Psychoacoustic effect of air-conducted sound on bone-conducted sound in dental drilling noise

When the teeth are drilled for the dental treatment in dental clinics, patients perceive the bone-conducted sound via their teeth in addition to the air-conducted sound from the ear. It is important to identify the characteristics of both the airconducted and the bone-conducted dental drilling sounds in order to reduce the unpleasant feeling during treatment. We have reported that high-frequency components in the air-conducted dental drilling sound have a great effect on the unpleasant impression in our former studies. In this study, the psychological evaluation of the bone-conducted dental drilling sounds via teeth with and without air-conducted sound from the ear was examined in order to find psychoacoustics effect of masker. As the results, some difference was found in the psychological evaluation between bone-conducted sounds alone, and air-conducted plus boneconducted sounds.