Coding of sounds in the auditory system and its relevance to signal processing and coding in cochlear implants.

PubMed

Moore, Brian C J

2003-03-01

To review how the properties of sounds are "coded" in the normal auditory system and to discuss the extent to which cochlear implants can and do represent these codes. Data are taken from published studies of the response of the cochlea and auditory nerve to simple and complex stimuli, in both the normal and the electrically stimulated ear. REVIEW CONTENT: The review describes: 1) the coding in the normal auditory system of overall level (which partly determines perceived loudness), spectral shape (which partly determines perceived timbre and the identity of speech sounds), periodicity (which partly determines pitch), and sound location; 2) the role of the active mechanism in the cochlea, and particularly the fast-acting compression associated with that mechanism; 3) the neural response patterns evoked by cochlear implants; and 4) how the response patterns evoked by implants differ from those observed in the normal auditory system in response to sound. A series of specific issues is then discussed, including: 1) how to compensate for the loss of cochlear compression; 2) the effective number of independent channels in a normal ear and in cochlear implantees; 3) the importance of independence of responses across neurons; 4) the stochastic nature of normal neural responses; 5) the possible role of across-channel coincidence detection; and 6) potential benefits of binaural implantation. Current cochlear implants do not adequately reproduce several aspects of the neural coding of sound in the normal auditory system. Improved electrode arrays and coding systems may lead to improved coding and, it is hoped, to better performance.

Neural coding strategies in auditory cortex.

PubMed

Wang, Xiaoqin

2007-07-01

In contrast to the visual system, the auditory system has longer subcortical pathways and more spiking synapses between the peripheral receptors and the cortex. This unique organization reflects the needs of the auditory system to extract behaviorally relevant information from a complex acoustic environment using strategies different from those used by other sensory systems. The neural representations of acoustic information in auditory cortex can be characterized by three types: (1) isomorphic (faithful) representations of acoustic structures; (2) non-isomorphic transformations of acoustic features and (3) transformations from acoustical to perceptual dimensions. The challenge facing auditory neurophysiologists is to understand the nature of the latter two transformations. In this article, I will review recent studies from our laboratory regarding temporal discharge patterns in auditory cortex of awake marmosets and cortical representations of time-varying signals. Findings from these studies show that (1) firing patterns of neurons in auditory cortex are dependent on stimulus optimality and context and (2) the auditory cortex forms internal representations of sounds that are no longer faithful replicas of their acoustic structures.

Slow Cholinergic Modulation of Spike Probability in Ultra-Fast Time-Coding Sensory Neurons

PubMed Central

Goyer, David; Kurth, Stefanie; Rübsamen, Rudolf

2016-01-01

Abstract Sensory processing in the lower auditory pathway is generally considered to be rigid and thus less subject to modulation than central processing. However, in addition to the powerful bottom-up excitation by auditory nerve fibers, the ventral cochlear nucleus also receives efferent cholinergic innervation from both auditory and nonauditory top–down sources. We thus tested the influence of cholinergic modulation on highly precise time-coding neurons in the cochlear nucleus of the Mongolian gerbil. By combining electrophysiological recordings with pharmacological application in vitro and in vivo, we found 55–72% of spherical bushy cells (SBCs) to be depolarized by carbachol on two time scales, ranging from hundreds of milliseconds to minutes. These effects were mediated by nicotinic and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, respectively. Pharmacological block of muscarinic receptors hyperpolarized the resting membrane potential, suggesting a novel mechanism of setting the resting membrane potential for SBC. The cholinergic depolarization led to an increase of spike probability in SBCs without compromising the temporal precision of the SBC output in vitro. In vivo, iontophoretic application of carbachol resulted in an increase in spontaneous SBC activity. The inclusion of cholinergic modulation in an SBC model predicted an expansion of the dynamic range of sound responses and increased temporal acuity. Our results thus suggest of a top–down modulatory system mediated by acetylcholine which influences temporally precise information processing in the lower auditory pathway. PMID:27699207

Auditory-neurophysiological responses to speech during early childhood: Effects of background noise

PubMed Central

White-Schwoch, Travis; Davies, Evan C.; Thompson, Elaine C.; Carr, Kali Woodruff; Nicol, Trent; Bradlow, Ann R.; Kraus, Nina

2015-01-01

Early childhood is a critical period of auditory learning, during which children are constantly mapping sounds to meaning. But learning rarely occurs under ideal listening conditions—children are forced to listen against a relentless din. This background noise degrades the neural coding of these critical sounds, in turn interfering with auditory learning. Despite the importance of robust and reliable auditory processing during early childhood, little is known about the neurophysiology underlying speech processing in children so young. To better understand the physiological constraints these adverse listening scenarios impose on speech sound coding during early childhood, auditory-neurophysiological responses were elicited to a consonant-vowel syllable in quiet and background noise in a cohort of typically-developing preschoolers (ages 3–5 yr). Overall, responses were degraded in noise: they were smaller, less stable across trials, slower, and there was poorer coding of spectral content and the temporal envelope. These effects were exacerbated in response to the consonant transition relative to the vowel, suggesting that the neural coding of spectrotemporally-dynamic speech features is more tenuous in noise than the coding of static features—even in children this young. Neural coding of speech temporal fine structure, however, was more resilient to the addition of background noise than coding of temporal envelope information. Taken together, these results demonstrate that noise places a neurophysiological constraint on speech processing during early childhood by causing a breakdown in neural processing of speech acoustics. These results may explain why some listeners have inordinate difficulties understanding speech in noise. Speech-elicited auditory-neurophysiological responses offer objective insight into listening skills during early childhood by reflecting the integrity of neural coding in quiet and noise; this paper documents typical response properties in this age group. These normative metrics may be useful clinically to evaluate auditory processing difficulties during early childhood. PMID:26113025

Sensorineural hearing loss amplifies neural coding of envelope information in the central auditory system of chinchillas

PubMed Central

Zhong, Ziwei; Henry, Kenneth S.; Heinz, Michael G.

2014-01-01

People with sensorineural hearing loss often have substantial difficulty understanding speech under challenging listening conditions. Behavioral studies suggest that reduced sensitivity to the temporal structure of sound may be responsible, but underlying neurophysiological pathologies are incompletely understood. Here, we investigate the effects of noise-induced hearing loss on coding of envelope (ENV) structure in the central auditory system of anesthetized chinchillas. ENV coding was evaluated noninvasively using auditory evoked potentials recorded from the scalp surface in response to sinusoidally amplitude modulated tones with carrier frequencies of 1, 2, 4, and 8 kHz and a modulation frequency of 140 Hz. Stimuli were presented in quiet and in three levels of white background noise. The latency of scalp-recorded ENV responses was consistent with generation in the auditory midbrain. Hearing loss amplified neural coding of ENV at carrier frequencies of 2 kHz and above. This result may reflect enhanced ENV coding from the periphery and/or an increase in the gain of central auditory neurons. In contrast to expectations, hearing loss was not associated with a stronger adverse effect of increasing masker intensity on ENV coding. The exaggerated neural representation of ENV information shown here at the level of the auditory midbrain helps to explain previous findings of enhanced sensitivity to amplitude modulation in people with hearing loss under some conditions. Furthermore, amplified ENV coding may potentially contribute to speech perception problems in people with cochlear hearing loss by acting as a distraction from more salient acoustic cues, particularly in fluctuating backgrounds. PMID:24315815

Cell-assembly coding in several memory processes.

PubMed

Sakurai, Y

1998-01-01

The present paper discusses why the cell assembly, i.e., an ensemble population of neurons with flexible functional connections, is a tenable view of the basic code for information processes in the brain. The main properties indicating the reality of cell-assembly coding are neurons overlaps among different assemblies and connection dynamics within and among the assemblies. The former can be detected as multiple functions of individual neurons in processing different kinds of information. Individual neurons appear to be involved in multiple information processes. The latter can be detected as changes of functional synaptic connections in processing different kinds of information. Correlations of activity among some of the recorded neurons appear to change in multiple information processes. Recent experiments have compared several different memory processes (tasks) and detected these two main properties, indicating cell-assembly coding of memory in the working brain. The first experiment compared different types of processing of identical stimuli, i.e., working memory and reference memory of auditory stimuli. The second experiment compared identical processes of different types of stimuli, i.e., discriminations of simple auditory, simple visual, and configural auditory-visual stimuli. The third experiment compared identical processes of different types of stimuli with or without temporal processing of stimuli, i.e., discriminations of elemental auditory, configural auditory-visual, and sequential auditory-visual stimuli. Some possible features of the cell-assembly coding, especially "dual coding" by individual neurons and cell assemblies, are discussed for future experimental approaches. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.

Non-visual spatial tasks reveal increased interactions with stance postural control.

PubMed

Woollacott, Marjorie; Vander Velde, Timothy

2008-05-07

The current investigation aimed to contrast the level and quality of dual-task interactions resulting from the combined performance of a challenging primary postural task and three specific, yet categorically dissociated, secondary central executive tasks. Experiments determined the extent to which modality (visual vs. auditory) and code (non-spatial vs. spatial) specific cognitive resources contributed to postural interference in young adults (n=9) in a dual-task setting. We hypothesized that the different forms of executive n-back task processing employed (visual-object, auditory-object and auditory-spatial) would display contrasting levels of interactions with tandem Romberg stance postural control, and that interactions within the spatial domain would be revealed as most vulnerable to dual-task interactions. Across all cognitive tasks employed, including auditory-object (aOBJ), auditory-spatial (aSPA), and visual-object (vOBJ) tasks, increasing n-back task complexity produced correlated increases in verbal reaction time measures. Increasing cognitive task complexity also resulted in consistent decreases in judgment accuracy. Postural performance was significantly influenced by the type of cognitive loading delivered. At comparable levels of cognitive task difficulty (n-back demands and accuracy judgments) the performance of challenging auditory-spatial tasks produced significantly greater levels of postural sway than either the auditory-object or visual-object based tasks. These results suggest that it is the employment of limited non-visual spatially based coding resources that may underlie previously observed visual dual-task interference effects with stance postural control in healthy young adults.

A possible role for a paralemniscal auditory pathway in the coding of slow temporal information

PubMed Central

Abrams, Daniel A.; Nicol, Trent; Zecker, Steven; Kraus, Nina

2010-01-01

Low frequency temporal information present in speech is critical for normal perception, however the neural mechanism underlying the differentiation of slow rates in acoustic signals is not known. Data from the rat trigeminal system suggest that the paralemniscal pathway may be specifically tuned to code low-frequency temporal information. We tested whether this phenomenon occurs in the auditory system by measuring the representation of temporal rate in lemniscal and paralemniscal auditory thalamus and cortex in guinea pig. Similar to the trigeminal system, responses measured in auditory thalamus indicate that slow rates are differentially represented in a paralemniscal pathway. In cortex, both lemniscal and paralemniscal neurons indicated sensitivity to slow rates. We speculate that a paralemniscal pathway in the auditory system may be specifically tuned to code low frequency temporal information present in acoustic signals. These data suggest that somatosensory and auditory modalities have parallel sub-cortical pathways that separately process slow rates and the spatial representation of the sensory periphery. PMID:21094680

Unsupervised learning of temporal features for word categorization in a spiking neural network model of the auditory brain.

PubMed

Higgins, Irina; Stringer, Simon; Schnupp, Jan

2017-01-01

The nature of the code used in the auditory cortex to represent complex auditory stimuli, such as naturally spoken words, remains a matter of debate. Here we argue that such representations are encoded by stable spatio-temporal patterns of firing within cell assemblies known as polychronous groups, or PGs. We develop a physiologically grounded, unsupervised spiking neural network model of the auditory brain with local, biologically realistic, spike-time dependent plasticity (STDP) learning, and show that the plastic cortical layers of the network develop PGs which convey substantially more information about the speaker independent identity of two naturally spoken word stimuli than does rate encoding that ignores the precise spike timings. We furthermore demonstrate that such informative PGs can only develop if the input spatio-temporal spike patterns to the plastic cortical areas of the model are relatively stable.

Unsupervised learning of temporal features for word categorization in a spiking neural network model of the auditory brain

PubMed Central

Stringer, Simon

2017-01-01

The nature of the code used in the auditory cortex to represent complex auditory stimuli, such as naturally spoken words, remains a matter of debate. Here we argue that such representations are encoded by stable spatio-temporal patterns of firing within cell assemblies known as polychronous groups, or PGs. We develop a physiologically grounded, unsupervised spiking neural network model of the auditory brain with local, biologically realistic, spike-time dependent plasticity (STDP) learning, and show that the plastic cortical layers of the network develop PGs which convey substantially more information about the speaker independent identity of two naturally spoken word stimuli than does rate encoding that ignores the precise spike timings. We furthermore demonstrate that such informative PGs can only develop if the input spatio-temporal spike patterns to the plastic cortical areas of the model are relatively stable. PMID:28797034

Incorporating Auditory Models in Speech/Audio Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Krishnamoorthi, Harish

2011-12-01

Following the success in incorporating perceptual models in audio coding algorithms, their application in other speech/audio processing systems is expanding. In general, all perceptual speech/audio processing algorithms involve minimization of an objective function that directly/indirectly incorporates properties of human perception. This dissertation primarily investigates the problems associated with directly embedding an auditory model in the objective function formulation and proposes possible solutions to overcome high complexity issues for use in real-time speech/audio algorithms. Specific problems addressed in this dissertation include: 1) the development of approximate but computationally efficient auditory model implementations that are consistent with the principles of psychoacoustics, 2) the development of a mapping scheme that allows synthesizing a time/frequency domain representation from its equivalent auditory model output. The first problem is aimed at addressing the high computational complexity involved in solving perceptual objective functions that require repeated application of auditory model for evaluation of different candidate solutions. In this dissertation, a frequency pruning and a detector pruning algorithm is developed that efficiently implements the various auditory model stages. The performance of the pruned model is compared to that of the original auditory model for different types of test signals in the SQAM database. Experimental results indicate only a 4-7% relative error in loudness while attaining up to 80-90 % reduction in computational complexity. Similarly, a hybrid algorithm is developed specifically for use with sinusoidal signals and employs the proposed auditory pattern combining technique together with a look-up table to store representative auditory patterns. The second problem obtains an estimate of the auditory representation that minimizes a perceptual objective function and transforms the auditory pattern back to its equivalent time/frequency representation. This avoids the repeated application of auditory model stages to test different candidate time/frequency vectors in minimizing perceptual objective functions. In this dissertation, a constrained mapping scheme is developed by linearizing certain auditory model stages that ensures obtaining a time/frequency mapping corresponding to the estimated auditory representation. This paradigm was successfully incorporated in a perceptual speech enhancement algorithm and a sinusoidal component selection task.

Sparse gammatone signal model optimized for English speech does not match the human auditory filters.

PubMed

Strahl, Stefan; Mertins, Alfred

2008-07-18

Evidence that neurosensory systems use sparse signal representations as well as improved performance of signal processing algorithms using sparse signal models raised interest in sparse signal coding in the last years. For natural audio signals like speech and environmental sounds, gammatone atoms have been derived as expansion functions that generate a nearly optimal sparse signal model (Smith, E., Lewicki, M., 2006. Efficient auditory coding. Nature 439, 978-982). Furthermore, gammatone functions are established models for the human auditory filters. Thus far, a practical application of a sparse gammatone signal model has been prevented by the fact that deriving the sparsest representation is, in general, computationally intractable. In this paper, we applied an accelerated version of the matching pursuit algorithm for gammatone dictionaries allowing real-time and large data set applications. We show that a sparse signal model in general has advantages in audio coding and that a sparse gammatone signal model encodes speech more efficiently in terms of sparseness than a sparse modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) signal model. We also show that the optimal gammatone parameters derived for English speech do not match the human auditory filters, suggesting for signal processing applications to derive the parameters individually for each applied signal class instead of using psychometrically derived parameters. For brain research, it means that care should be taken with directly transferring findings of optimality for technical to biological systems.

A rapid form of activity-dependent recovery from short-term synaptic depression in the intensity pathway of the auditory brainstem

PubMed Central

Horiuchi, Timothy K.

2011-01-01

Short-term synaptic plasticity acts as a time- and firing rate-dependent filter that mediates the transmission of information across synapses. In the avian auditory brainstem, specific forms of plasticity are expressed at different terminals of the same auditory nerve fibers and contribute to the divergence of acoustic timing and intensity information. To identify key differences in the plasticity properties, we made patch-clamp recordings from neurons in the cochlear nucleus responsible for intensity coding, nucleus angularis, and measured the time course of the recovery of excitatory postsynaptic currents following short-term synaptic depression. These synaptic responses showed a very rapid recovery, following a bi-exponential time course with a fast time constant of ~40 ms and a dependence on the presynaptic activity levels, resulting in a crossing over of the recovery trajectories following high-rate versus low-rate stimulation trains. We also show that the recorded recovery in the intensity pathway differs from similar recordings in the timing pathway, specifically the cochlear nucleus magnocellularis, in two ways: (1) a fast recovery that was not due to recovery from postsynaptic receptor desensitization and (2) a recovery trajectory that was characterized by a non-monotonic bump that may be due in part to facilitation mechanisms more prevalent in the intensity pathway. We tested whether a previously proposed model of synaptic transmission based on vesicle depletion and sequential steps of vesicle replenishment could account for the recovery responses, and found it was insufficient, suggesting an activity-dependent feedback mechanism is present. We propose that the rapid recovery following depression allows improved coding of natural auditory signals that often consist of sound bursts separated by short gaps. PMID:21409439

Different Timescales for the Neural Coding of Consonant and Vowel Sounds

PubMed Central

Perez, Claudia A.; Engineer, Crystal T.; Jakkamsetti, Vikram; Carraway, Ryan S.; Perry, Matthew S.

2013-01-01

Psychophysical, clinical, and imaging evidence suggests that consonant and vowel sounds have distinct neural representations. This study tests the hypothesis that consonant and vowel sounds are represented on different timescales within the same population of neurons by comparing behavioral discrimination with neural discrimination based on activity recorded in rat inferior colliculus and primary auditory cortex. Performance on 9 vowel discrimination tasks was highly correlated with neural discrimination based on spike count and was not correlated when spike timing was preserved. In contrast, performance on 11 consonant discrimination tasks was highly correlated with neural discrimination when spike timing was preserved and not when spike timing was eliminated. These results suggest that in the early stages of auditory processing, spike count encodes vowel sounds and spike timing encodes consonant sounds. These distinct coding strategies likely contribute to the robust nature of speech sound representations and may help explain some aspects of developmental and acquired speech processing disorders. PMID:22426334

Differential coding of conspecific vocalizations in the ventral auditory cortical stream.

PubMed

Fukushima, Makoto; Saunders, Richard C; Leopold, David A; Mishkin, Mortimer; Averbeck, Bruno B

2014-03-26

The mammalian auditory cortex integrates spectral and temporal acoustic features to support the perception of complex sounds, including conspecific vocalizations. Here we investigate coding of vocal stimuli in different subfields in macaque auditory cortex. We simultaneously measured auditory evoked potentials over a large swath of primary and higher order auditory cortex along the supratemporal plane in three animals chronically using high-density microelectrocorticographic arrays. To evaluate the capacity of neural activity to discriminate individual stimuli in these high-dimensional datasets, we applied a regularized multivariate classifier to evoked potentials to conspecific vocalizations. We found a gradual decrease in the level of overall classification performance along the caudal to rostral axis. Furthermore, the performance in the caudal sectors was similar across individual stimuli, whereas the performance in the rostral sectors significantly differed for different stimuli. Moreover, the information about vocalizations in the caudal sectors was similar to the information about synthetic stimuli that contained only the spectral or temporal features of the original vocalizations. In the rostral sectors, however, the classification for vocalizations was significantly better than that for the synthetic stimuli, suggesting that conjoined spectral and temporal features were necessary to explain differential coding of vocalizations in the rostral areas. We also found that this coding in the rostral sector was carried primarily in the theta frequency band of the response. These findings illustrate a progression in neural coding of conspecific vocalizations along the ventral auditory pathway.

