Structural connectome and cognitive performance in young stroke survivors.

With the automotive industry transitioning toward lightweight, electrified, and intelligent vehicles, consumer expectations for interior noise have shifted from mere quietness to acoustic texture and personalized sound characteristics. Traditional NVH (Noise, Vibration, Harshness) development methods typically focus on reducing sound pressure levels; however, they often fail to meet the refined requirements of high-end users for brand-specific tonal qualities, such as sportiness or luxury. SQ evaluation is a complex process involving subjective perception and cognitive interaction. Conventional acoustic assessment methods primarily rely on single physical metrics, such as sound pressure level or loudness, but studies indicate that these parameters alone cannot fully capture the human auditory perception and subjective preference for noise, thus failing to satisfy the multidimensional sound quality demands of modern automotive users. In recent years, an increasing number of psychoacoustic metrics have been proposed to more accurately quantify subjective sound perception. Concurrently, multidimensional sound quality evaluation methods have received growing attention. For instance, dividing SQ into dimensions such as Comfort, Sportiness, Luxury, and Timbre Pleasantness allows a more comprehensive characterization of occupants’ subjective experience. Nevertheless, most existing studies assume homogeneous perception across all evaluators, overlooking the potential impact of individual differences among drivers. Such differences may arise from factors including gender, age, driving experience, driving style, or psychological preferences, resulting in systematic scoring deviations for the same noise sample across different evaluators, and consequently affecting the accuracy and practical reliability of sound quality assessment models. Recent studies have demonstrated that individual differences among participants markedly influence SQ evaluations. For instance, in research on HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) noise, Italian and Japanese participants exhibited distinct preferences under identical noise stimuli. Under high airflow conditions, Japanese participants rated comfort significantly lower than Italian participants, while their annoyance scores were significantly higher. In vehicle interior SQ perception studies, Noumura et al. conducted large-scale subjective evaluations in the United States, Germany, and Japan, revealing that passenger perception primarily aligns along two dimensions: Luxury and Sportiness. Significant cross-national differences were observed: approximately 43% of U.S. participants preferred Sportiness and 57% preferred Luxury; in Japan, 59% favored Sportiness and 41% favored Luxury; German participants overwhelmingly preferred Luxury. A large-scale online survey by Wagner et al. further indicated that German consumers favor softer, quieter, and brighter vehicle sounds, with lower emphasis on roughness, sharpness, loudness, and timbre richness compared to American consumers. Kim et al. evaluated driving, operational, and warning sounds of a luxury sedan through in-vehicle testing, revealing substantial differences in preferences for rapid acceleration and warning sounds across countries: German and Korean participants preferred refined, low-resonance engine sounds, whereas American participants favored more pronounced engine harmonic components; German participants preferred traditional relay-type turn signal tones, while Korean participants were more receptive to electronically synthesized signals.