and analyse information from books, web based learning and relevant scientific literature

• Introduce the principles behind basic electrophysiological and psychological measurement techniques used in neuroscience • Introduce some commonly used methods for measuring electrophysiological and psychophysical parameters in the human • Give examples that relate abnormalities of these parameters to features of neurosensory loss in humans

• Transducer systems for electrophysiological measurement • Recording and stimulating electrodes • Signal detection and signal conditioning and stimulus signals • AC and DC signals • Analogue and digital representation of signals • Analysis and recording systems including filtering and averaging • Signals and noise • Domains of neurosensory signals (intensity, frequency, time, direction, acuity, velocity) • Units of intensity, frequency and time • Threshold of neurosensory signals and their measurement • Practical measurement of hearing, visual and somatosensory thresholds. • Feedback from practical: basic psychometric function for neurosensory threshold • Normal neurosensory threshold and normal range: visual, nerve impulse and earphone and sound field measures • Effects of stimulus duration: temporal summation at threshold • Pitch and frequency discrimination • Practical measurement of pitch categorisation and frequency discrimination • Loudness and intensity: equal loudness contours • Concept of masking: same-frequency and remote masking, cross-masking (Practical assignment: measurement of same-frequency same-ear masking) • Binaural stimuli: localisation and lateralisation (Practical assignment: measurement of lateralisation performance) • Visual contrast measurement • emg recording and interpretation • nerve conduction velocity measurement (carpal tunnel) • Subjective scaling techniques (including recognition and minimisation of recording artefacts) • Classical and modern psychoacoustic methods • Principles of detection, discrimination and recognition

• One 45 minute lecture per week in a formal classroom setting. Typical class size is 30 students. During these lectures there may be small group work with four students per group discussing salient issues with feedback from each group to the whole class. • You will need to work in your own time and in timetabled independent learning sessions in order to supplement lectures. In addition to the information resources available to you, you will be able to meet with the module co-ordinator for assistance as and when required.

• Working in small groups during the lecture and feeding back from those groups to the group as a whole • Working in your own time and in timetabled independent learning sessions you are expected to read supporting texts outlined in the book list and make reference to appropriate academic journals in order to support lectures

Core text

An introduction to the psychology of hearing, 5th edn., Moore, B.C.J. (2003), Academic Press

Handbook of Auditory Evoked Responses, Hall, J.W. (1992), Allyn and Bacon

Handbook of balance function testing, Jacobson, G.P., Newman, C.W., Kartush, J. M. (1997), Singular Press

Hearing: An introduction to psychological and physiological acoustics., Gelfand, S.A., Marcel Dekker Inc.