Differential Coding of Conspecific Vocalizations in the Ventral Auditory Cortical Stream

PubMed Central

Saunders, Richard C.; Leopold, David A.; Mishkin, Mortimer; Averbeck, Bruno B.

2014-01-01

The mammalian auditory cortex integrates spectral and temporal acoustic features to support the perception of complex sounds, including conspecific vocalizations. Here we investigate coding of vocal stimuli in different subfields in macaque auditory cortex. We simultaneously measured auditory evoked potentials over a large swath of primary and higher order auditory cortex along the supratemporal plane in three animals chronically using high-density microelectrocorticographic arrays. To evaluate the capacity of neural activity to discriminate individual stimuli in these high-dimensional datasets, we applied a regularized multivariate classifier to evoked potentials to conspecific vocalizations. We found a gradual decrease in the level of overall classification performance along the caudal to rostral axis. Furthermore, the performance in the caudal sectors was similar across individual stimuli, whereas the performance in the rostral sectors significantly differed for different stimuli. Moreover, the information about vocalizations in the caudal sectors was similar to the information about synthetic stimuli that contained only the spectral or temporal features of the original vocalizations. In the rostral sectors, however, the classification for vocalizations was significantly better than that for the synthetic stimuli, suggesting that conjoined spectral and temporal features were necessary to explain differential coding of vocalizations in the rostral areas. We also found that this coding in the rostral sector was carried primarily in the theta frequency band of the response. These findings illustrate a progression in neural coding of conspecific vocalizations along the ventral auditory pathway. PMID:24672012

Using individual differences to test the role of temporal and place cues in coding frequency modulation

PubMed Central

Whiteford, Kelly L.; Oxenham, Andrew J.

2015-01-01

The question of how frequency is coded in the peripheral auditory system remains unresolved. Previous research has suggested that slow rates of frequency modulation (FM) of a low carrier frequency may be coded via phase-locked temporal information in the auditory nerve, whereas FM at higher rates and/or high carrier frequencies may be coded via a rate-place (tonotopic) code. This hypothesis was tested in a cohort of 100 young normal-hearing listeners by comparing individual sensitivity to slow-rate (1-Hz) and fast-rate (20-Hz) FM at a carrier frequency of 500 Hz with independent measures of phase-locking (using dynamic interaural time difference, ITD, discrimination), level coding (using amplitude modulation, AM, detection), and frequency selectivity (using forward-masking patterns). All FM and AM thresholds were highly correlated with each other. However, no evidence was obtained for stronger correlations between measures thought to reflect phase-locking (e.g., slow-rate FM and ITD sensitivity), or between measures thought to reflect tonotopic coding (fast-rate FM and forward-masking patterns). The results suggest that either psychoacoustic performance in young normal-hearing listeners is not limited by peripheral coding, or that similar peripheral mechanisms limit both high- and low-rate FM coding. PMID:26627783

Using individual differences to test the role of temporal and place cues in coding frequency modulation.

PubMed

Whiteford, Kelly L; Oxenham, Andrew J

2015-11-01

The question of how frequency is coded in the peripheral auditory system remains unresolved. Previous research has suggested that slow rates of frequency modulation (FM) of a low carrier frequency may be coded via phase-locked temporal information in the auditory nerve, whereas FM at higher rates and/or high carrier frequencies may be coded via a rate-place (tonotopic) code. This hypothesis was tested in a cohort of 100 young normal-hearing listeners by comparing individual sensitivity to slow-rate (1-Hz) and fast-rate (20-Hz) FM at a carrier frequency of 500 Hz with independent measures of phase-locking (using dynamic interaural time difference, ITD, discrimination), level coding (using amplitude modulation, AM, detection), and frequency selectivity (using forward-masking patterns). All FM and AM thresholds were highly correlated with each other. However, no evidence was obtained for stronger correlations between measures thought to reflect phase-locking (e.g., slow-rate FM and ITD sensitivity), or between measures thought to reflect tonotopic coding (fast-rate FM and forward-masking patterns). The results suggest that either psychoacoustic performance in young normal-hearing listeners is not limited by peripheral coding, or that similar peripheral mechanisms limit both high- and low-rate FM coding.

Efficient coding of spectrotemporal binaural sounds leads to emergence of the auditory space representation

PubMed Central

Młynarski, Wiktor

2014-01-01

To date a number of studies have shown that receptive field shapes of early sensory neurons can be reproduced by optimizing coding efficiency of natural stimulus ensembles. A still unresolved question is whether the efficient coding hypothesis explains formation of neurons which explicitly represent environmental features of different functional importance. This paper proposes that the spatial selectivity of higher auditory neurons emerges as a direct consequence of learning efficient codes for natural binaural sounds. Firstly, it is demonstrated that a linear efficient coding transform—Independent Component Analysis (ICA) trained on spectrograms of naturalistic simulated binaural sounds extracts spatial information present in the signal. A simple hierarchical ICA extension allowing for decoding of sound position is proposed. Furthermore, it is shown that units revealing spatial selectivity can be learned from a binaural recording of a natural auditory scene. In both cases a relatively small subpopulation of learned spectrogram features suffices to perform accurate sound localization. Representation of the auditory space is therefore learned in a purely unsupervised way by maximizing the coding efficiency and without any task-specific constraints. This results imply that efficient coding is a useful strategy for learning structures which allow for making behaviorally vital inferences about the environment. PMID:24639644

The Role of Inhibition in a Computational Model of an Auditory Cortical Neuron during the Encoding of Temporal Information

PubMed Central

Bendor, Daniel

2015-01-01

In auditory cortex, temporal information within a sound is represented by two complementary neural codes: a temporal representation based on stimulus-locked firing and a rate representation, where discharge rate co-varies with the timing between acoustic events but lacks a stimulus-synchronized response. Using a computational neuronal model, we find that stimulus-locked responses are generated when sound-evoked excitation is combined with strong, delayed inhibition. In contrast to this, a non-synchronized rate representation is generated when the net excitation evoked by the sound is weak, which occurs when excitation is coincident and balanced with inhibition. Using single-unit recordings from awake marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), we validate several model predictions, including differences in the temporal fidelity, discharge rates and temporal dynamics of stimulus-evoked responses between neurons with rate and temporal representations. Together these data suggest that feedforward inhibition provides a parsimonious explanation of the neural coding dichotomy observed in auditory cortex. PMID:25879843

Effects of Secondary Task Modality and Processing Code on Automation Trust and Utilization During Simulated Airline Luggage Screening

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Phillips, Rachel; Madhavan, Poornima

2010-01-01

The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of environmental distractions on human trust and utilization of automation during the process of visual search. Participants performed a computer-simulated airline luggage screening task with the assistance of a 70% reliable automated decision aid (called DETECTOR) both with and without environmental distractions. The distraction was implemented as a secondary task in either a competing modality (visual) or non-competing modality (auditory). The secondary task processing code either competed with the luggage screening task (spatial code) or with the automation's textual directives (verbal code). We measured participants' system trust, perceived reliability of the system (when a target weapon was present and absent), compliance, reliance, and confidence when agreeing and disagreeing with the system under both distracted and undistracted conditions. Results revealed that system trust was lower in the visual-spatial and auditory-verbal conditions than in the visual-verbal and auditory-spatial conditions. Perceived reliability of the system (when the target was present) was significantly higher when the secondary task was visual rather than auditory. Compliance with the aid increased in all conditions except for the auditory-verbal condition, where it decreased. Similar to the pattern for trust, reliance on the automation was lower in the visual-spatial and auditory-verbal conditions than in the visual-verbal and auditory-spatial conditions. Confidence when agreeing with the system decreased with the addition of any kind of distraction; however, confidence when disagreeing increased with the addition of an auditory secondary task but decreased with the addition of a visual task. A model was developed to represent the research findings and demonstrate the relationship between secondary task modality, processing code, and automation use. Results suggest that the nature of environmental distractions influence interaction with automation via significant effects on trust and system utilization. These findings have implications for both automation design and operator training.

Representations of Pitch and Timbre Variation in Human Auditory Cortex

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Pitch and timbre are two primary dimensions of auditory perception, but how they are represented in the human brain remains a matter of contention. Some animal studies of auditory cortical processing have suggested modular processing, with different brain regions preferentially coding for pitch or timbre, whereas other studies have suggested a distributed code for different attributes across the same population of neurons. This study tested whether variations in pitch and timbre elicit activity in distinct regions of the human temporal lobes. Listeners were presented with sequences of sounds that varied in either fundamental frequency (eliciting changes in pitch) or spectral centroid (eliciting changes in brightness, an important attribute of timbre), with the degree of pitch or timbre variation in each sequence parametrically manipulated. The BOLD responses from auditory cortex increased with increasing sequence variance along each perceptual dimension. The spatial extent, region, and laterality of the cortical regions most responsive to variations in pitch or timbre at the univariate level of analysis were largely overlapping. However, patterns of activation in response to pitch or timbre variations were discriminable in most subjects at an individual level using multivoxel pattern analysis, suggesting a distributed coding of the two dimensions bilaterally in human auditory cortex. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Pitch and timbre are two crucial aspects of auditory perception. Pitch governs our perception of musical melodies and harmonies, and conveys both prosodic and (in tone languages) lexical information in speech. Brightness—an aspect of timbre or sound quality—allows us to distinguish different musical instruments and speech sounds. Frequency-mapping studies have revealed tonotopic organization in primary auditory cortex, but the use of pure tones or noise bands has precluded the possibility of dissociating pitch from brightness. Our results suggest a distributed code, with no clear anatomical distinctions between auditory cortical regions responsive to changes in either pitch or timbre, but also reveal a population code that can differentiate between changes in either dimension within the same cortical regions. PMID:28025255

Speech Rhythms and Multiplexed Oscillatory Sensory Coding in the Human Brain

PubMed Central

Gross, Joachim; Hoogenboom, Nienke; Thut, Gregor; Schyns, Philippe; Panzeri, Stefano; Belin, Pascal; Garrod, Simon

2013-01-01

Cortical oscillations are likely candidates for segmentation and coding of continuous speech. Here, we monitored continuous speech processing with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to unravel the principles of speech segmentation and coding. We demonstrate that speech entrains the phase of low-frequency (delta, theta) and the amplitude of high-frequency (gamma) oscillations in the auditory cortex. Phase entrainment is stronger in the right and amplitude entrainment is stronger in the left auditory cortex. Furthermore, edges in the speech envelope phase reset auditory cortex oscillations thereby enhancing their entrainment to speech. This mechanism adapts to the changing physical features of the speech envelope and enables efficient, stimulus-specific speech sampling. Finally, we show that within the auditory cortex, coupling between delta, theta, and gamma oscillations increases following speech edges. Importantly, all couplings (i.e., brain-speech and also within the cortex) attenuate for backward-presented speech, suggesting top-down control. We conclude that segmentation and coding of speech relies on a nested hierarchy of entrained cortical oscillations. PMID:24391472

Rapid change in articulatory lip movement induced by preceding auditory feedback during production of bilabial plosives.

PubMed

Mochida, Takemi; Gomi, Hiroaki; Kashino, Makio

2010-11-08

There has been plentiful evidence of kinesthetically induced rapid compensation for unanticipated perturbation in speech articulatory movements. However, the role of auditory information in stabilizing articulation has been little studied except for the control of voice fundamental frequency, voice amplitude and vowel formant frequencies. Although the influence of auditory information on the articulatory control process is evident in unintended speech errors caused by delayed auditory feedback, the direct and immediate effect of auditory alteration on the movements of articulators has not been clarified. This work examined whether temporal changes in the auditory feedback of bilabial plosives immediately affects the subsequent lip movement. We conducted experiments with an auditory feedback alteration system that enabled us to replace or block speech sounds in real time. Participants were asked to produce the syllable /pa/ repeatedly at a constant rate. During the repetition, normal auditory feedback was interrupted, and one of three pre-recorded syllables /pa/, /Φa/, or /pi/, spoken by the same participant, was presented once at a different timing from the anticipated production onset, while no feedback was presented for subsequent repetitions. Comparisons of the labial distance trajectories under altered and normal feedback conditions indicated that the movement quickened during the short period immediately after the alteration onset, when /pa/ was presented 50 ms before the expected timing. Such change was not significant under other feedback conditions we tested. The earlier articulation rapidly induced by the progressive auditory input suggests that a compensatory mechanism helps to maintain a constant speech rate by detecting errors between the internally predicted and actually provided auditory information associated with self movement. The timing- and context-dependent effects of feedback alteration suggest that the sensory error detection works in a temporally asymmetric window where acoustic features of the syllable to be produced may be coded.

Burst Firing is a Neural Code in an Insect Auditory System

PubMed Central

Eyherabide, Hugo G.; Rokem, Ariel; Herz, Andreas V. M.; Samengo, Inés

2008-01-01

Various classes of neurons alternate between high-frequency discharges and silent intervals. This phenomenon is called burst firing. To analyze burst activity in an insect system, grasshopper auditory receptor neurons were recorded in vivo for several distinct stimulus types. The experimental data show that both burst probability and burst characteristics are strongly influenced by temporal modulations of the acoustic stimulus. The tendency to burst, hence, is not only determined by cell-intrinsic processes, but also by their interaction with the stimulus time course. We study this interaction quantitatively and observe that bursts containing a certain number of spikes occur shortly after stimulus deflections of specific intensity and duration. Our findings suggest a sparse neural code where information about the stimulus is represented by the number of spikes per burst, irrespective of the detailed interspike-interval structure within a burst. This compact representation cannot be interpreted as a firing-rate code. An information-theoretical analysis reveals that the number of spikes per burst reliably conveys information about the amplitude and duration of sound transients, whereas their time of occurrence is reflected by the burst onset time. The investigated neurons encode almost half of the total transmitted information in burst activity. PMID:18946533

Auditory brainstem response to complex sounds: a tutorial

PubMed Central

Skoe, Erika; Kraus, Nina

2010-01-01

This tutorial provides a comprehensive overview of the methodological approach to collecting and analyzing auditory brainstem responses to complex sounds (cABRs). cABRs provide a window into how behaviorally relevant sounds such as speech and music are processed in the brain. Because temporal and spectral characteristics of sounds are preserved in this subcortical response, cABRs can be used to assess specific impairments and enhancements in auditory processing. Notably, subcortical function is neither passive nor hardwired but dynamically interacts with higher-level cognitive processes to refine how sounds are transcribed into neural code. This experience-dependent plasticity, which can occur on a number of time scales (e.g., life-long experience with speech or music, short-term auditory training, online auditory processing), helps shape sensory perception. Thus, by being an objective and non-invasive means for examining cognitive function and experience-dependent processes in sensory activity, cABRs have considerable utility in the study of populations where auditory function is of interest (e.g., auditory experts such as musicians, persons with hearing loss, auditory processing and language disorders). This tutorial is intended for clinicians and researchers seeking to integrate cABRs into their clinical and/or research programs. PMID:20084007

Electrophysiological Evidence for the Sources of the Masking Level Difference.

PubMed

Fowler, Cynthia G

2017-08-16

The purpose of this review article is to review evidence from auditory evoked potential studies to describe the contributions of the auditory brainstem and cortex to the generation of the masking level difference (MLD). A literature review was performed, focusing on the auditory brainstem, middle, and late latency responses used in protocols similar to those used to generate the behavioral MLD. Temporal coding of the signals necessary for generating the MLD occurs in the auditory periphery and brainstem. Brainstem disorders up to wave III of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) can disrupt the MLD. The full MLD requires input to the generators of the auditory late latency potentials to produce all characteristics of the MLD; these characteristics include threshold differences for various binaural signal and noise conditions. Studies using central auditory lesions are beginning to identify the cortical effects on the MLD. The MLD requires auditory processing from the periphery to cortical areas. A healthy auditory periphery and brainstem codes temporal synchrony, which is essential for the ABR. Threshold differences require engaging cortical function beyond the primary auditory cortex. More studies using cortical lesions and evoked potentials or imaging should clarify the specific cortical areas involved in the MLD.

Distinct Correlation Structure Supporting a Rate-Code for Sound Localization in the Owl’s Auditory Forebrain

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Abstract While a topographic map of auditory space exists in the vertebrate midbrain, it is absent in the forebrain. Yet, both brain regions are implicated in sound localization. The heterogeneous spatial tuning of adjacent sites in the forebrain compared to the midbrain reflects different underlying circuitries, which is expected to affect the correlation structure, i.e., signal (similarity of tuning) and noise (trial-by-trial variability) correlations. Recent studies have drawn attention to the impact of response correlations on the information readout from a neural population. We thus analyzed the correlation structure in midbrain and forebrain regions of the barn owl’s auditory system. Tetrodes were used to record in the midbrain and two forebrain regions, Field L and the downstream auditory arcopallium (AAr), in anesthetized owls. Nearby neurons in the midbrain showed high signal and noise correlations (RNCs), consistent with shared inputs. As previously reported, Field L was arranged in random clusters of similarly tuned neurons. Interestingly, AAr neurons displayed homogeneous monotonic azimuth tuning, while response variability of nearby neurons was significantly less correlated than the midbrain. Using a decoding approach, we demonstrate that low RNC in AAr restricts the potentially detrimental effect it can have on information, assuming a rate code proposed for mammalian sound localization. This study harnesses the power of correlation structure analysis to investigate the coding of auditory space. Our findings demonstrate distinct correlation structures in the auditory midbrain and forebrain, which would be beneficial for a rate-code framework for sound localization in the nontopographic forebrain representation of auditory space. PMID:28674698

Disruption of hierarchical predictive coding during sleep

PubMed Central

Strauss, Melanie; Sitt, Jacobo D.; King, Jean-Remi; Elbaz, Maxime; Azizi, Leila; Buiatti, Marco; Naccache, Lionel; van Wassenhove, Virginie; Dehaene, Stanislas

2015-01-01

When presented with an auditory sequence, the brain acts as a predictive-coding device that extracts regularities in the transition probabilities between sounds and detects unexpected deviations from these regularities. Does such prediction require conscious vigilance, or does it continue to unfold automatically in the sleeping brain? The mismatch negativity and P300 components of the auditory event-related potential, reflecting two steps of auditory novelty detection, have been inconsistently observed in the various sleep stages. To clarify whether these steps remain during sleep, we recorded simultaneous electroencephalographic and magnetoencephalographic signals during wakefulness and during sleep in normal subjects listening to a hierarchical auditory paradigm including short-term (local) and long-term (global) regularities. The global response, reflected in the P300, vanished during sleep, in line with the hypothesis that it is a correlate of high-level conscious error detection. The local mismatch response remained across all sleep stages (N1, N2, and REM sleep), but with an incomplete structure; compared with wakefulness, a specific peak reflecting prediction error vanished during sleep. Those results indicate that sleep leaves initial auditory processing and passive sensory response adaptation intact, but specifically disrupts both short-term and long-term auditory predictive coding. PMID:25737555

Constructing Noise-Invariant Representations of Sound in the Auditory Pathway

PubMed Central

Rabinowitz, Neil C.; Willmore, Ben D. B.; King, Andrew J.; Schnupp, Jan W. H.

