In his early career in the 1970s, Moore was mainly interested in fundamental research on
loudness and
pitch perception, masking effects, and
speech recognition. He started to consider the practical aspects and potential applications of this research in the 1980s with his work on a 2-channel compression hearing aid. has been cited over 5600 times and has been translated into Japanese, Polish, Korean, and Chinese. Other books include Cochlear hearing Loss and Auditory Processing of Temporal Fine Structure: Effects of Age and Hearing Loss.
Pitch perception Moore was one of the first researchers to present convincing evidence for the role of phase locking (the synchronization of nerve spikes to individual cycles of the filtered stimulus in the
cochlea) in the perception of
pitch. He showed that the ability of human listeners to detect small changes in frequency of brief tones was too good to be accounted for by a place mechanism of pitch for frequencies up to about 4
kHz. Together with Stephan Ernst he later showed that the ability to detect small changes in frequency worsened with increasing frequency from 2 to 8 kHz, consistent with the roll-off in the precision of phase-locking information at high frequencies, and then reached a plateau, consistent with a transition to a place mechanism. Together with Aleksander Sek he showed that phase locking to the temporal fine structure of complex tones contributes to the perception of pitch up to higher frequencies than previously assumed and that the detection of frequency modulation for low modulation rates also probably depends on phase locking.
Loudness perception and modelling Moore together with Brian Glasberg, Thomas Baer and Michael Stone developed a model for predicting the
loudness of sounds by extending and modifying the earlier models of Fletcher and Munson and of Zwicker and Scharf. The model proposed by Moore and co-workers formed the basis for an
American National Standard and an
ISO standard. An extension of the model to deal with time-varying sounds is under consideration as an ISO standard (ISO532-3, 2020). The loudness model of Moore and colleagues has been extended to predict loudness for people with hearing loss and this has been used to develop methods of fitting hearing aids.
Hearing aid design and fitting Moore collaborated in the development and evaluation of multi-channel compression
hearing aids intended to compensate for the loudness recruitment experienced by most hearing-impaired people. He and his colleagues developed a dual-time-constant
automatic gain control system that has been widely used in hearing aids and cochlear implants.
Diagnostic tests of hearing Moore and colleagues developed the Threshold Equalizing Noise (TEN) test for diagnosing dead regions in the cochlea; these are regions with very few or no functioning inner hair cells, synapses or neurons. The outcomes of the TEN test are relevant to the fitting of hearing aids and cochlear implants. The TEN test has been incorporated in the audiometers of several major manufacturers. Brian Moore also contributed to the development of tests for assessing monaural and binaural sensitivity to the temporal fine structure of sounds. These tests have been widely used in research and clinical studies.
Auditory scene analysis Moore and colleagues were among the first to demonstrate the role of harmonicity in
auditory scene analysis: simultaneous sinewaves that form a harmonic series are heard as a single sound object, but if a single sinewave is mistuned slightly from the harmonic series it “pops out” as a separate sound object. Moore and colleagues also showed that for rapid sequences of pure tones with alternating frequencies, the fission boundary (the frequency separation between successive tones at which they can no longer be heard as two separate streams) is constant across a wide range of centre frequencies when expressed on the ERBN-number scale developed in Moore's laboratory.
Effects of hearing loss and age on speech perception Moore and colleagues have conducted several studies examining the relationship between psychoacoustic abilities and speech perception by people with cochlear hearing loss and older people. They have shown that difficulties in speech perception are at least partly linked to reduced sensitivity to the temporal fine structure of sounds. Deficits in the processing of temporal fine structure are associated with increasing age even when audiometric thresholds remain normal. == Awards and honors ==