Modulation Filterbank model of the human auditory system

The Modulation Filterbank (MFB) model is a simple functional model of the human auditory system inspired by the work of Torsten Dau (PErceptual MOdel; Dau, Kollmeier & Kohlrausch, 1997) and Stefan Ewert (Envelope Power Spectrum Model; Ewert, Dau, 2000). These models aim at predicting the processing of temporal and spectral cues by human listeners.

The MFB is now available (together with 50 other models) in the new release of the Auditory Modeling Toolbox (AMT 1.0), an open access toolbox for Matlab and Octave. The model can be found under the name king2019 (see documentation and demo).

Administrative details

Collaborators: Christian Lorenzi, Alejandro Osses, Andrew King, Nicole Miller

Selected publications and presentations:

A general presentation of the toolbox « The Modulation Filterbank model, step-by-step presentation » (slides)

Description of the model, excerpt from Nicole Miller’s master’s thesis: NMiller_MFB  

List of publications using the MFB model:

Osses, A., Varnet, L., Carney, L., Dau, T., Bruce, I., Verhulst, S., Majdak, P. (2022). A comparative study of eight human auditory models of monaural processing. Acta Acustica, 6, pp.17 (article)

Varnet, L., Lorenzi, C. (2022). Probing temporal modulation detection in white noise using intrinsic envelope fluctuations: A reverse-correlation study. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 151 (2), pp.1353-1366. (article)

Ponsot, E., Varnet, L., Wallaert, N., Daoud, E., Shamma, S., Lorenzi, C., Neri, P. (2021). Mechanisms of spectrotemporal modulation detection for normal- and hearing-impaired listeners. Trends in Hearing, 25. (article)

Cabrera, L., Varnet, L., Buss, E., Rosen, S., Lorenzi, C. (2019). Development of temporal auditory processing in childhood: Changes in efficiency rather than temporal-modulation selectivity. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 146, 2415-2429. (article)

King, A., Varnet, L., Lorenzi, C. (2019). Accounting for masking of frequency modulation by amplitude modulation with the modulation filter-bank concept. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145, 2277-2293. (article)

Wallaert, N., Varnet, L., Moore, B. C. J., Lorenzi, C. (2018). Sensorineural hearing loss impairs sensitivity but spares temporal integration for detection of frequency modulation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 144, 720-733. (article)