2013-01-01

Identifying behaviorally relevant sounds in the presence of background noise is one of the most important and poorly understood challenges faced by the auditory system. An elegant solution to this problem would be for the auditory system to represent sounds in a noise-invariant fashion. Since a major effect of background noise is to alter the statistics of the sounds reaching the ear, noise-invariant representations could be promoted by neurons adapting to stimulus statistics. Here we investigated the extent of neuronal adaptation to the mean and contrast of auditory stimulation as one ascends the auditory pathway. We measured these forms of adaptation by presenting complex synthetic and natural sounds, recording neuronal responses in the inferior colliculus and primary fields of the auditory cortex of anaesthetized ferrets, and comparing these responses with a sophisticated model of the auditory nerve. We find that the strength of both forms of adaptation increases as one ascends the auditory pathway. To investigate whether this adaptation to stimulus statistics contributes to the construction of noise-invariant sound representations, we also presented complex, natural sounds embedded in stationary noise, and used a decoding approach to assess the noise tolerance of the neuronal population code. We find that the code for complex sounds in the periphery is affected more by the addition of noise than the cortical code. We also find that noise tolerance is correlated with adaptation to stimulus statistics, so that populations that show the strongest adaptation to stimulus statistics are also the most noise-tolerant. This suggests that the increase in adaptation to sound statistics from auditory nerve to midbrain to cortex is an important stage in the construction of noise-invariant sound representations in the higher auditory brain. PMID:24265596

Seasonal Plasticity of Precise Spike Timing in the Avian Auditory System

PubMed Central

Sen, Kamal; Rubel, Edwin W; Brenowitz, Eliot A.

2015-01-01

Vertebrate audition is a dynamic process, capable of exhibiting both short- and long-term adaptations to varying listening conditions. Precise spike timing has long been known to play an important role in auditory encoding, but its role in sensory plasticity remains largely unexplored. We addressed this issue in Gambel's white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii), a songbird that shows pronounced seasonal fluctuations in circulating levels of sex-steroid hormones, which are known to be potent neuromodulators of auditory function. We recorded extracellular single-unit activity in the auditory forebrain of males and females under different breeding conditions and used a computational approach to explore two potential strategies for the neural discrimination of sound level: one based on spike counts and one based on spike timing reliability. We report that breeding condition has robust sex-specific effects on spike timing. Specifically, in females, breeding condition increases the proportion of cells that rely solely on spike timing information and increases the temporal resolution required for optimal intensity encoding. Furthermore, in a functionally distinct subset of cells that are particularly well suited for amplitude encoding, female breeding condition enhances spike timing-based discrimination accuracy. No effects of breeding condition were observed in males. Our results suggest that high-resolution temporal discharge patterns may provide a plastic neural substrate for sensory coding. PMID:25716843

Neural coding of time-varying interaural time differences and time-varying amplitude in the inferior colliculus

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Binaural cues occurring in natural environments are frequently time varying, either from the motion of a sound source or through interactions between the cues produced by multiple sources. Yet, a broad understanding of how the auditory system processes dynamic binaural cues is still lacking. In the current study, we directly compared neural responses in the inferior colliculus (IC) of unanesthetized rabbits to broadband noise with time-varying interaural time differences (ITD) with responses to noise with sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) over a wide range of modulation frequencies. On the basis of prior research, we hypothesized that the IC, one of the first stages to exhibit tuning of firing rate to modulation frequency, might use a common mechanism to encode time-varying information in general. Instead, we found weaker temporal coding for dynamic ITD compared with amplitude modulation and stronger effects of adaptation for amplitude modulation. The differences in temporal coding of dynamic ITD compared with SAM at the single-neuron level could be a neural correlate of “binaural sluggishness,” the inability to perceive fluctuations in time-varying binaural cues at high modulation frequencies, for which a physiological explanation has so far remained elusive. At ITD-variation frequencies of 64 Hz and above, where a temporal code was less effective, noise with a dynamic ITD could still be distinguished from noise with a constant ITD through differences in average firing rate in many neurons, suggesting a frequency-dependent tradeoff between rate and temporal coding of time-varying binaural information. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Humans use time-varying binaural cues to parse auditory scenes comprising multiple sound sources and reverberation. However, the neural mechanisms for doing so are poorly understood. Our results demonstrate a potential neural correlate for the reduced detectability of fluctuations in time-varying binaural information at high speeds, as occurs in reverberation. The results also suggest that the neural mechanisms for processing time-varying binaural and monaural cues are largely distinct. PMID:28381487

Coding of auditory temporal and pitch information by hippocampal individual cells and cell assemblies in the rat.

PubMed

Sakurai, Y

2002-01-01

This study reports how hippocampal individual cells and cell assemblies cooperate for neural coding of pitch and temporal information in memory processes for auditory stimuli. Each rat performed two tasks, one requiring discrimination of auditory pitch (high or low) and the other requiring discrimination of their duration (long or short). Some CA1 and CA3 complex-spike neurons showed task-related differential activity between the high and low tones in only the pitch-discrimination task. However, without exception, neurons which showed task-related differential activity between the long and short tones in the duration-discrimination task were always task-related neurons in the pitch-discrimination task. These results suggest that temporal information (long or short), in contrast to pitch information (high or low), cannot be coded independently by specific neurons. The results also indicate that the two different behavioral tasks cannot be fully differentiated by the task-related single neurons alone and suggest a model of cell-assembly coding of the tasks. Cross-correlation analysis among activities of simultaneously recorded multiple neurons supported the suggested cell-assembly model.Considering those results, this study concludes that dual coding by hippocampal single neurons and cell assemblies is working in memory processing of pitch and temporal information of auditory stimuli. The single neurons encode both auditory pitches and their temporal lengths and the cell assemblies encode types of tasks (contexts or situations) in which the pitch and the temporal information are processed.

Auditory memory can be object based.

PubMed

Dyson, Benjamin J; Ishfaq, Feraz

2008-04-01

Identifying how memories are organized remains a fundamental issue in psychology. Previous work has shown that visual short-term memory is organized according to the object of origin, with participants being better at retrieving multiple pieces of information from the same object than from different objects. However, it is not yet clear whether similar memory structures are employed for other modalities, such as audition. Under analogous conditions in the auditory domain, we found that short-term memories for sound can also be organized according to object, with a same-object advantage being demonstrated for the retrieval of information in an auditory scene defined by two complex sounds overlapping in both space and time. Our results provide support for the notion of an auditory object, in addition to the continued identification of similar processing constraints across visual and auditory domains. The identification of modality-independent organizational principles of memory, such as object-based coding, suggests possible mechanisms by which the human processing system remembers multimodal experiences.

On the Relevance of Natural Stimuli for the Study of Brainstem Correlates: The Example of Consonance Perception

PubMed Central

Cousineau, Marion; Bidelman, Gavin M.; Peretz, Isabelle; Lehmann, Alexandre

2015-01-01

Some combinations of musical tones sound pleasing to Western listeners, and are termed consonant, while others sound discordant, and are termed dissonant. The perceptual phenomenon of consonance has been traced to the acoustic property of harmonicity. It has been repeatedly shown that neural correlates of consonance can be found as early as the auditory brainstem as reflected in the harmonicity of the scalp-recorded frequency-following response (FFR). “Neural Pitch Salience” (NPS) measured from FFRs—essentially a time-domain equivalent of the classic pattern recognition models of pitch—has been found to correlate with behavioral judgments of consonance for synthetic stimuli. Following the idea that the auditory system has evolved to process behaviorally relevant natural sounds, and in order to test the generalizability of this finding made with synthetic tones, we recorded FFRs for consonant and dissonant intervals composed of synthetic and natural stimuli. We found that NPS correlated with behavioral judgments of consonance and dissonance for synthetic but not for naturalistic sounds. These results suggest that while some form of harmonicity can be computed from the auditory brainstem response, the general percept of consonance and dissonance is not captured by this measure. It might either be represented in the brainstem in a different code (such as place code) or arise at higher levels of the auditory pathway. Our findings further illustrate the importance of using natural sounds, as a complementary tool to fully-controlled synthetic sounds, when probing auditory perception. PMID:26720000

[Conversion of sound into auditory nerve action potentials].

PubMed

Encke, J; Kreh, J; Völk, F; Hemmert, W

2016-11-01

Outer hair cells play a major role in the hearing process: they amplify the motion of the basilar membrane up to a 1000-fold and at the same time sharpen the excitation patterns. These patterns are converted by inner hair cells into action potentials of the auditory nerve. Outer hair cells are delicate structures and easily damaged, e. g., by overexposure to noise. Hearing aids can amplify the amplitude of the excitation patterns, but they cannot restore their degraded frequency selectivity. Noise overexposure also leads to delayed degeneration of auditory nerve fibers, particularly those with low a spontaneous rate, which are important for the coding of sound in noise. However, this loss cannot be diagnosed by pure-tone audiometry.

Developmental Experience Alters Information Coding in Auditory Midbrain and Forebrain Neurons

PubMed Central

Woolley, Sarah M. N.; Hauber, Mark E.; Theunissen, Frederic E.

2010-01-01

In songbirds, species identity and developmental experience shape vocal behavior and behavioral responses to vocalizations. The interaction of species identity and developmental experience may also shape the coding properties of sensory neurons. We tested whether responses of auditory midbrain and forebrain neurons to songs differed between species and between groups of conspecific birds with different developmental exposure to song. We also compared responses of individual neurons to conspecific and heterospecific songs. Zebra and Bengalese finches that were raised and tutored by conspecific birds, and zebra finches that were cross-tutored by Bengalese finches were studied. Single-unit responses to zebra and Bengalese finch songs were recorded and analyzed by calculating mutual information, response reliability, mean spike rate, fluctuations in time-varying spike rate, distributions of time-varying spike rates, and neural discrimination of individual songs. Mutual information quantifies a response’s capacity to encode information about a stimulus. In midbrain and forebrain neurons, mutual information was significantly higher in normal zebra finch neurons than in Bengalese finch and cross-tutored zebra finch neurons, but not between Bengalese finch and cross-tutored zebra finch neurons. Information rate differences were largely due to spike rate differences. Mutual information did not differ between responses to conspecific and heterospecific songs. Therefore, neurons from normal zebra finches encoded more information about songs than did neurons from other birds, but conspecific and heterospecific songs were encoded equally. Neural discrimination of songs and mutual information were highly correlated. Results demonstrate that developmental exposure to vocalizations shapes the information coding properties of songbird auditory neurons. PMID:20039264

The opponent channel population code of sound location is an efficient representation of natural binaural sounds.

PubMed

Młynarski, Wiktor

2015-05-01

In mammalian auditory cortex, sound source position is represented by a population of broadly tuned neurons whose firing is modulated by sounds located at all positions surrounding the animal. Peaks of their tuning curves are concentrated at lateral position, while their slopes are steepest at the interaural midline, allowing for the maximum localization accuracy in that area. These experimental observations contradict initial assumptions that the auditory space is represented as a topographic cortical map. It has been suggested that a "panoramic" code has evolved to match specific demands of the sound localization task. This work provides evidence suggesting that properties of spatial auditory neurons identified experimentally follow from a general design principle- learning a sparse, efficient representation of natural stimuli. Natural binaural sounds were recorded and served as input to a hierarchical sparse-coding model. In the first layer, left and right ear sounds were separately encoded by a population of complex-valued basis functions which separated phase and amplitude. Both parameters are known to carry information relevant for spatial hearing. Monaural input converged in the second layer, which learned a joint representation of amplitude and interaural phase difference. Spatial selectivity of each second-layer unit was measured by exposing the model to natural sound sources recorded at different positions. Obtained tuning curves match well tuning characteristics of neurons in the mammalian auditory cortex. This study connects neuronal coding of the auditory space with natural stimulus statistics and generates new experimental predictions. Moreover, results presented here suggest that cortical regions with seemingly different functions may implement the same computational strategy-efficient coding.

Efficient transformation of an auditory population code in a small sensory system.

PubMed

Clemens, Jan; Kutzki, Olaf; Ronacher, Bernhard; Schreiber, Susanne; Wohlgemuth, Sandra

2011-08-16

Optimal coding principles are implemented in many large sensory systems. They include the systematic transformation of external stimuli into a sparse and decorrelated neuronal representation, enabling a flexible readout of stimulus properties. Are these principles also applicable to size-constrained systems, which have to rely on a limited number of neurons and may only have to fulfill specific and restricted tasks? We studied this question in an insect system--the early auditory pathway of grasshoppers. Grasshoppers use genetically fixed songs to recognize mates. The first steps of neural processing of songs take place in a small three-layer feed-forward network comprising only a few dozen neurons. We analyzed the transformation of the neural code within this network. Indeed, grasshoppers create a decorrelated and sparse representation, in accordance with optimal coding theory. Whereas the neuronal input layer is best read out as a summed population, a labeled-line population code for temporal features of the song is established after only two processing steps. At this stage, information about song identity is maximal for a population decoder that preserves neuronal identity. We conclude that optimal coding principles do apply to the early auditory system of the grasshopper, despite its size constraints. The inputs, however, are not encoded in a systematic, map-like fashion as in many larger sensory systems. Already at its periphery, part of the grasshopper auditory system seems to focus on behaviorally relevant features, and is in this property more reminiscent of higher sensory areas in vertebrates.

Representations of temporal information in short-term memory: Are they modality-specific?

PubMed

Bratzke, Daniel; Quinn, Katrina R; Ulrich, Rolf; Bausenhart, Karin M

2016-10-01

Rattat and Picard (2012) reported that the coding of temporal information in short-term memory is modality-specific, that is, temporal information received via the visual (auditory) modality is stored as a visual (auditory) code. This conclusion was supported by modality-specific interference effects on visual and auditory duration discrimination, which were induced by secondary tasks (visual tracking or articulatory suppression), presented during a retention interval. The present study assessed the stability of these modality-specific interference effects. Our study did not replicate the selective interference pattern but rather indicated that articulatory suppression not only impairs short-term memory for auditory but also for visual durations. This result pattern supports a crossmodal or an abstract view of temporal encoding. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Process Timing and Its Relation to the Coding of Tonal Harmony

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aksentijevic, Aleksandar; Barber, Paul J.; Elliott, Mark A.

2011-01-01

Advances in auditory research suggest that gamma-band synchronization of frequency-specific cortical loci could be responsible for the integration of pure tones (harmonics) into harmonic complex tones. Thus far, evidence for such a mechanism has been revealed in neurophysiological studies, with little corroborative psychophysical evidence. In six…

Electrophysiological correlates of predictive coding of auditory location in the perception of natural audiovisual events.

PubMed

Stekelenburg, Jeroen J; Vroomen, Jean

2012-01-01

In many natural audiovisual events (e.g., a clap of the two hands), the visual signal precedes the sound and thus allows observers to predict when, where, and which sound will occur. Previous studies have reported that there are distinct neural correlates of temporal (when) versus phonetic/semantic (which) content on audiovisual integration. Here we examined the effect of visual prediction of auditory location (where) in audiovisual biological motion stimuli by varying the spatial congruency between the auditory and visual parts. Visual stimuli were presented centrally, whereas auditory stimuli were presented either centrally or at 90° azimuth. Typical sub-additive amplitude reductions (AV - V < A) were found for the auditory N1 and P2 for spatially congruent and incongruent conditions. The new finding is that this N1 suppression was greater for the spatially congruent stimuli. A very early audiovisual interaction was also found at 40-60 ms (P50) in the spatially congruent condition, while no effect of congruency was found on the suppression of the P2. This indicates that visual prediction of auditory location can be coded very early in auditory processing.

Assembly of the Auditory Circuitry by a Hox Genetic Network in the Mouse Brainstem

PubMed Central

Di Bonito, Maria; Narita, Yuichi; Avallone, Bice; Sequino, Luigi; Mancuso, Marta; Andolfi, Gennaro; Franzè, Anna Maria; Puelles, Luis; Rijli, Filippo M.; Studer, Michèle

2013-01-01

Rhombomeres (r) contribute to brainstem auditory nuclei during development. Hox genes are determinants of rhombomere-derived fate and neuronal connectivity. Little is known about the contribution of individual rhombomeres and their associated Hox codes to auditory sensorimotor circuitry. Here, we show that r4 contributes to functionally linked sensory and motor components, including the ventral nucleus of lateral lemniscus, posterior ventral cochlear nuclei (VCN), and motor olivocochlear neurons. Assembly of the r4-derived auditory components is involved in sound perception and depends on regulatory interactions between Hoxb1 and Hoxb2. Indeed, in Hoxb1 and Hoxb2 mutant mice the transmission of low-level auditory stimuli is lost, resulting in hearing impairments. On the other hand, Hoxa2 regulates the Rig1 axon guidance receptor and controls contralateral projections from the anterior VCN to the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body, a circuit involved in sound localization. Thus, individual rhombomeres and their associated Hox codes control the assembly of distinct functionally segregated sub-circuits in the developing auditory brainstem. PMID:23408898

Assembly of the auditory circuitry by a Hox genetic network in the mouse brainstem.

PubMed

Di Bonito, Maria; Narita, Yuichi; Avallone, Bice; Sequino, Luigi; Mancuso, Marta; Andolfi, Gennaro; Franzè, Anna Maria; Puelles, Luis; Rijli, Filippo M; Studer, Michèle

2013-01-01

Rhombomeres (r) contribute to brainstem auditory nuclei during development. Hox genes are determinants of rhombomere-derived fate and neuronal connectivity. Little is known about the contribution of individual rhombomeres and their associated Hox codes to auditory sensorimotor circuitry. Here, we show that r4 contributes to functionally linked sensory and motor components, including the ventral nucleus of lateral lemniscus, posterior ventral cochlear nuclei (VCN), and motor olivocochlear neurons. Assembly of the r4-derived auditory components is involved in sound perception and depends on regulatory interactions between Hoxb1 and Hoxb2. Indeed, in Hoxb1 and Hoxb2 mutant mice the transmission of low-level auditory stimuli is lost, resulting in hearing impairments. On the other hand, Hoxa2 regulates the Rig1 axon guidance receptor and controls contralateral projections from the anterior VCN to the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body, a circuit involved in sound localization. Thus, individual rhombomeres and their associated Hox codes control the assembly of distinct functionally segregated sub-circuits in the developing auditory brainstem.

