Re: Fitz and Kramer's audiomonitor

["John F. Olsen" <jfolsen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fitch and Kramer's multichannel auditory monitor is an intriguing device which
takes advantage of auditory capablility that is familiar to many
neurophysiologists.  In my experiments,  I find auditory monitoring of EKG to
be invaluable. Auditory monitoring conveys instantly changes in heart rate,
rhythm, and beat amplitude without the constant attention that a chart recorder
or an oscilloscope requires.  I also find it easy to correlate stimulus and
response through auditory monitoring of the stimulus and action potentials.
Best of all, both tasks can be done apparently simultaneously and in conjuction
with visually based tasks, such as typing instructions on a keyboard.  The
auditory mode seems to be capable of dividing and prioritizing attention to a
greater extent than the visual mode.  In addition, I have found that spatially
separating the audiomonitor that broadcasts the neural  response from the one
for the EKG makes both signals easier to follow. Perhaps Fitch and Kramer could
incorporate the auditory spatial dimension in a stereo physiological monitor
and thereby add another channel of information, eg., CO2 level coded by
elevation, 02 by azimuth.
John Olsen
Lab. Neurophysiology
NIMH