The Opponent Channel Population Code of Sound Location Is an Efficient Representation of Natural Binaural Sounds

PubMed Central

Młynarski, Wiktor

2015-01-01

In mammalian auditory cortex, sound source position is represented by a population of broadly tuned neurons whose firing is modulated by sounds located at all positions surrounding the animal. Peaks of their tuning curves are concentrated at lateral position, while their slopes are steepest at the interaural midline, allowing for the maximum localization accuracy in that area. These experimental observations contradict initial assumptions that the auditory space is represented as a topographic cortical map. It has been suggested that a “panoramic” code has evolved to match specific demands of the sound localization task. This work provides evidence suggesting that properties of spatial auditory neurons identified experimentally follow from a general design principle- learning a sparse, efficient representation of natural stimuli. Natural binaural sounds were recorded and served as input to a hierarchical sparse-coding model. In the first layer, left and right ear sounds were separately encoded by a population of complex-valued basis functions which separated phase and amplitude. Both parameters are known to carry information relevant for spatial hearing. Monaural input converged in the second layer, which learned a joint representation of amplitude and interaural phase difference. Spatial selectivity of each second-layer unit was measured by exposing the model to natural sound sources recorded at different positions. Obtained tuning curves match well tuning characteristics of neurons in the mammalian auditory cortex. This study connects neuronal coding of the auditory space with natural stimulus statistics and generates new experimental predictions. Moreover, results presented here suggest that cortical regions with seemingly different functions may implement the same computational strategy-efficient coding. PMID:25996373

Cerebral responses to local and global auditory novelty under general anesthesia

PubMed Central

Uhrig, Lynn; Janssen, David; Dehaene, Stanislas; Jarraya, Béchir

2017-01-01

Primate brains can detect a variety of unexpected deviations in auditory sequences. The local-global paradigm dissociates two hierarchical levels of auditory predictive coding by examining the brain responses to first-order (local) and second-order (global) sequence violations. Using the macaque model, we previously demonstrated that, in the awake state, local violations cause focal auditory responses while global violations activate a brain circuit comprising prefrontal, parietal and cingulate cortices. Here we used the same local-global auditory paradigm to clarify the encoding of the hierarchical auditory regularities in anesthetized monkeys and compared their brain responses to those obtained in the awake state as measured with fMRI. Both, propofol, a GABAA-agonist, and ketamine, an NMDA-antagonist, left intact or even enhanced the cortical response to auditory inputs. The local effect vanished during propofol anesthesia and shifted spatially during ketamine anesthesia compared with wakefulness. Under increasing levels of propofol, we observed a progressive disorganization of the global effect in prefrontal, parietal and cingulate cortices and its complete suppression under ketamine anesthesia. Anesthesia also suppressed thalamic activations to the global effect. These results suggest that anesthesia preserves initial auditory processing, but disturbs both short-term and long-term auditory predictive coding mechanisms. The disorganization of auditory novelty processing under anesthesia relates to a loss of thalamic responses to novelty and to a disruption of higher-order functional cortical networks in parietal, prefrontal and cingular cortices. PMID:27502046

Learning Midlevel Auditory Codes from Natural Sound Statistics.

PubMed

Młynarski, Wiktor; McDermott, Josh H

2018-03-01

Interaction with the world requires an organism to transform sensory signals into representations in which behaviorally meaningful properties of the environment are made explicit. These representations are derived through cascades of neuronal processing stages in which neurons at each stage recode the output of preceding stages. Explanations of sensory coding may thus involve understanding how low-level patterns are combined into more complex structures. To gain insight into such midlevel representations for sound, we designed a hierarchical generative model of natural sounds that learns combinations of spectrotemporal features from natural stimulus statistics. In the first layer, the model forms a sparse convolutional code of spectrograms using a dictionary of learned spectrotemporal kernels. To generalize from specific kernel activation patterns, the second layer encodes patterns of time-varying magnitude of multiple first-layer coefficients. When trained on corpora of speech and environmental sounds, some second-layer units learned to group similar spectrotemporal features. Others instantiate opponency between distinct sets of features. Such groupings might be instantiated by neurons in the auditory cortex, providing a hypothesis for midlevel neuronal computation.

Interactions across Multiple Stimulus Dimensions in Primary Auditory Cortex.

PubMed

Sloas, David C; Zhuo, Ran; Xue, Hongbo; Chambers, Anna R; Kolaczyk, Eric; Polley, Daniel B; Sen, Kamal

2016-01-01

Although sensory cortex is thought to be important for the perception of complex objects, its specific role in representing complex stimuli remains unknown. Complex objects are rich in information along multiple stimulus dimensions. The position of cortex in the sensory hierarchy suggests that cortical neurons may integrate across these dimensions to form a more gestalt representation of auditory objects. Yet, studies of cortical neurons typically explore single or few dimensions due to the difficulty of determining optimal stimuli in a high dimensional stimulus space. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) provide a potentially powerful approach for exploring multidimensional stimulus spaces based on real-time spike feedback, but two important issues arise in their application. First, it is unclear whether it is necessary to characterize cortical responses to multidimensional stimuli or whether it suffices to characterize cortical responses to a single dimension at a time. Second, quantitative methods for analyzing complex multidimensional data from an EA are lacking. Here, we apply a statistical method for nonlinear regression, the generalized additive model (GAM), to address these issues. The GAM quantitatively describes the dependence between neural response and all stimulus dimensions. We find that auditory cortical neurons in mice are sensitive to interactions across dimensions. These interactions are diverse across the population, indicating significant integration across stimulus dimensions in auditory cortex. This result strongly motivates using multidimensional stimuli in auditory cortex. Together, the EA and the GAM provide a novel quantitative paradigm for investigating neural coding of complex multidimensional stimuli in auditory and other sensory cortices.

Auditory temporal preparation induced by rhythmic cues during concurrent auditory working memory tasks.

PubMed

Cutanda, Diana; Correa, Ángel; Sanabria, Daniel

2015-06-01

The present study investigated whether participants can develop temporal preparation driven by auditory isochronous rhythms when concurrently performing an auditory working memory (WM) task. In Experiment 1, participants had to respond to an auditory target presented after a regular or an irregular sequence of auditory stimuli while concurrently performing a Sternberg-type WM task. Results showed that participants responded faster after regular compared with irregular rhythms and that this effect was not affected by WM load; however, the lack of a significant main effect of WM load made it difficult to draw any conclusion regarding the influence of the dual-task manipulation in Experiment 1. In order to enhance dual-task interference, Experiment 2 combined the auditory rhythm procedure with an auditory N-Back task, which required WM updating (monitoring and coding of the information) and was presumably more demanding than the mere rehearsal of the WM task used in Experiment 1. Results now clearly showed dual-task interference effects (slower reaction times [RTs] in the high- vs. the low-load condition). However, such interference did not affect temporal preparation induced by rhythms, with faster RTs after regular than after irregular sequences in the high-load and low-load conditions. These results revealed that secondary tasks demanding memory updating, relative to tasks just demanding rehearsal, produced larger interference effects on overall RTs in the auditory rhythm task. Nevertheless, rhythm regularity exerted a strong temporal preparation effect that survived the interference of the WM task even when both tasks competed for processing resources within the auditory modality. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Enhanced auditory temporal gap detection in listeners with musical training.

PubMed

Mishra, Srikanta K; Panda, Manas R; Herbert, Carolyn

2014-08-01

Many features of auditory perception are positively altered in musicians. Traditionally auditory mechanisms in musicians are investigated using the Western-classical musician model. The objective of the present study was to adopt an alternative model-Indian-classical music-to further investigate auditory temporal processing in musicians. This study presents that musicians have significantly lower across-channel gap detection thresholds compared to nonmusicians. Use of the South Indian musician model provides an increased external validity for the prediction, from studies on Western-classical musicians, that auditory temporal coding is enhanced in musicians.

The LAC Test: A New Look at Auditory Conceptualization and Literacy Development K-12.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lindamood, Charles; And Others

The Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization (LAC) Test was constructed with the recognition that the process of decoding involves an integration of the auditory, visual, and motor senses. Requiring the manipulation of colored blocks to indicate conceptualization of test patterns spoken by the examiner, subtest 1 entails coding of identity, number,…

Putative mechanisms mediating tolerance for audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony.

PubMed

Bhat, Jyoti; Miller, Lee M; Pitt, Mark A; Shahin, Antoine J

2015-03-01

Audiovisual (AV) speech perception is robust to temporal asynchronies between visual and auditory stimuli. We investigated the neural mechanisms that facilitate tolerance for audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony (AVOA) with EEG. Individuals were presented with AV words that were asynchronous in onsets of voice and mouth movement and judged whether they were synchronous or not. Behaviorally, individuals tolerated (perceived as synchronous) longer AVOAs when mouth movement preceded the speech (V-A) stimuli than when the speech preceded mouth movement (A-V). Neurophysiologically, the P1-N1-P2 auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), time-locked to sound onsets and known to arise in and surrounding the primary auditory cortex (PAC), were smaller for the in-sync than the out-of-sync percepts. Spectral power of oscillatory activity in the beta band (14-30 Hz) following the AEPs was larger during the in-sync than out-of-sync perception for both A-V and V-A conditions. However, alpha power (8-14 Hz), also following AEPs, was larger for the in-sync than out-of-sync percepts only in the V-A condition. These results demonstrate that AVOA tolerance is enhanced by inhibiting low-level auditory activity (e.g., AEPs representing generators in and surrounding PAC) that code for acoustic onsets. By reducing sensitivity to acoustic onsets, visual-to-auditory onset mapping is weakened, allowing for greater AVOA tolerance. In contrast, beta and alpha results suggest the involvement of higher-level neural processes that may code for language cues (phonetic, lexical), selective attention, and binding of AV percepts, allowing for wider neural windows of temporal integration, i.e., greater AVOA tolerance. Copyright © 2015 the American Physiological Society.

Pairing broadband noise with cortical stimulation induces extensive suppression of ascending sensory activity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Markovitz, Craig D.; Hogan, Patrick S.; Wesen, Kyle A.; Lim, Hubert H.

2015-04-01

Objective. The corticofugal system can alter coding along the ascending sensory pathway. Within the auditory system, electrical stimulation of the auditory cortex (AC) paired with a pure tone can cause egocentric shifts in the tuning of auditory neurons, making them more sensitive to the pure tone frequency. Since tinnitus has been linked with hyperactivity across auditory neurons, we sought to develop a new neuromodulation approach that could suppress a wide range of neurons rather than enhance specific frequency-tuned neurons. Approach. We performed experiments in the guinea pig to assess the effects of cortical stimulation paired with broadband noise (PN-Stim) on ascending auditory activity within the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (CNIC), a widely studied region for AC stimulation paradigms. Main results. All eight stimulated AC subregions induced extensive suppression of activity across the CNIC that was not possible with noise stimulation alone. This suppression built up over time and remained after the PN-Stim paradigm. Significance. We propose that the corticofugal system is designed to decrease the brain’s input gain to irrelevant stimuli and PN-Stim is able to artificially amplify this effect to suppress neural firing across the auditory system. The PN-Stim concept may have potential for treating tinnitus and other neurological disorders.

A Neural Code That Is Isometric to Vocal Output and Correlates with Its Sensory Consequences

PubMed Central

Vyssotski, Alexei L.; Stepien, Anna E.; Keller, Georg B.; Hahnloser, Richard H. R.

2016-01-01

What cortical inputs are provided to motor control areas while they drive complex learned behaviors? We study this question in the nucleus interface of the nidopallium (NIf), which is required for normal birdsong production and provides the main source of auditory input to HVC, the driver of adult song. In juvenile and adult zebra finches, we find that spikes in NIf projection neurons precede vocalizations by several tens of milliseconds and are insensitive to distortions of auditory feedback. We identify a local isometry between NIf output and vocalizations: quasi-identical notes produced in different syllables are preceded by highly similar NIf spike patterns. NIf multiunit firing during song precedes responses in auditory cortical neurons by about 50 ms, revealing delayed congruence between NIf spiking and a neural representation of auditory feedback. Our findings suggest that NIf codes for imminent acoustic events within vocal performance. PMID:27723764

Extraction of Inter-Aural Time Differences Using a Spiking Neuron Network Model of the Medial Superior Olive.

PubMed

Encke, Jörg; Hemmert, Werner

2018-01-01

The mammalian auditory system is able to extract temporal and spectral features from sound signals at the two ears. One important cue for localization of low-frequency sound sources in the horizontal plane are inter-aural time differences (ITDs) which are first analyzed in the medial superior olive (MSO) in the brainstem. Neural recordings of ITD tuning curves at various stages along the auditory pathway suggest that ITDs in the mammalian brainstem are not represented in form of a Jeffress-type place code. An alternative is the hemispheric opponent-channel code, according to which ITDs are encoded as the difference in the responses of the MSO nuclei in the two hemispheres. In this study, we present a physiologically-plausible, spiking neuron network model of the mammalian MSO circuit and apply two different methods of extracting ITDs from arbitrary sound signals. The network model is driven by a functional model of the auditory periphery and physiological models of the cochlear nucleus and the MSO. Using a linear opponent-channel decoder, we show that the network is able to detect changes in ITD with a precision down to 10 μs and that the sensitivity of the decoder depends on the slope of the ITD-rate functions. A second approach uses an artificial neuronal network to predict ITDs directly from the spiking output of the MSO and ANF model. Using this predictor, we show that the MSO-network is able to reliably encode static and time-dependent ITDs over a large frequency range, also for complex signals like speech.

Contextual modulation of primary visual cortex by auditory signals.

PubMed

Petro, L S; Paton, A T; Muckli, L

2017-02-19

Early visual cortex receives non-feedforward input from lateral and top-down connections (Muckli & Petro 2013 Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 23, 195-201. (doi:10.1016/j.conb.2013.01.020)), including long-range projections from auditory areas. Early visual cortex can code for high-level auditory information, with neural patterns representing natural sound stimulation (Vetter et al. 2014 Curr. Biol. 24, 1256-1262. (doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.04.020)). We discuss a number of questions arising from these findings. What is the adaptive function of bimodal representations in visual cortex? What type of information projects from auditory to visual cortex? What are the anatomical constraints of auditory information in V1, for example, periphery versus fovea, superficial versus deep cortical layers? Is there a putative neural mechanism we can infer from human neuroimaging data and recent theoretical accounts of cortex? We also present data showing we can read out high-level auditory information from the activation patterns of early visual cortex even when visual cortex receives simple visual stimulation, suggesting independent channels for visual and auditory signals in V1. We speculate which cellular mechanisms allow V1 to be contextually modulated by auditory input to facilitate perception, cognition and behaviour. Beyond cortical feedback that facilitates perception, we argue that there is also feedback serving counterfactual processing during imagery, dreaming and mind wandering, which is not relevant for immediate perception but for behaviour and cognition over a longer time frame.This article is part of the themed issue 'Auditory and visual scene analysis'. © 2017 The Authors.

Contextual modulation of primary visual cortex by auditory signals

PubMed Central

Paton, A. T.

2017-01-01

Early visual cortex receives non-feedforward input from lateral and top-down connections (Muckli & Petro 2013 Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 23, 195–201. (doi:10.1016/j.conb.2013.01.020)), including long-range projections from auditory areas. Early visual cortex can code for high-level auditory information, with neural patterns representing natural sound stimulation (Vetter et al. 2014 Curr. Biol. 24, 1256–1262. (doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.04.020)). We discuss a number of questions arising from these findings. What is the adaptive function of bimodal representations in visual cortex? What type of information projects from auditory to visual cortex? What are the anatomical constraints of auditory information in V1, for example, periphery versus fovea, superficial versus deep cortical layers? Is there a putative neural mechanism we can infer from human neuroimaging data and recent theoretical accounts of cortex? We also present data showing we can read out high-level auditory information from the activation patterns of early visual cortex even when visual cortex receives simple visual stimulation, suggesting independent channels for visual and auditory signals in V1. We speculate which cellular mechanisms allow V1 to be contextually modulated by auditory input to facilitate perception, cognition and behaviour. Beyond cortical feedback that facilitates perception, we argue that there is also feedback serving counterfactual processing during imagery, dreaming and mind wandering, which is not relevant for immediate perception but for behaviour and cognition over a longer time frame. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Auditory and visual scene analysis’. PMID:28044015

Effects of sensorineural hearing loss on temporal coding of narrowband and broadband signals in the auditory periphery

PubMed Central

Henry, Kenneth S.; Heinz, Michael G.

2013-01-01

People with sensorineural hearing loss have substantial difficulty understanding speech under degraded listening conditions. Behavioral studies suggest that this difficulty may be caused by changes in auditory processing of the rapidly-varying temporal fine structure (TFS) of acoustic signals. In this paper, we review the presently known effects of sensorineural hearing loss on processing of TFS and slower envelope modulations in the peripheral auditory system of mammals. Cochlear damage has relatively subtle effects on phase locking by auditory-nerve fibers to the temporal structure of narrowband signals under quiet conditions. In background noise, however, sensorineural loss does substantially reduce phase locking to the TFS of pure-tone stimuli. For auditory processing of broadband stimuli, sensorineural hearing loss has been shown to severely alter the neural representation of temporal information along the tonotopic axis of the cochlea. Notably, auditory-nerve fibers innervating the high-frequency part of the cochlea grow increasingly responsive to low-frequency TFS information and less responsive to temporal information near their characteristic frequency (CF). Cochlear damage also increases the correlation of the response to TFS across fibers of varying CF, decreases the traveling-wave delay between TFS responses of fibers with different CFs, and can increase the range of temporal modulation frequencies encoded in the periphery for broadband sounds. Weaker neural coding of temporal structure in background noise and degraded coding of broadband signals along the tonotopic axis of the cochlea are expected to contribute considerably to speech perception problems in people with sensorineural hearing loss. PMID:23376018

Hierarchical differences in population coding within auditory cortex.

PubMed

Downer, Joshua D; Niwa, Mamiko; Sutter, Mitchell L

2017-08-01

Most models of auditory cortical (AC) population coding have focused on primary auditory cortex (A1). Thus our understanding of how neural coding for sounds progresses along the cortical hierarchy remains obscure. To illuminate this, we recorded from two AC fields: A1 and middle lateral belt (ML) of rhesus macaques. We presented amplitude-modulated (AM) noise during both passive listening and while the animals performed an AM detection task ("active" condition). In both fields, neurons exhibit monotonic AM-depth tuning, with A1 neurons mostly exhibiting increasing rate-depth functions and ML neurons approximately evenly distributed between increasing and decreasing functions. We measured noise correlation ( r noise ) between simultaneously recorded neurons and found that whereas engagement decreased average r noise in A1, engagement increased average r noise in ML. This finding surprised us, because attentive states are commonly reported to decrease average r noise We analyzed the effect of r noise on AM coding in both A1 and ML and found that whereas engagement-related shifts in r noise in A1 enhance AM coding, r noise shifts in ML have little effect. These results imply that the effect of r noise differs between sensory areas, based on the distribution of tuning properties among the neurons within each population. A possible explanation of this is that higher areas need to encode nonsensory variables (e.g., attention, choice, and motor preparation), which impart common noise, thus increasing r noise Therefore, the hierarchical emergence of r noise -robust population coding (e.g., as we observed in ML) enhances the ability of sensory cortex to integrate cognitive and sensory information without a loss of sensory fidelity. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Prevailing models of population coding of sensory information are based on a limited subset of neural structures. An important and under-explored question in neuroscience is how distinct areas of sensory cortex differ in their population coding strategies. In this study, we compared population coding between primary and secondary auditory cortex. Our findings demonstrate striking differences between the two areas and highlight the importance of considering the diversity of neural structures as we develop models of population coding. Copyright © 2017 the American Physiological Society.

Augmented reality warnings in vehicles: Effects of modality and specificity on effectiveness.

PubMed

Schwarz, Felix; Fastenmeier, Wolfgang

2017-04-01

In the future, vehicles will be able to warn drivers of hidden dangers before they are visible. Specific warning information about these hazards could improve drivers' reactions and the warning effectiveness, but could also impair them, for example, by additional cognitive-processing costs. In a driving simulator study with 88 participants, we investigated the effects of modality (auditory vs. visual) and specificity (low vs. high) on warning effectiveness. For the specific warnings, we used augmented reality as an advanced technology to display the additional auditory or visual warning information. Part one of the study concentrates on the effectiveness of necessary warnings and part two on the drivers' compliance despite false alarms. For the first warning scenario, we found several positive main effects of specificity. However, subsequent effects of specificity were moderated by the modality of the warnings. The specific visual warnings were observed to have advantages over the three other warning designs concerning gaze and braking reaction times, passing speeds and collision rates. Besides the true alarms, braking reaction times as well as subjective evaluation after these warnings were still improved despite false alarms. The specific auditory warnings were revealed to have only a few advantages, but also several disadvantages. The results further indicate that the exact coding of additional information, beyond its mere amount and modality, plays an important role. Moreover, the observed advantages of the specific visual warnings highlight the potential benefit of augmented reality coding to improve future collision warnings. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Remembering a criminal conversation: beyond eyewitness testimony.

PubMed

Campos, Laura; Alonso-Quecuty, María L

2006-01-01

Unlike the important body of work on eyewitness memory, little research has been done on the accuracy and completeness of "earwitness" memory for conversations. The present research examined the effects of mode of presentation (audiovisual/ auditory-only) on witnesses' free recall for utterances in a criminal conversation at different retention intervals (immediate/delayed) within a single experiment. Different forms of correct recall (verbatim/gist) of the verbal information as well as different types of errors (distortions/fabrications) were also examined. It was predicted that participants in the audiovisual modality would provide more correct information, and fewer errors than participants in the auditory-only modality. Participants' recall was predicted to be impaired over time, dropping to a greater extent after a delay in the auditory-only modality. Results confirmed these hypotheses. Interpretations of the overall findings are offered within the context of dual-coding theory, and within the theoretical frameworks of source monitoring and fuzzy-trace theory.

Sensory Coding and Sensitivity to Local Estrogens Shift during Critical Period Milestones in the Auditory Cortex of Male Songbirds.

PubMed

Vahaba, Daniel M; Macedo-Lima, Matheus; Remage-Healey, Luke

2017-01-01

Vocal learning occurs during an experience-dependent, age-limited critical period early in development. In songbirds, vocal learning begins when presinging birds acquire an auditory memory of their tutor's song (sensory phase) followed by the onset of vocal production and refinement (sensorimotor phase). Hearing is necessary throughout the vocal learning critical period. One key brain area for songbird auditory processing is the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM), a telencephalic region analogous to mammalian auditory cortex. Despite NCM's established role in auditory processing, it is unclear how the response properties of NCM neurons may shift across development. Moreover, communication processing in NCM is rapidly enhanced by local 17β-estradiol (E2) administration in adult songbirds; however, the function of dynamically fluctuating E 2 in NCM during development is unknown. We collected bilateral extracellular recordings in NCM coupled with reverse microdialysis delivery in juvenile male zebra finches ( Taeniopygia guttata ) across the vocal learning critical period. We found that auditory-evoked activity and coding accuracy were substantially higher in the NCM of sensory-aged animals compared to sensorimotor-aged animals. Further, we observed both age-dependent and lateralized effects of local E 2 administration on sensory processing. In sensory-aged subjects, E 2 decreased auditory responsiveness across both hemispheres; however, a similar trend was observed in age-matched control subjects. In sensorimotor-aged subjects, E 2 dampened auditory responsiveness in left NCM but enhanced auditory responsiveness in right NCM. Our results reveal an age-dependent physiological shift in auditory processing and lateralized E 2 sensitivity that each precisely track a key neural "switch point" from purely sensory (pre-singing) to sensorimotor (singing) in developing songbirds.

Sensory Coding and Sensitivity to Local Estrogens Shift during Critical Period Milestones in the Auditory Cortex of Male Songbirds

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Abstract Vocal learning occurs during an experience-dependent, age-limited critical period early in development. In songbirds, vocal learning begins when presinging birds acquire an auditory memory of their tutor’s song (sensory phase) followed by the onset of vocal production and refinement (sensorimotor phase). Hearing is necessary throughout the vocal learning critical period. One key brain area for songbird auditory processing is the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM), a telencephalic region analogous to mammalian auditory cortex. Despite NCM’s established role in auditory processing, it is unclear how the response properties of NCM neurons may shift across development. Moreover, communication processing in NCM is rapidly enhanced by local 17β-estradiol (E2) administration in adult songbirds; however, the function of dynamically fluctuating E2 in NCM during development is unknown. We collected bilateral extracellular recordings in NCM coupled with reverse microdialysis delivery in juvenile male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) across the vocal learning critical period. We found that auditory-evoked activity and coding accuracy were substantially higher in the NCM of sensory-aged animals compared to sensorimotor-aged animals. Further, we observed both age-dependent and lateralized effects of local E2 administration on sensory processing. In sensory-aged subjects, E2 decreased auditory responsiveness across both hemispheres; however, a similar trend was observed in age-matched control subjects. In sensorimotor-aged subjects, E2 dampened auditory responsiveness in left NCM but enhanced auditory responsiveness in right NCM. Our results reveal an age-dependent physiological shift in auditory processing and lateralized E2 sensitivity that each precisely track a key neural “switch point” from purely sensory (pre-singing) to sensorimotor (singing) in developing songbirds. PMID:29255797

Predictive information processing is a fundamental learning mechanism present in early development: evidence from infants.

PubMed

Trainor, Laurel J

2012-02-01

Evidence is presented that predictive coding is fundamental to brain function and present in early infancy. Indeed, mismatch responses to unexpected auditory stimuli are among the earliest robust cortical event-related potential responses, and have been measured in young infants in response to many types of deviation, including in pitch, timing, and melodic pattern. Furthermore, mismatch responses change quickly with specific experience, suggesting that predictive coding reflects a powerful, early-developing learning mechanism. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The neuromechanics of hearing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Araya, Mussie K.; Brownell, William E.

2015-12-01

Hearing requires precise detection and coding of acoustic signals by the inner ear and equally precise communication of the information through the auditory brainstem. A membrane based motor in the outer hair cell lateral wall contributes to the transformation of sound into a precise neural code. Structural, molecular and energetic similarities between the outer hair cell and auditory brainstem neurons suggest that a similar membrane based motor may contribute to signal processing in the auditory CNS. Cooperative activation of voltage gated ion channels enhances neuronal temporal processing and increases the upper frequency limit for phase locking. We explore the possibility that membrane mechanics contribute to ion channel cooperativity as a consequence of the nearly instantaneous speed of electromechanical signaling and the fact that membrane composition and mechanics modulate ion channel function.

Some Behavioral and Neurobiological Constraints on Theories of Audiovisual Speech Integration: A Review and Suggestions for New Directions

PubMed Central

Altieri, Nicholas; Pisoni, David B.; Townsend, James T.

2012-01-01

Summerfield (1987) proposed several accounts of audiovisual speech perception, a field of research that has burgeoned in recent years. The proposed accounts included the integration of discrete phonetic features, vectors describing the values of independent acoustical and optical parameters, the filter function of the vocal tract, and articulatory dynamics of the vocal tract. The latter two accounts assume that the representations of audiovisual speech perception are based on abstract gestures, while the former two assume that the representations consist of symbolic or featural information obtained from visual and auditory modalities. Recent converging evidence from several different disciplines reveals that the general framework of Summerfield’s feature-based theories should be expanded. An updated framework building upon the feature-based theories is presented. We propose a processing model arguing that auditory and visual brain circuits provide facilitatory information when the inputs are correctly timed, and that auditory and visual speech representations do not necessarily undergo translation into a common code during information processing. Future research on multisensory processing in speech perception should investigate the connections between auditory and visual brain regions, and utilize dynamic modeling tools to further understand the timing and information processing mechanisms involved in audiovisual speech integration. PMID:21968081

Some behavioral and neurobiological constraints on theories of audiovisual speech integration: a review and suggestions for new directions.

PubMed

Altieri, Nicholas; Pisoni, David B; Townsend, James T

2011-01-01

Summerfield (1987) proposed several accounts of audiovisual speech perception, a field of research that has burgeoned in recent years. The proposed accounts included the integration of discrete phonetic features, vectors describing the values of independent acoustical and optical parameters, the filter function of the vocal tract, and articulatory dynamics of the vocal tract. The latter two accounts assume that the representations of audiovisual speech perception are based on abstract gestures, while the former two assume that the representations consist of symbolic or featural information obtained from visual and auditory modalities. Recent converging evidence from several different disciplines reveals that the general framework of Summerfield's feature-based theories should be expanded. An updated framework building upon the feature-based theories is presented. We propose a processing model arguing that auditory and visual brain circuits provide facilitatory information when the inputs are correctly timed, and that auditory and visual speech representations do not necessarily undergo translation into a common code during information processing. Future research on multisensory processing in speech perception should investigate the connections between auditory and visual brain regions, and utilize dynamic modeling tools to further understand the timing and information processing mechanisms involved in audiovisual speech integration.

Learning Pitch with STDP: A Computational Model of Place and Temporal Pitch Perception Using Spiking Neural Networks.

PubMed

Erfanian Saeedi, Nafise; Blamey, Peter J; Burkitt, Anthony N; Grayden, David B

2016-04-01

Pitch perception is important for understanding speech prosody, music perception, recognizing tones in tonal languages, and perceiving speech in noisy environments. The two principal pitch perception theories consider the place of maximum neural excitation along the auditory nerve and the temporal pattern of the auditory neurons' action potentials (spikes) as pitch cues. This paper describes a biophysical mechanism by which fine-structure temporal information can be extracted from the spikes generated at the auditory periphery. Deriving meaningful pitch-related information from spike times requires neural structures specialized in capturing synchronous or correlated activity from amongst neural events. The emergence of such pitch-processing neural mechanisms is described through a computational model of auditory processing. Simulation results show that a correlation-based, unsupervised, spike-based form of Hebbian learning can explain the development of neural structures required for recognizing the pitch of simple and complex tones, with or without the fundamental frequency. The temporal code is robust to variations in the spectral shape of the signal and thus can explain the phenomenon of pitch constancy.

Learning Pitch with STDP: A Computational Model of Place and Temporal Pitch Perception Using Spiking Neural Networks

PubMed Central

Erfanian Saeedi, Nafise; Blamey, Peter J.; Burkitt, Anthony N.; Grayden, David B.

2016-01-01

Pitch perception is important for understanding speech prosody, music perception, recognizing tones in tonal languages, and perceiving speech in noisy environments. The two principal pitch perception theories consider the place of maximum neural excitation along the auditory nerve and the temporal pattern of the auditory neurons’ action potentials (spikes) as pitch cues. This paper describes a biophysical mechanism by which fine-structure temporal information can be extracted from the spikes generated at the auditory periphery. Deriving meaningful pitch-related information from spike times requires neural structures specialized in capturing synchronous or correlated activity from amongst neural events. The emergence of such pitch-processing neural mechanisms is described through a computational model of auditory processing. Simulation results show that a correlation-based, unsupervised, spike-based form of Hebbian learning can explain the development of neural structures required for recognizing the pitch of simple and complex tones, with or without the fundamental frequency. The temporal code is robust to variations in the spectral shape of the signal and thus can explain the phenomenon of pitch constancy. PMID:27049657

Control of Biosonar Behavior by the Auditory Cortex

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-11-28

TITLE (include Security Classification) Control of Biosonar Behavior by the Auditory Cortex 12. PERSONAL AUTHOR(S) Nobuo Suga and Stephen Gaioni 13a...NOTATION 17. COSATI CODES IS SUBJECT TERMS (Continue on reverse if necessary and identify by block number) FIELD GROUP1 SUB-GROUP - biosonar ; echolocation...SLesion experiments were conducted to examine whether the functional organization of the mustached bat’s auditory cortex is related to biosonar

Cognitive/emotional models for human behavior representation in 3D avatar simulations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peterson, James K.

2004-08-01

Simplified models of human cognition and emotional response are presented which are based on models of auditory/ visual polymodal fusion. At the core of these models is a computational model of Area 37 of the temporal cortex which is based on new isocortex models presented recently by Grossberg. These models are trained using carefully chosen auditory (musical sequences), visual (paintings) and higher level abstract (meta level) data obtained from studies of how optimization strategies are chosen in response to outside managerial inputs. The software modules developed are then used as inputs to character generation codes in standard 3D virtual world simulations. The auditory and visual training data also enable the development of simple music and painting composition generators which significantly enhance one's ability to validate the cognitive model. The cognitive models are handled as interacting software agents implemented as CORBA objects to allow the use of multiple language coding choices (C++, Java, Python etc) and efficient use of legacy code.

The Rhythm of Perception: Entrainment to Acoustic Rhythms Induces Subsequent Perceptual Oscillation.

PubMed

Hickok, Gregory; Farahbod, Haleh; Saberi, Kourosh

2015-07-01

Acoustic rhythms are pervasive in speech, music, and environmental sounds. Recent evidence for neural codes representing periodic information suggests that they may be a neural basis for the ability to detect rhythm. Further, rhythmic information has been found to modulate auditory-system excitability, which provides a potential mechanism for parsing the acoustic stream. Here, we explored the effects of a rhythmic stimulus on subsequent auditory perception. We found that a low-frequency (3 Hz), amplitude-modulated signal induces a subsequent oscillation of the perceptual detectability of a brief nonperiodic acoustic stimulus (1-kHz tone); the frequency but not the phase of the perceptual oscillation matches the entrained stimulus-driven rhythmic oscillation. This provides evidence that rhythmic contexts have a direct influence on subsequent auditory perception of discrete acoustic events. Rhythm coding is likely a fundamental feature of auditory-system design that predates the development of explicit human enjoyment of rhythm in music or poetry. © The Author(s) 2015.

It takes two-coincidence coding within the dual olfactory pathway of the honeybee.

PubMed

Brill, Martin F; Meyer, Anneke; Rössler, Wolfgang

2015-01-01

To rapidly process biologically relevant stimuli, sensory systems have developed a broad variety of coding mechanisms like parallel processing and coincidence detection. Parallel processing (e.g., in the visual system), increases both computational capacity and processing speed by simultaneously coding different aspects of the same stimulus. Coincidence detection is an efficient way to integrate information from different sources. Coincidence has been shown to promote associative learning and memory or stimulus feature detection (e.g., in auditory delay lines). Within the dual olfactory pathway of the honeybee both of these mechanisms might be implemented by uniglomerular projection neurons (PNs) that transfer information from the primary olfactory centers, the antennal lobe (AL), to a multimodal integration center, the mushroom body (MB). PNs from anatomically distinct tracts respond to the same stimulus space, but have different physiological properties, characteristics that are prerequisites for parallel processing of different stimulus aspects. However, the PN pathways also display mirror-imaged like anatomical trajectories that resemble neuronal coincidence detectors as known from auditory delay lines. To investigate temporal processing of olfactory information, we recorded PN odor responses simultaneously from both tracts and measured coincident activity of PNs within and between tracts. Our results show that coincidence levels are different within each of the two tracts. Coincidence also occurs between tracts, but to a minor extent compared to coincidence within tracts. Taken together our findings support the relevance of spike timing in coding of olfactory information (temporal code).

Evolutionarily conserved coding properties of auditory neurons across grasshopper species

PubMed Central

Neuhofer, Daniela; Wohlgemuth, Sandra; Stumpner, Andreas; Ronacher, Bernhard

2008-01-01

We investigated encoding properties of identified auditory interneurons in two not closely related grasshopper species (Acrididae). The neurons can be homologized on the basis of their similar morphologies and physiologies. As test stimuli, we used the species-specific stridulation signals of Chorthippus biguttulus, which evidently are not relevant for the other species, Locusta migratoria. We recorded spike trains produced in response to these signals from several neuron types at the first levels of the auditory pathway in both species. Using a spike train metric to quantify differences between neuronal responses, we found a high similarity in the responses of homologous neurons: interspecific differences between the responses of homologous neurons in the two species were not significantly larger than intraspecific differences (between several specimens of a neuron in one species). These results suggest that the elements of the thoracic auditory pathway have been strongly conserved during the evolutionary divergence of these species. According to the ‘efficient coding’ hypothesis, an adaptation of the thoracic auditory pathway to the specific needs of acoustic communication could be expected. We conclude that there must have been stabilizing selective forces at work that conserved coding characteristics and prevented such an adaptation. PMID:18505715

Representation of particle motion in the auditory midbrain of a developing anuran.

PubMed

Simmons, Andrea Megela

2015-07-01

In bullfrog tadpoles, a "deaf period" of lessened responsiveness to the pressure component of sounds, evident during the end of the late larval period, has been identified in the auditory midbrain. But coding of underwater particle motion in the vestibular medulla remains stable over all of larval development, with no evidence of a "deaf period." Neural coding of particle motion in the auditory midbrain was assessed to determine if a "deaf period" for this mode of stimulation exists in this brain area in spite of its absence from the vestibular medulla. Recording sites throughout the developing laminar and medial principal nuclei show relatively stable thresholds to z-axis particle motion, up until the "deaf period." Thresholds then begin to increase from this point up through the rest of metamorphic climax, and significantly fewer responsive sites can be located. The representation of particle motion in the auditory midbrain is less robust during later compared to earlier larval stages, overlapping with but also extending beyond the restricted "deaf period" for pressure stimulation. The decreased functional representation of particle motion in the auditory midbrain throughout metamorphic climax may reflect ongoing neural reorganization required to mediate the transition from underwater to amphibious life.

Reduced temporal processing in older, normal-hearing listeners evident from electrophysiological responses to shifts in interaural time difference.

PubMed

Ozmeral, Erol J; Eddins, David A; Eddins, Ann C

2016-12-01

Previous electrophysiological studies of interaural time difference (ITD) processing have demonstrated that ITDs are represented by a nontopographic population rate code. Rather than narrow tuning to ITDs, neural channels have broad tuning to ITDs in either the left or right auditory hemifield, and the relative activity between the channels determines the perceived lateralization of the sound. With advancing age, spatial perception weakens and poor temporal processing contributes to declining spatial acuity. At present, it is unclear whether age-related temporal processing deficits are due to poor inhibitory controls in the auditory system or degraded neural synchrony at the periphery. Cortical processing of spatial cues based on a hemifield code are susceptible to potential age-related physiological changes. We consider two distinct predictions of age-related changes to ITD sensitivity: declines in inhibitory mechanisms would lead to increased excitation and medial shifts to rate-azimuth functions, whereas a general reduction in neural synchrony would lead to reduced excitation and shallower slopes in the rate-azimuth function. The current study tested these possibilities by measuring an evoked response to ITD shifts in a narrow-band noise. Results were more in line with the latter outcome, both from measured latencies and amplitudes of the global field potentials and source-localized waveforms in the left and right auditory cortices. The measured responses for older listeners also tended to have reduced asymmetric distribution of activity in response to ITD shifts, which is consistent with other sensory and cognitive processing models of aging. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

Hierarchical neurocomputations underlying concurrent sound segregation: connecting periphery to percept.

PubMed

Bidelman, Gavin M; Alain, Claude

2015-02-01

Natural soundscapes often contain multiple sound sources at any given time. Numerous studies have reported that in human observers, the perception and identification of concurrent sounds is paralleled by specific changes in cortical event-related potentials (ERPs). Although these studies provide a window into the cerebral mechanisms governing sound segregation, little is known about the subcortical neural architecture and hierarchy of neurocomputations that lead to this robust perceptual process. Using computational modeling, scalp-recorded brainstem/cortical ERPs, and human psychophysics, we demonstrate that a primary cue for sound segregation, i.e., harmonicity, is encoded at the auditory nerve level within tens of milliseconds after the onset of sound and is maintained, largely untransformed, in phase-locked activity of the rostral brainstem. As then indexed by auditory cortical responses, (in)harmonicity is coded in the signature and magnitude of the cortical object-related negativity (ORN) response (150-200 ms). The salience of the resulting percept is then captured in a discrete, categorical-like coding scheme by a late negativity response (N5; ~500 ms latency), just prior to the elicitation of a behavioral judgment. Subcortical activity correlated with cortical evoked responses such that weaker phase-locked brainstem responses (lower neural harmonicity) generated larger ORN amplitude, reflecting the cortical registration of multiple sound objects. Studying multiple brain indices simultaneously helps illuminate the mechanisms and time-course of neural processing underlying concurrent sound segregation and may lead to further development and refinement of physiologically driven models of auditory scene analysis. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Simultaneous perception of a spoken and a signed language: The brain basis of ASL-English code-blends

PubMed Central

Weisberg, Jill; McCullough, Stephen; Emmorey, Karen

2018-01-01

Code-blends (simultaneous words and signs) are a unique characteristic of bimodal bilingual communication. Using fMRI, we investigated code-blend comprehension in hearing native ASL-English bilinguals who made a semantic decision (edible?) about signs, audiovisual words, and semantically equivalent code-blends. English and ASL recruited a similar fronto-temporal network with expected modality differences: stronger activation for English in auditory regions of bilateral superior temporal cortex, and stronger activation for ASL in bilateral occipitotemporal visual regions and left parietal cortex. Code-blend comprehension elicited activity in a combination of these regions, and no cognitive control regions were additionally recruited. Furthermore, code-blends elicited reduced activation relative to ASL presented alone in bilateral prefrontal and visual extrastriate cortices, and relative to English alone in auditory association cortex. Consistent with behavioral facilitation observed during semantic decisions, the findings suggest that redundant semantic content induces more efficient neural processing in language and sensory regions during bimodal language integration. PMID:26177161

A Review of Auditory Prediction and Its Potential Role in Tinnitus Perception.

PubMed

Durai, Mithila; O'Keeffe, Mary G; Searchfield, Grant D

2018-06-01

The precise mechanisms underlying tinnitus perception and distress are still not fully understood. A recent proposition is that auditory prediction errors and related memory representations may play a role in driving tinnitus perception. It is of interest to further explore this. To obtain a comprehensive narrative synthesis of current research in relation to auditory prediction and its potential role in tinnitus perception and severity. A narrative review methodological framework was followed. The key words Prediction Auditory, Memory Prediction Auditory, Tinnitus AND Memory, Tinnitus AND Prediction in Article Title, Abstract, and Keywords were extensively searched on four databases: PubMed, Scopus, SpringerLink, and PsychINFO. All study types were selected from 2000-2016 (end of 2016) and had the following exclusion criteria applied: minimum age of participants <18, nonhuman participants, and article not available in English. Reference lists of articles were reviewed to identify any further relevant studies. Articles were short listed based on title relevance. After reading the abstracts and with consensus made between coauthors, a total of 114 studies were selected for charting data. The hierarchical predictive coding model based on the Bayesian brain hypothesis, attentional modulation and top-down feedback serves as the fundamental framework in current literature for how auditory prediction may occur. Predictions are integral to speech and music processing, as well as in sequential processing and identification of auditory objects during auditory streaming. Although deviant responses are observable from middle latency time ranges, the mismatch negativity (MMN) waveform is the most commonly studied electrophysiological index of auditory irregularity detection. However, limitations may apply when interpreting findings because of the debatable origin of the MMN and its restricted ability to model real-life, more complex auditory phenomenon. Cortical oscillatory band activity may act as neurophysiological substrates for auditory prediction. Tinnitus has been modeled as an auditory object which may demonstrate incomplete processing during auditory scene analysis resulting in tinnitus salience and therefore difficulty in habituation. Within the electrophysiological domain, there is currently mixed evidence regarding oscillatory band changes in tinnitus. There are theoretical proposals for a relationship between prediction error and tinnitus but few published empirical studies. American Academy of Audiology.

Visual and Auditory Memory: Relationships to Reading Achievement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bruning, Roger H.; And Others

1978-01-01

Good and poor readers' visual and auditory memory were tested. No group differences existed for single mode presentation in recognition frequency or latency. With multimodal presentation, good readers had faster latencies. Dual coding and self-terminating memory search hypotheses were supported. Implications for the reading process and reading…

Multisensory guidance of orienting behavior.

PubMed

Maier, Joost X; Groh, Jennifer M

2009-12-01

We use both vision and audition when localizing objects and events in our environment. However, these sensory systems receive spatial information in different coordinate systems: sounds are localized using inter-aural and spectral cues, yielding a head-centered representation of space, whereas the visual system uses an eye-centered representation of space, based on the site of activation on the retina. In addition, the visual system employs a place-coded, retinotopic map of space, whereas the auditory system's representational format is characterized by broad spatial tuning and a lack of topographical organization. A common view is that the brain needs to reconcile these differences in order to control behavior, such as orienting gaze to the location of a sound source. To accomplish this, it seems that either auditory spatial information must be transformed from a head-centered rate code to an eye-centered map to match the frame of reference used by the visual system, or vice versa. Here, we review a number of studies that have focused on the neural basis underlying such transformations in the primate auditory system. Although, these studies have found some evidence for such transformations, many differences in the way the auditory and visual system encode space exist throughout the auditory pathway. We will review these differences at the neural level, and will discuss them in relation to differences in the way auditory and visual information is used in guiding orienting movements.

Incorporating Midbrain Adaptation to Mean Sound Level Improves Models of Auditory Cortical Processing

PubMed Central

Schoppe, Oliver; King, Andrew J.; Schnupp, Jan W.H.; Harper, Nicol S.

2016-01-01

Adaptation to stimulus statistics, such as the mean level and contrast of recently heard sounds, has been demonstrated at various levels of the auditory pathway. It allows the nervous system to operate over the wide range of intensities and contrasts found in the natural world. Yet current standard models of the response properties of auditory neurons do not incorporate such adaptation. Here we present a model of neural responses in the ferret auditory cortex (the IC Adaptation model), which takes into account adaptation to mean sound level at a lower level of processing: the inferior colliculus (IC). The model performs high-pass filtering with frequency-dependent time constants on the sound spectrogram, followed by half-wave rectification, and passes the output to a standard linear–nonlinear (LN) model. We find that the IC Adaptation model consistently predicts cortical responses better than the standard LN model for a range of synthetic and natural stimuli. The IC Adaptation model introduces no extra free parameters, so it improves predictions without sacrificing parsimony. Furthermore, the time constants of adaptation in the IC appear to be matched to the statistics of natural sounds, suggesting that neurons in the auditory midbrain predict the mean level of future sounds and adapt their responses appropriately. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT An ability to accurately predict how sensory neurons respond to novel stimuli is critical if we are to fully characterize their response properties. Attempts to model these responses have had a distinguished history, but it has proven difficult to improve their predictive power significantly beyond that of simple, mostly linear receptive field models. Here we show that auditory cortex receptive field models benefit from a nonlinear preprocessing stage that replicates known adaptation properties of the auditory midbrain. This improves their predictive power across a wide range of stimuli but keeps model complexity low as it introduces no new free parameters. Incorporating the adaptive coding properties of neurons will likely improve receptive field models in other sensory modalities too. PMID:26758822

Great Expectations: Is there Evidence for Predictive Coding in Auditory Cortex?

PubMed

Heilbron, Micha; Chait, Maria

2017-08-04

Predictive coding is possibly one of the most influential, comprehensive, and controversial theories of neural function. While proponents praise its explanatory potential, critics object that key tenets of the theory are untested or even untestable. The present article critically examines existing evidence for predictive coding in the auditory modality. Specifically, we identify five key assumptions of the theory and evaluate each in the light of animal, human and modeling studies of auditory pattern processing. For the first two assumptions - that neural responses are shaped by expectations and that these expectations are hierarchically organized - animal and human studies provide compelling evidence. The anticipatory, predictive nature of these expectations also enjoys empirical support, especially from studies on unexpected stimulus omission. However, for the existence of separate error and prediction neurons, a key assumption of the theory, evidence is lacking. More work exists on the proposed oscillatory signatures of predictive coding, and on the relation between attention and precision. However, results on these latter two assumptions are mixed or contradictory. Looking to the future, more collaboration between human and animal studies, aided by model-based analyses will be needed to test specific assumptions and implementations of predictive coding - and, as such, help determine whether this popular grand theory can fulfill its expectations. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Contributions of Sensory Coding and Attentional Control to Individual Differences in Performance in Spatial Auditory Selective Attention Tasks.

PubMed

Dai, Lengshi; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G

2016-01-01

Listeners with normal hearing thresholds (NHTs) differ in their ability to steer attention to whatever sound source is important. This ability depends on top-down executive control, which modulates the sensory representation of sound in the cortex. Yet, this sensory representation also depends on the coding fidelity of the peripheral auditory system. Both of these factors may thus contribute to the individual differences in performance. We designed a selective auditory attention paradigm in which we could simultaneously measure envelope following responses (EFRs, reflecting peripheral coding), onset event-related potentials (ERPs) from the scalp (reflecting cortical responses to sound) and behavioral scores. We performed two experiments that varied stimulus conditions to alter the degree to which performance might be limited due to fine stimulus details vs. due to control of attentional focus. Consistent with past work, in both experiments we find that attention strongly modulates cortical ERPs. Importantly, in Experiment I, where coding fidelity limits the task, individual behavioral performance correlates with subcortical coding strength (derived by computing how the EFR is degraded for fully masked tones compared to partially masked tones); however, in this experiment, the effects of attention on cortical ERPs were unrelated to individual subject performance. In contrast, in Experiment II, where sensory cues for segregation are robust (and thus less of a limiting factor on task performance), inter-subject behavioral differences correlate with subcortical coding strength. In addition, after factoring out the influence of subcortical coding strength, behavioral differences are also correlated with the strength of attentional modulation of ERPs. These results support the hypothesis that behavioral abilities amongst listeners with NHTs can arise due to both subcortical coding differences and differences in attentional control, depending on stimulus characteristics and task demands.

Noise-induced hearing loss increases the temporal precision of complex envelope coding by auditory-nerve fibers

PubMed Central

Henry, Kenneth S.; Kale, Sushrut; Heinz, Michael G.

2014-01-01

While changes in cochlear frequency tuning are thought to play an important role in the perceptual difficulties of people with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), the possible role of temporal processing deficits remains less clear. Our knowledge of temporal envelope coding in the impaired cochlea is limited to two studies that examined auditory-nerve fiber responses to narrowband amplitude modulated stimuli. In the present study, we used Wiener-kernel analyses of auditory-nerve fiber responses to broadband Gaussian noise in anesthetized chinchillas to quantify changes in temporal envelope coding with noise-induced SNHL. Temporal modulation transfer functions (TMTFs) and temporal windows of sensitivity to acoustic stimulation were computed from 2nd-order Wiener kernels and analyzed to estimate the temporal precision, amplitude, and latency of envelope coding. Noise overexposure was associated with slower (less negative) TMTF roll-off with increasing modulation frequency and reduced temporal window duration. The results show that at equal stimulus sensation level, SNHL increases the temporal precision of envelope coding by 20–30%. Furthermore, SNHL increased the amplitude of envelope coding by 50% in fibers with CFs from 1–2 kHz and decreased mean response latency by 0.4 ms. While a previous study of envelope coding demonstrated a similar increase in response amplitude, the present study is the first to show enhanced temporal precision. This new finding may relate to the use of a more complex stimulus with broad frequency bandwidth and a dynamic temporal envelope. Exaggerated neural coding of fast envelope modulations may contribute to perceptual difficulties in people with SNHL by acting as a distraction from more relevant acoustic cues, especially in fluctuating background noise. Finally, the results underscore the value of studying sensory systems with more natural, real-world stimuli. PMID:24596545

Auditory word recognition: extrinsic and intrinsic effects of word frequency.

PubMed

Connine, C M; Titone, D; Wang, J

1993-01-01

Two experiments investigated the influence of word frequency in a phoneme identification task. Speech voicing continua were constructed so that one endpoint was a high-frequency word and the other endpoint was a low-frequency word (e.g., best-pest). Experiment 1 demonstrated that ambiguous tokens were labeled such that a high-frequency word was formed (intrinsic frequency effect). Experiment 2 manipulated the frequency composition of the list (extrinsic frequency effect). A high-frequency list bias produced an exaggerated influence of frequency; a low-frequency list bias showed a reverse frequency effect. Reaction time effects were discussed in terms of activation and postaccess decision models of frequency coding. The results support a late use of frequency in auditory word recognition.

Musical Experience Influences Statistical Learning of a Novel Language

PubMed Central

Shook, Anthony; Marian, Viorica; Bartolotti, James; Schroeder, Scott R.

2014-01-01

Musical experience may benefit learning a new language by enhancing the fidelity with which the auditory system encodes sound. In the current study, participants with varying degrees of musical experience were exposed to two statistically-defined languages consisting of auditory Morse-code sequences which varied in difficulty. We found an advantage for highly-skilled musicians, relative to less-skilled musicians, in learning novel Morse-code based words. Furthermore, in the more difficult learning condition, performance of lower-skilled musicians was mediated by their general cognitive abilities. We suggest that musical experience may lead to enhanced processing of statistical information and that musicians’ enhanced ability to learn statistical probabilities in a novel Morse-code language may extend to natural language learning. PMID:23505962

Experiences of hearing voices: analysis of a novel phenomenological survey

PubMed Central

Woods, Angela; Jones, Nev; Alderson-Day, Ben; Callard, Felicity; Fernyhough, Charles

2015-01-01

Summary Background Auditory hallucinations—or voices—are a common feature of many psychiatric disorders and are also experienced by individuals with no psychiatric history. Understanding of the variation in subjective experiences of hallucination is central to psychiatry, yet systematic empirical research on the phenomenology of auditory hallucinations remains scarce. We aimed to record a detailed and diverse collection of experiences, in the words of the people who hear voices themselves. Methods We made a 13 item questionnaire available online for 3 months. To elicit phenomenologically rich data, we designed a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions, which drew on service-user perspectives and approaches from phenomenological psychiatry, psychology, and medical humanities. We invited people aged 16–84 years with experience of voice-hearing to take part via an advertisement circulated through clinical networks, hearing voices groups, and other mental health forums. We combined qualitative and quantitative methods, and used inductive thematic analysis to code the data and χ2 tests to test additional associations of selected codes. Findings Between Sept 9 and Nov 29, 2013, 153 participants completed the study. Most participants described hearing multiple voices (124 [81%] of 153 individuals) with characterful qualities (106 [69%] individuals). Less than half of the participants reported hearing literally auditory voices—70 (46%) individuals reported either thought-like or mixed experiences. 101 (66%) participants reported bodily sensations while they heard voices, and these sensations were significantly associated with experiences of abusive or violent voices (p=0·024). Although fear, anxiety, depression, and stress were often associated with voices, 48 (31%) participants reported positive emotions and 49 (32%) reported neutral emotions. Our statistical analysis showed that mixed voices were more likely to have changed over time (p=0·030), be internally located (p=0·010), and be conversational in nature (p=0·010). Interpretation This study is, to our knowledge, the largest mixed-methods investigation of auditory hallucination phenomenology so far. Our survey was completed by a diverse sample of people who hear voices with various diagnoses and clinical histories. Our findings both overlap with past large-sample investigations of auditory hallucination and suggest potentially important new findings about the association between acoustic perception and thought, somatic and multisensorial features of auditory hallucinations, and the link between auditory hallucinations and characterological entities. Funding Wellcome Trust. PMID:26360085

Differences between primary auditory cortex and auditory belt related to encoding and choice for AM sounds

PubMed Central

Niwa, Mamiko; Johnson, Jeffrey S.; O’Connor, Kevin N.; Sutter, Mitchell L.

2013-01-01

We recorded from middle-lateral (ML) and primary (A1) auditory cortex while macaques discriminated amplitude modulated (AM) from unmodulated noise. Compared to A1, ML had a higher proportion of neurons that encode increasing AM depth by decreasing their firing-rates (‘decreasing’ neurons), particularly with responses that were not synchronized to the modulation. Choice probability (CP) analysis revealed that A1 and ML activity were different during the first half of the test stimulus. In A1, significant CP begins prior to the test stimulus, remains relatively constant (or increases slightly) during the stimulus and increases greatly within 200 ms of lever-release. Neurons in ML behave similarly, except that significant CP disappears during the first half of the stimulus and reappears during the second half and pre-release periods. CP differences between A1 and ML depend on neural response type. In ML (but not A1), when activity is lower during the first half of the stimulus in non-synchronized ‘decreasing’ neurons, the monkey is more likely to report AM. Neurons that both increase firing rate with increasing modulation depth (‘increasing’ neurons) and synchronize their responses to AM had similar choice-related activity dynamics in ML and A1. The results suggest that, when ascending the auditory system, there is a transformation in coding AM from primarily synchronized ‘increasing’ responses in A1 to non-synchronized and dual (‘increasing’/’decreasing’) coding in ML. This sensory transformation is accompanied by changes in the timing of activity related to choice, suggesting functional differences between A1 and ML related to attention and/or behavior. PMID:23658177

Development of the auditory system

PubMed Central

Litovsky, Ruth

2015-01-01

Auditory development involves changes in the peripheral and central nervous system along the auditory pathways, and these occur naturally, and in response to stimulation. Human development occurs along a trajectory that can last decades, and is studied using behavioral psychophysics, as well as physiologic measurements with neural imaging. The auditory system constructs a perceptual space that takes information from objects and groups, segregates sounds, and provides meaning and access to communication tools such as language. Auditory signals are processed in a series of analysis stages, from peripheral to central. Coding of information has been studied for features of sound, including frequency, intensity, loudness, and location, in quiet and in the presence of maskers. In the latter case, the ability of the auditory system to perform an analysis of the scene becomes highly relevant. While some basic abilities are well developed at birth, there is a clear prolonged maturation of auditory development well into the teenage years. Maturation involves auditory pathways. However, non-auditory changes (attention, memory, cognition) play an important role in auditory development. The ability of the auditory system to adapt in response to novel stimuli is a key feature of development throughout the nervous system, known as neural plasticity. PMID:25726262

Speech perception of young children using nucleus 22-channel or CLARION cochlear implants.

PubMed

Young, N M; Grohne, K M; Carrasco, V N; Brown, C

1999-04-01

This study compares the auditory perceptual skill development of 23 congenitally deaf children who received the Nucleus 22-channel cochlear implant with the SPEAK speech coding strategy, and 20 children who received the CLARION Multi-Strategy Cochlear Implant with the Continuous Interleaved Sampler (CIS) speech coding strategy. All were under 5 years old at implantation. Preimplantation, there were no significant differences between the groups in age, length of hearing aid use, or communication mode. Auditory skills were assessed at 6 months and 12 months after implantation. Postimplantation, the mean scores on all speech perception tests were higher for the Clarion group. These differences were statistically significant for the pattern perception and monosyllable subtests of the Early Speech Perception battery at 6 months, and for the Glendonald Auditory Screening Procedure at 12 months. Multiple regression analysis revealed that device type accounted for the greatest variance in performance after 12 months of implant use. We conclude that children using the CIS strategy implemented in the Clarion implant may develop better auditory perceptual skills during the first year postimplantation than children using the SPEAK strategy with the Nucleus device.

Tinnitus Intensity Dependent Gamma Oscillations of the Contralateral Auditory Cortex

PubMed Central

van der Loo, Elsa; Gais, Steffen; Congedo, Marco; Vanneste, Sven; Plazier, Mark; Menovsky, Tomas; Van de Heyning, Paul; De Ridder, Dirk

2009-01-01

Background Non-pulsatile tinnitus is considered a subjective auditory phantom phenomenon present in 10 to 15% of the population. Tinnitus as a phantom phenomenon is related to hyperactivity and reorganization of the auditory cortex. Magnetoencephalography studies demonstrate a correlation between gamma band activity in the contralateral auditory cortex and the presence of tinnitus. The present study aims to investigate the relation between objective gamma-band activity in the contralateral auditory cortex and subjective tinnitus loudness scores. Methods and Findings In unilateral tinnitus patients (N = 15; 10 right, 5 left) source analysis of resting state electroencephalographic gamma band oscillations shows a strong positive correlation with Visual Analogue Scale loudness scores in the contralateral auditory cortex (max r = 0.73, p<0.05). Conclusion Auditory phantom percepts thus show similar sound level dependent activation of the contralateral auditory cortex as observed in normal audition. In view of recent consciousness models and tinnitus network models these results suggest tinnitus loudness is coded by gamma band activity in the contralateral auditory cortex but might not, by itself, be responsible for tinnitus perception. PMID:19816597

Short-term retention of pictures and words: evidence for dual coding systems.

PubMed

Pellegrino, J W; Siegel, A W; Dhawan, M

1975-03-01

The recall of picture and word triads was examined in three experiments that manipulated the type of distraction in a Brown-Peterson short-term retention task. In all three experiments recall of pictures was superior to words under auditory distraction conditions. Visual distraction produced high performance levels with both types of stimuli, whereas combined auditory and visual distraction significantly reduced picture recall without further affecting word recall. The results were interpreted in terms of the dual coding hypothesis and indicated that pictures are encoded into separate visual and acoustic processing systems while words are primarily acoustically encoded.

Assessing the Formation of Experience-Based Gender Expectations in an Implicit Learning Scenario

PubMed Central

Öttl, Anton; Behne, Dawn M.

2017-01-01

The present study investigates the formation of new word-referent associations in an implicit learning scenario, using a gender-coded artificial language with spoken words and visual referents. Previous research has shown that when participants are explicitly instructed about the gender-coding system underlying an artificial lexicon, they monitor the frequency of exposure to male vs. female referents within this lexicon, and subsequently use this probabilistic information to predict the gender of an upcoming referent. In an explicit learning scenario, the auditory and visual gender cues are necessarily highlighted prior to acqusition, and the effects previously observed may therefore depend on participants' overt awareness of these cues. To assess whether the formation of experience-based expectations is dependent on explicit awareness of the underlying coding system, we present data from an experiment in which gender-coding was acquired implicitly, thereby reducing the likelihood that visual and auditory gender cues are used strategically during acquisition. Results show that even if the gender coding system was not perfectly mastered (as reflected in the number of gender coding errors), participants develop frequency based expectations comparable to those previously observed in an explicit learning scenario. In line with previous findings, participants are quicker at recognizing a referent whose gender is consistent with an induced expectation than one whose gender is inconsistent with an induced expectation. At the same time however, eyetracking data suggest that these expectations may surface earlier in an implicit learning scenario. These findings suggest that experience-based expectations are robust against manner of acquisition, and contribute to understanding why similar expectations observed in the activation of stereotypes during the processing of natural language stimuli are difficult or impossible to suppress. PMID:28936186

Using Facebook to Reach People Who Experience Auditory Hallucinations

PubMed Central

Brian, Rachel Marie; Ben-Zeev, Dror

2016-01-01

Background Auditory hallucinations (eg, hearing voices) are relatively common and underreported false sensory experiences that may produce distress and impairment. A large proportion of those who experience auditory hallucinations go unidentified and untreated. Traditional engagement methods oftentimes fall short in reaching the diverse population of people who experience auditory hallucinations. Objective The objective of this proof-of-concept study was to examine the viability of leveraging Web-based social media as a method of engaging people who experience auditory hallucinations and to evaluate their attitudes toward using social media platforms as a resource for Web-based support and technology-based treatment. Methods We used Facebook advertisements to recruit individuals who experience auditory hallucinations to complete an 18-item Web-based survey focused on issues related to auditory hallucinations and technology use in American adults. We systematically tested multiple elements of the advertisement and survey layout including image selection, survey pagination, question ordering, and advertising targeting strategy. Each element was evaluated sequentially and the most cost-effective strategy was implemented in the subsequent steps, eventually deriving an optimized approach. Three open-ended question responses were analyzed using conventional inductive content analysis. Coded responses were quantified into binary codes, and frequencies were then calculated. Results Recruitment netted N=264 total sample over a 6-week period. Ninety-seven participants fully completed all measures at a total cost of $8.14 per participant across testing phases. Systematic adjustments to advertisement design, survey layout, and targeting strategies improved data quality and cost efficiency. People were willing to provide information on what triggered their auditory hallucinations along with strategies they use to cope, as well as provide suggestions to others who experience auditory hallucinations. Women, people who use mobile phones, and those experiencing more distress, were reportedly more open to using Facebook as a support and/or therapeutic tool in the future. Conclusions Facebook advertisements can be used to recruit research participants who experience auditory hallucinations quickly and in a cost-effective manner. Most (58%) Web-based respondents are open to Facebook-based support and treatment and are willing to describe their subjective experiences with auditory hallucinations. PMID:27302017

Using Facebook to Reach People Who Experience Auditory Hallucinations.

PubMed

Crosier, Benjamin Sage; Brian, Rachel Marie; Ben-Zeev, Dror

2016-06-14

Auditory hallucinations (eg, hearing voices) are relatively common and underreported false sensory experiences that may produce distress and impairment. A large proportion of those who experience auditory hallucinations go unidentified and untreated. Traditional engagement methods oftentimes fall short in reaching the diverse population of people who experience auditory hallucinations. The objective of this proof-of-concept study was to examine the viability of leveraging Web-based social media as a method of engaging people who experience auditory hallucinations and to evaluate their attitudes toward using social media platforms as a resource for Web-based support and technology-based treatment. We used Facebook advertisements to recruit individuals who experience auditory hallucinations to complete an 18-item Web-based survey focused on issues related to auditory hallucinations and technology use in American adults. We systematically tested multiple elements of the advertisement and survey layout including image selection, survey pagination, question ordering, and advertising targeting strategy. Each element was evaluated sequentially and the most cost-effective strategy was implemented in the subsequent steps, eventually deriving an optimized approach. Three open-ended question responses were analyzed using conventional inductive content analysis. Coded responses were quantified into binary codes, and frequencies were then calculated. Recruitment netted N=264 total sample over a 6-week period. Ninety-seven participants fully completed all measures at a total cost of $8.14 per participant across testing phases. Systematic adjustments to advertisement design, survey layout, and targeting strategies improved data quality and cost efficiency. People were willing to provide information on what triggered their auditory hallucinations along with strategies they use to cope, as well as provide suggestions to others who experience auditory hallucinations. Women, people who use mobile phones, and those experiencing more distress, were reportedly more open to using Facebook as a support and/or therapeutic tool in the future. Facebook advertisements can be used to recruit research participants who experience auditory hallucinations quickly and in a cost-effective manner. Most (58%) Web-based respondents are open to Facebook-based support and treatment and are willing to describe their subjective experiences with auditory hallucinations.

Computer-Based Learning of Spelling Skills in Children with and without Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kast, Monika; Baschera, Gian-Marco; Gross, Markus; Jancke, Lutz; Meyer, Martin

2011-01-01

Our spelling training software recodes words into multisensory representations comprising visual and auditory codes. These codes represent information about letters and syllables of a word. An enhanced version, developed for this study, contains an additional phonological code and an improved word selection controller relying on a phoneme-based…

A Test of Two Alternative Cognitive Processing Models: Learning Styles and Dual Coding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cuevas, Joshua; Dawson, Bryan L.

2018-01-01

This study tested two cognitive models, learning styles and dual coding, which make contradictory predictions about how learners process and retain visual and auditory information. Learning styles-based instructional practices are common in educational environments despite a questionable research base, while the use of dual coding is less…

Estradiol-dependent modulation of auditory processing and selectivity in songbirds

PubMed Central

Maney, Donna; Pinaud, Raphael

2011-01-01

The steroid hormone estradiol plays an important role in reproductive development and behavior and modulates a wide array of physiological and cognitive processes. Recently, reports from several research groups have converged to show that estradiol also powerfully modulates sensory processing, specifically, the physiology of central auditory circuits in songbirds. These investigators have discovered that (1) behaviorally-relevant auditory experience rapidly increases estradiol levels in the auditory forebrain; (2) estradiol instantaneously enhances the responsiveness and coding efficiency of auditory neurons; (3) these changes are mediated by a non-genomic effect of brain-generated estradiol on the strength of inhibitory neurotransmission; and (4) estradiol regulates biochemical cascades that induce the expression of genes involved in synaptic plasticity. Together, these findings have established estradiol as a central regulator of auditory function and intensified the need to consider brain-based mechanisms, in addition to peripheral organ dysfunction, in hearing pathologies associated with estrogen deficiency. PMID:21146556

Cochlear neuropathy and the coding of supra-threshold sound.

PubMed

Bharadwaj, Hari M; Verhulst, Sarah; Shaheen, Luke; Liberman, M Charles; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G

2014-01-01

Many listeners with hearing thresholds within the clinically normal range nonetheless complain of difficulty hearing in everyday settings and understanding speech in noise. Converging evidence from human and animal studies points to one potential source of such difficulties: differences in the fidelity with which supra-threshold sound is encoded in the early portions of the auditory pathway. Measures of auditory subcortical steady-state responses (SSSRs) in humans and animals support the idea that the temporal precision of the early auditory representation can be poor even when hearing thresholds are normal. In humans with normal hearing thresholds (NHTs), paradigms that require listeners to make use of the detailed spectro-temporal structure of supra-threshold sound, such as selective attention and discrimination of frequency modulation (FM), reveal individual differences that correlate with subcortical temporal coding precision. Animal studies show that noise exposure and aging can cause a loss of a large percentage of auditory nerve fibers (ANFs) without any significant change in measured audiograms. Here, we argue that cochlear neuropathy may reduce encoding precision of supra-threshold sound, and that this manifests both behaviorally and in SSSRs in humans. Furthermore, recent studies suggest that noise-induced neuropathy may be selective for higher-threshold, lower-spontaneous-rate nerve fibers. Based on our hypothesis, we suggest some approaches that may yield particularly sensitive, objective measures of supra-threshold coding deficits that arise due to neuropathy. Finally, we comment on the potential clinical significance of these ideas and identify areas for future investigation.

Inter-individual differences in how presentation modality affects verbal learning performance in children aged 5 to 16.

PubMed

Meijs, Celeste; Hurks, Petra P M; Wassenberg, Renske; Feron, Frans J M; Jolles, Jelle

2016-01-01

This study examines inter-individual differences in how presentation modality affects verbal learning performance. Children aged 5 to 16 performed a verbal learning test within one of three presentation modalities: pictorial, auditory, or textual. The results indicated that a beneficial effect of pictures exists over auditory and textual presentation modalities and that this effect increases with age. However, this effect is only found if the information to be learned is presented once (or at most twice) and only in children above the age of 7. The results may be explained in terms of single or dual coding of information in which the phonological loop is involved. Development of the (sub)vocal rehearsal system in the phonological loop is believed to be a gradual process that begins developing around the age of 7. The developmental trajectories are similar for boys and girls. Additionally, auditory information and textual information both seemed to be processed in a similar manner, namely without labeling or recoding, leading to single coding. In contrast, pictures are assumed to be processed by the dual coding of both the visual information and a (verbal) labeling of the pictures.

Evidence that hidden hearing loss underlies amplitude modulation encoding deficits in individuals with and without tinnitus.

PubMed

Paul, Brandon T; Bruce, Ian C; Roberts, Larry E

2017-02-01

Damage to auditory nerve fibers that expresses with suprathreshold sounds but is hidden from the audiogram has been proposed to underlie deficits in temporal coding ability observed among individuals with otherwise normal hearing, and to be present in individuals experiencing chronic tinnitus with clinically normal audiograms. We tested whether these individuals may have hidden synaptic losses on auditory nerve fibers with low spontaneous rates of firing (low-SR fibers) that are important for coding suprathreshold sounds in noise while high-SR fibers determining threshold responses in quiet remain relatively unaffected. Tinnitus and control subjects were required to detect the presence of amplitude modulation (AM) in a 5 kHz, suprathreshold tone (a frequency in the tinnitus frequency region of the tinnitus subjects, whose audiometric thresholds were normal to 12 kHz). The AM tone was embedded within background noise intended to degrade the contribution of high-SR fibers, such that AM coding was preferentially reliant on low-SR fibers. We also recorded by electroencephalography the "envelope following response" (EFR, generated in the auditory midbrain) to a 5 kHz, 85 Hz AM tone presented in the same background noise, and also in quiet (both low-SR and high-SR fibers contributing to AM coding in the latter condition). Control subjects with EFRs that were comparatively resistant to the addition of background noise had better AM detection thresholds than controls whose EFRs were more affected by noise. Simulated auditory nerve responses to our stimulus conditions using a well-established peripheral model suggested that low-SR fibers were better preserved in the former cases. Tinnitus subjects had worse AM detection thresholds and reduced EFRs overall compared to controls. Simulated auditory nerve responses found that in addition to severe low-SR fiber loss, a degree of high-SR fiber loss that would not be expected to affect audiometric thresholds was needed to explain the results in tinnitus subjects. The results indicate that hidden hearing loss could be sufficient to account for impaired temporal coding in individuals with normal audiograms as well as for cases of tinnitus without audiometric hearing loss. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Evaluation of Persons of Varying Ages.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stolte, John F.

1996-01-01

Reviews two experiments that strongly support dual coding theory. Dual coding theory holds that communicating concretely (tactile, auditory, or visual stimuli) affects evaluative thinking stronger than communicating abstractly through words and numbers. The experiments applied this theory to the realm of age and evaluation. (MJP)

Population responses in primary auditory cortex simultaneously represent the temporal envelope and periodicity features in natural speech.

PubMed

Abrams, Daniel A; Nicol, Trent; White-Schwoch, Travis; Zecker, Steven; Kraus, Nina

2017-05-01

Speech perception relies on a listener's ability to simultaneously resolve multiple temporal features in the speech signal. Little is known regarding neural mechanisms that enable the simultaneous coding of concurrent temporal features in speech. Here we show that two categories of temporal features in speech, the low-frequency speech envelope and periodicity cues, are processed by distinct neural mechanisms within the same population of cortical neurons. We measured population activity in primary auditory cortex of anesthetized guinea pig in response to three variants of a naturally produced sentence. Results show that the envelope of population responses closely tracks the speech envelope, and this cortical activity more closely reflects wider bandwidths of the speech envelope compared to narrow bands. Additionally, neuronal populations represent the fundamental frequency of speech robustly with phase-locked responses. Importantly, these two temporal features of speech are simultaneously observed within neuronal ensembles in auditory cortex in response to clear, conversation, and compressed speech exemplars. Results show that auditory cortical neurons are adept at simultaneously resolving multiple temporal features in extended speech sentences using discrete coding mechanisms. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Knowledge of response location alone is not sufficient to generate social inhibition of return.

PubMed

Welsh, Timothy N; Manzone, Joseph; McDougall, Laura

2014-11-01

Previous research has revealed that the inhibition of return (IOR) effect emerges when individuals respond to a target at the same location as their own previous response or the previous response of a co-actor. The latter social IOR effect is thought to occur because the observation of co-actor's response evokes a representation of that action in the observer and that the observation-evoked response code subsequently activates the inhibitory mechanisms underlying IOR. The present study was conducted to determine if knowledge of the co-actor's response alone is sufficient to evoke social IOR. Pairs of participants completed responses to targets that appeared at different button locations. Button contact generated location-contingent auditory stimuli (high and low tones in Experiment 1 and colour words in Experiment 2). In the Full condition, the observer saw the response and heard the auditory stimuli. In the Auditory Only condition, the observer did not see the co-actor's response, but heard the auditory stimuli generated via button contact to indicate response endpoint. It was found that, although significant individual and social IOR effects emerged in the Full conditions, there were no social IOR effects in the Auditory Only conditions. These findings suggest that knowledge of the co-actor's response alone via auditory information is not sufficient to activate the inhibitory processes leading to IOR. The activation of the mechanisms that lead to social IOR seems to be dependent on processing channels that code the spatial characteristics of action. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A nonstationary Poisson point process describes the sequence of action potentials over long time scales in lateral-superior-olive auditory neurons.

PubMed

Turcott, R G; Lowen, S B; Li, E; Johnson, D H; Tsuchitani, C; Teich, M C

1994-01-01

The behavior of lateral-superior-olive (LSO) auditory neurons over large time scales was investigated. Of particular interest was the determination as to whether LSO neurons exhibit the same type of fractal behavior as that observed in primary VIII-nerve auditory neurons. It has been suggested that this fractal behavior, apparent on long time scales, may play a role in optimally coding natural sounds. We found that a nonfractal model, the nonstationary dead-time-modified Poisson point process (DTMP), describes the LSO firing patterns well for time scales greater than a few tens of milliseconds, a region where the specific details of refractoriness are unimportant. The rate is given by the sum of two decaying exponential functions. The process is completely specified by the initial values and time constants of the two exponentials and by the dead-time relation. Specific measures of the firing patterns investigated were the interspike-interval (ISI) histogram, the Fano-factor time curve (FFC), and the serial count correlation coefficient (SCC) with the number of action potentials in successive counting times serving as the random variable. For all the data sets we examined, the latter portion of the recording was well approximated by a single exponential rate function since the initial exponential portion rapidly decreases to a negligible value. Analytical expressions available for the statistics of a DTMP with a single exponential rate function can therefore be used for this portion of the data. Good agreement was obtained among the analytical results, the computer simulation, and the experimental data on time scales where the details of refractoriness are insignificant.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Neural Representation of Concurrent Vowels in Macaque Primary Auditory Cortex123

PubMed Central

Micheyl, Christophe; Steinschneider, Mitchell

2016-01-01

Abstract Successful speech perception in real-world environments requires that the auditory system segregate competing voices that overlap in frequency and time into separate streams. Vowels are major constituents of speech and are comprised of frequencies (harmonics) that are integer multiples of a common fundamental frequency (F0). The pitch and identity of a vowel are determined by its F0 and spectral envelope (formant structure), respectively. When two spectrally overlapping vowels differing in F0 are presented concurrently, they can be readily perceived as two separate “auditory objects” with pitches at their respective F0s. A difference in pitch between two simultaneous vowels provides a powerful cue for their segregation, which in turn, facilitates their individual identification. The neural mechanisms underlying the segregation of concurrent vowels based on pitch differences are poorly understood. Here, we examine neural population responses in macaque primary auditory cortex (A1) to single and double concurrent vowels (/a/ and /i/) that differ in F0 such that they are heard as two separate auditory objects with distinct pitches. We find that neural population responses in A1 can resolve, via a rate-place code, lower harmonics of both single and double concurrent vowels. Furthermore, we show that the formant structures, and hence the identities, of single vowels can be reliably recovered from the neural representation of double concurrent vowels. We conclude that A1 contains sufficient spectral information to enable concurrent vowel segregation and identification by downstream cortical areas. PMID:27294198

Memory for pictures and sounds: independence of auditory and visual codes.

PubMed

Thompson, V A; Paivio, A

1994-09-01

Three experiments examined the mnemonic independence of auditory and visual nonverbal stimuli in free recall. Stimulus lists consisted of (1) pictures, (2) the corresponding environmental sounds, or (3) picture-sound pairs. In Experiment 1, free recall was tested under three learning conditions: standard intentional, intentional with a rehearsal-inhibiting distracter task, or incidental with the distracter task. In all three groups, recall was best for the picture-sound items. In addition, recall for the picture-sound stimuli appeared to be additive relative to pictures or sounds alone when the distracter task was used. Experiment 2 included two additional groups: In one, two copies of the same picture were shown simultaneously; in the other, two different pictures of the same concept were shown. There was no difference in recall among any of the picture groups; in contrast, recall in the picture-sound condition was greater than recall in either single-modality condition. However, doubling the exposure time in a third experiment resulted in additively higher recall for repeated pictures with different exemplars than ones with identical exemplars. The results are discussed in terms of dual coding theory and alternative conceptions of the memory trace.

The Effects of Computerized Auditory Feedback on Electronic Article Surveillance Tag Placement in an Auto-Parts Distribution Center

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goomas, David T.

2008-01-01

In this report from the field, computerized auditory feedback was used to inform order selectors and order selector auditors in a distribution center to add an electronic article surveillance (EAS) adhesive tag. This was done by programming handheld computers to emit a loud beep for high-priced items upon scanning the item's bar-coded Universal…

Perception of the Auditory-Visual Illusion in Speech Perception by Children with Phonological Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dodd, Barbara; McIntosh, Beth; Erdener, Dogu; Burnham, Denis

2008-01-01

An example of the auditory-visual illusion in speech perception, first described by McGurk and MacDonald, is the perception of [ta] when listeners hear [pa] in synchrony with the lip movements for [ka]. One account of the illusion is that lip-read and heard speech are combined in an articulatory code since people who mispronounce words respond…

Exploring Modality Compatibility in the Response-Effect Compatibility Paradigm.

PubMed

Földes, Noémi; Philipp, Andrea M; Badets, Arnaud; Koch, Iring

2017-01-01

According to ideomotor theory , action planning is based on anticipatory perceptual representations of action-effects. This aspect of action control has been investigated in studies using the response-effect compatibility (REC) paradigm, in which responses have been shown to be facilitated if ensuing perceptual effects share codes with the response based on dimensional overlap (i.e., REC). Additionally, according to the notion of ideomotor compatibility, certain response-effect (R-E) mappings will be stronger than others because some response features resemble the anticipated sensory response effects more strongly than others (e.g., since vocal responses usually produce auditory effects, an auditory stimulus should be anticipated in a stronger manner following vocal responses rather than following manual responses). Yet, systematic research on this matter is lacking. In the present study, two REC experiments aimed to explore the influence of R-E modality mappings. In Experiment 1, vocal number word responses produced visual effects on the screen (digits vs. number words; i.e., visual-symbolic vs. visual-verbal effect codes). The REC effect was only marginally larger for visual-verbal than for visual-symbolic effects. Using verbal effect codes in Experiment 2, we found that the REC effect was larger with auditory-verbal R-E mapping than with visual-verbal R-E mapping. Overall, the findings support the hypothesis of a role of R-E modality mappings in REC effects, suggesting both further evidence for ideomotor accounts as well as code-specific and modality-specific contributions to effect anticipation.

Low-cost coding of directivity information for the recording of musical instruments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Braasch, Jonas; Martens, William L.; Woszczyk, Wieslaw

2004-05-01

Most musical instruments radiate sound according to characteristic spatial directivity patterns. These patterns are usually not only strongly frequency dependent, but also time-variant functions of various parameters of the instrument, such as pitch and the playing technique applied (e.g., plucking versus bowing of string instruments). To capture the directivity information when recording an instrument, Warusfel and Misdariis (2001) proposed to record an instrument using four channels, one for the monopole and the others for three orthogonal dipole parts. In the new recording setup presented here, it is proposed to store one channel at a high sampling frequency, along with directivity information that is updated only every few milliseconds. Taking the binaural sluggishness of the human auditory system into account in this way provides a low-cost coding scheme for subsequent reproduction of time-variant directivity patterns.

Adaptation to Vocal Expressions Reveals Multistep Perception of Auditory Emotion

PubMed Central

Maurage, Pierre; Rouger, Julien; Latinus, Marianne; Belin, Pascal

2014-01-01

The human voice carries speech as well as important nonlinguistic signals that influence our social interactions. Among these cues that impact our behavior and communication with other people is the perceived emotional state of the speaker. A theoretical framework for the neural processing stages of emotional prosody has suggested that auditory emotion is perceived in multiple steps (Schirmer and Kotz, 2006) involving low-level auditory analysis and integration of the acoustic information followed by higher-level cognition. Empirical evidence for this multistep processing chain, however, is still sparse. We examined this question using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a continuous carry-over design (Aguirre, 2007) to measure brain activity while volunteers listened to non-speech-affective vocalizations morphed on a continuum between anger and fear. Analyses dissociated neuronal adaptation effects induced by similarity in perceived emotional content between consecutive stimuli from those induced by their acoustic similarity. We found that bilateral voice-sensitive auditory regions as well as right amygdala coded the physical difference between consecutive stimuli. In contrast, activity in bilateral anterior insulae, medial superior frontal cortex, precuneus, and subcortical regions such as bilateral hippocampi depended predominantly on the perceptual difference between morphs. Our results suggest that the processing of vocal affect recognition is a multistep process involving largely distinct neural networks. Amygdala and auditory areas predominantly code emotion-related acoustic information while more anterior insular and prefrontal regions respond to the abstract, cognitive representation of vocal affect. PMID:24920615

Adaptation to vocal expressions reveals multistep perception of auditory emotion.

PubMed

Bestelmeyer, Patricia E G; Maurage, Pierre; Rouger, Julien; Latinus, Marianne; Belin, Pascal

2014-06-11

The human voice carries speech as well as important nonlinguistic signals that influence our social interactions. Among these cues that impact our behavior and communication with other people is the perceived emotional state of the speaker. A theoretical framework for the neural processing stages of emotional prosody has suggested that auditory emotion is perceived in multiple steps (Schirmer and Kotz, 2006) involving low-level auditory analysis and integration of the acoustic information followed by higher-level cognition. Empirical evidence for this multistep processing chain, however, is still sparse. We examined this question using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a continuous carry-over design (Aguirre, 2007) to measure brain activity while volunteers listened to non-speech-affective vocalizations morphed on a continuum between anger and fear. Analyses dissociated neuronal adaptation effects induced by similarity in perceived emotional content between consecutive stimuli from those induced by their acoustic similarity. We found that bilateral voice-sensitive auditory regions as well as right amygdala coded the physical difference between consecutive stimuli. In contrast, activity in bilateral anterior insulae, medial superior frontal cortex, precuneus, and subcortical regions such as bilateral hippocampi depended predominantly on the perceptual difference between morphs. Our results suggest that the processing of vocal affect recognition is a multistep process involving largely distinct neural networks. Amygdala and auditory areas predominantly code emotion-related acoustic information while more anterior insular and prefrontal regions respond to the abstract, cognitive representation of vocal affect. Copyright © 2014 Bestelmeyer et al.

Modality-dependent effect of motion information in sensory-motor synchronised tapping.

PubMed

Ono, Kentaro

2018-05-14

Synchronised action is important for everyday life. Generally, the auditory domain is more sensitive for coding temporal information, and previous studies have shown that auditory-motor synchronisation is much more precise than visuo-motor synchronisation. Interestingly, adding motion information improves synchronisation with visual stimuli and the advantage of the auditory modality seems to diminish. However, whether adding motion information also improves auditory-motor synchronisation remains unknown. This study compared tapping accuracy with a stationary or moving stimulus in both auditory and visual modalities. Participants were instructed to tap in synchrony with the onset of a sound or flash in the stationary condition, while these stimuli were perceived as moving from side to side in the motion condition. The results demonstrated that synchronised tapping with a moving visual stimulus was significantly more accurate than tapping with a stationary visual stimulus, as previous studies have shown. However, tapping with a moving auditory stimulus was significantly poorer than tapping with a stationary auditory stimulus. Although motion information impaired audio-motor synchronisation, an advantage of auditory modality compared to visual modality still existed. These findings are likely the result of higher temporal resolution in the auditory domain, which is likely due to the physiological and structural differences in the auditory and visual pathways in the brain. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The role of auditory transient and deviance processing in distraction of task performance: a combined behavioral and event-related brain potential study

PubMed Central

Berti, Stefan

2013-01-01

Distraction of goal-oriented performance by a sudden change in the auditory environment is an everyday life experience. Different types of changes can be distracting, including a sudden onset of a transient sound and a slight deviation of otherwise regular auditory background stimulation. With regard to deviance detection, it is assumed that slight changes in a continuous sequence of auditory stimuli are detected by a predictive coding mechanisms and it has been demonstrated that this mechanism is capable of distracting ongoing task performance. In contrast, it is open whether transient detection—which does not rely on predictive coding mechanisms—can trigger behavioral distraction, too. In the present study, the effect of rare auditory changes on visual task performance is tested in an auditory-visual cross-modal distraction paradigm. The rare changes are either embedded within a continuous standard stimulation (triggering deviance detection) or are presented within an otherwise silent situation (triggering transient detection). In the event-related brain potentials, deviants elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN) while transients elicited an enhanced N1 component, mirroring pre-attentive change detection in both conditions but on the basis of different neuro-cognitive processes. These sensory components are followed by attention related ERP components including the P3a and the reorienting negativity (RON). This demonstrates that both types of changes trigger switches of attention. Finally, distraction of task performance is observable, too, but the impact of deviants is higher compared to transients. These findings suggest different routes of distraction allowing for the automatic processing of a wide range of potentially relevant changes in the environment as a pre-requisite for adaptive behavior. PMID:23874278

Complex Auditory Signals

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-09-01

ability to detect a change in spectral shape. This question also beats on that of how the auditory system codes intensity. There are, at laast, two...This prior experience with the diotic presentations. disparity leads us to speculate that the tasks of detecting an We also considered how binaural ...quite complex. One Colburn and Durlach, 1978), one prerequisite for binaural may not be able to simply extrapolate from one to the other. interaction

Multidimensional Characterization and Differentiation of Neurons in the Anteroventral Cochlear Nucleus

PubMed Central

Typlt, Marei; Englitz, Bernhard; Sonntag, Mandy; Dehmel, Susanne; Kopp-Scheinpflug, Cornelia; Ruebsamen, Rudolf

2012-01-01

Multiple parallel auditory pathways ascend from the cochlear nucleus. It is generally accepted that the origin of these pathways are distinct groups of neurons differing in their anatomical and physiological properties. In extracellular in vivo recordings these neurons are typically classified on the basis of their peri-stimulus time histogram. In the present study we reconsider the question of classification of neurons in the anteroventral cochlear nucleus (AVCN) by taking a wider range of response properties into account. The study aims at a better understanding of the AVCN's functional organization and its significance as the source of different ascending auditory pathways. The analyses were based on 223 neurons recorded in the AVCN of the Mongolian gerbil. The range of analysed parameters encompassed spontaneous activity, frequency coding, sound level coding, as well as temporal coding. In order to categorize the unit sample without any presumptions as to the relevance of certain response parameters, hierarchical cluster analysis and additional principal component analysis were employed which both allow a classification on the basis of a multitude of parameters simultaneously. Even with the presently considered wider range of parameters, high number of neurons and more advanced analytical methods, no clear boundaries emerged which would separate the neurons based on their physiology. At the current resolution of the analysis, we therefore conclude that the AVCN units more likely constitute a multi-dimensional continuum with different physiological characteristics manifested at different poles. However, more complex stimuli could be useful to uncover physiological differences in future studies. PMID:22253838

Temporal tuning in the bat auditory cortex is sharper when studied with natural echolocation sequences.

PubMed

Beetz, M Jerome; Hechavarría, Julio C; Kössl, Manfred

2016-06-30

Precise temporal coding is necessary for proper acoustic analysis. However, at cortical level, forward suppression appears to limit the ability of neurons to extract temporal information from natural sound sequences. Here we studied how temporal processing can be maintained in the bats' cortex in the presence of suppression evoked by natural echolocation streams that are relevant to the bats' behavior. We show that cortical neurons tuned to target-distance actually profit from forward suppression induced by natural echolocation sequences. These neurons can more precisely extract target distance information when they are stimulated with natural echolocation sequences than during stimulation with isolated call-echo pairs. We conclude that forward suppression does for time domain tuning what lateral inhibition does for selectivity forms such as auditory frequency tuning and visual orientation tuning. When talking about cortical processing, suppression should be seen as a mechanistic tool rather than a limiting element.

Precise auditory-vocal mirroring in neurons for learned vocal communication.

PubMed

Prather, J F; Peters, S; Nowicki, S; Mooney, R

2008-01-17

Brain mechanisms for communication must establish a correspondence between sensory and motor codes used to represent the signal. One idea is that this correspondence is established at the level of single neurons that are active when the individual performs a particular gesture or observes a similar gesture performed by another individual. Although neurons that display a precise auditory-vocal correspondence could facilitate vocal communication, they have yet to be identified. Here we report that a certain class of neurons in the swamp sparrow forebrain displays a precise auditory-vocal correspondence. We show that these neurons respond in a temporally precise fashion to auditory presentation of certain note sequences in this songbird's repertoire and to similar note sequences in other birds' songs. These neurons display nearly identical patterns of activity when the bird sings the same sequence, and disrupting auditory feedback does not alter this singing-related activity, indicating it is motor in nature. Furthermore, these neurons innervate striatal structures important for song learning, raising the possibility that singing-related activity in these cells is compared to auditory feedback to guide vocal learning.

Revisiting place and temporal theories of pitch

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

The nature of pitch and its neural coding have been studied for over a century. A popular debate has revolved around the question of whether pitch is coded via “place” cues in the cochlea, or via timing cues in the auditory nerve. In the most recent incarnation of this debate, the role of temporal fine structure has been emphasized in conveying important pitch and speech information, particularly because the lack of temporal fine structure coding in cochlear implants might explain some of the difficulties faced by cochlear implant users in perceiving music and pitch contours in speech. In addition, some studies have postulated that hearing-impaired listeners may have a specific deficit related to processing temporal fine structure. This article reviews some of the recent literature surrounding the debate, and argues that much of the recent evidence suggesting the importance of temporal fine structure processing can also be accounted for using spectral (place) or temporal-envelope cues. PMID:25364292

"When Music Speaks": Auditory Cortex Morphology as a Neuroanatomical Marker of Language Aptitude and Musicality.

PubMed

Turker, Sabrina; Reiterer, Susanne M; Seither-Preisler, Annemarie; Schneider, Peter

2017-01-01

Recent research has shown that the morphology of certain brain regions may indeed correlate with a number of cognitive skills such as musicality or language ability. The main aim of the present study was to explore the extent to which foreign language aptitude, in particular phonetic coding ability, is influenced by the morphology of Heschl's gyrus (HG; auditory cortex), working memory capacity, and musical ability. In this study, the auditory cortices of German-speaking individuals ( N = 30; 13 males/17 females; aged 20-40 years) with high and low scores in a number of language aptitude tests were compared. The subjects' language aptitude was measured by three different tests, namely a Hindi speech imitation task (phonetic coding ability), an English pronunciation assessment, and the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT). Furthermore, working memory capacity and musical ability were assessed to reveal their relationship with foreign language aptitude. On the behavioral level, significant correlations were found between phonetic coding ability, English pronunciation skills, musical experience, and language aptitude as measured by the MLAT. Parts of all three tests measuring language aptitude correlated positively and significantly with each other, supporting their validity for measuring components of language aptitude. Remarkably, the number of instruments played by subjects showed significant correlations with all language aptitude measures and musicality, whereas, the number of foreign languages did not show any correlations. With regard to the neuroanatomy of auditory cortex, adults with very high scores in the Hindi testing and the musicality test (AMMA) demonstrated a clear predominance of complete posterior HG duplications in the right hemisphere. This may reignite the discussion of the importance of the right hemisphere for language processing, especially when linked or common resources are involved, such as the inter-dependency between phonetic and musical aptitude.

Conversion of amino-acid sequence in proteins to classical music: search for auditory patterns

PubMed Central

2007-01-01

We have converted genome-encoded protein sequences into musical notes to reveal auditory patterns without compromising musicality. We derived a reduced range of 13 base notes by pairing similar amino acids and distinguishing them using variations of three-note chords and codon distribution to dictate rhythm. The conversion will help make genomic coding sequences more approachable for the general public, young children, and vision-impaired scientists. PMID:17477882

Behavioral determination of stimulus pair discrimination of auditory acoustic and electrical stimuli using a classical conditioning and heart-rate approach.

PubMed

Morgan, Simeon J; Paolini, Antonio G

2012-06-06

Acute animal preparations have been used in research prospectively investigating electrode designs and stimulation techniques for integration into neural auditory prostheses, such as auditory brainstem implants and auditory midbrain implants. While acute experiments can give initial insight to the effectiveness of the implant, testing the chronically implanted and awake animals provides the advantage of examining the psychophysical properties of the sensations induced using implanted devices. Several techniques such as reward-based operant conditioning, conditioned avoidance, or classical fear conditioning have been used to provide behavioral confirmation of detection of a relevant stimulus attribute. Selection of a technique involves balancing aspects including time efficiency (often poor in reward-based approaches), the ability to test a plurality of stimulus attributes simultaneously (limited in conditioned avoidance), and measure reliability of repeated stimuli (a potential constraint when physiological measures are employed). Here, a classical fear conditioning behavioral method is presented which may be used to simultaneously test both detection of a stimulus, and discrimination between two stimuli. Heart-rate is used as a measure of fear response, which reduces or eliminates the requirement for time-consuming video coding for freeze behaviour or other such measures (although such measures could be included to provide convergent evidence). Animals were conditioned using these techniques in three 2-hour conditioning sessions, each providing 48 stimulus trials. Subsequent 48-trial testing sessions were then used to test for detection of each stimulus in presented pairs, and test discrimination between the member stimuli of each pair. This behavioral method is presented in the context of its utilisation in auditory prosthetic research. The implantation of electrocardiogram telemetry devices is shown. Subsequent implantation of brain electrodes into the Cochlear Nucleus, guided by the monitoring of neural responses to acoustic stimuli, and the fixation of the electrode into place for chronic use is likewise shown.

Mouth and Voice: A Relationship between Visual and Auditory Preference in the Human Superior Temporal Sulcus

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Cortex in and around the human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is known to be critical for speech perception. The pSTS responds to both the visual modality (especially biological motion) and the auditory modality (especially human voices). Using fMRI in single subjects with no spatial smoothing, we show that visual and auditory selectivity are linked. Regions of the pSTS were identified that preferred visually presented moving mouths (presented in isolation or as part of a whole face) or moving eyes. Mouth-preferring regions responded strongly to voices and showed a significant preference for vocal compared with nonvocal sounds. In contrast, eye-preferring regions did not respond to either vocal or nonvocal sounds. The converse was also true: regions of the pSTS that showed a significant response to speech or preferred vocal to nonvocal sounds responded more strongly to visually presented mouths than eyes. These findings can be explained by environmental statistics. In natural environments, humans see visual mouth movements at the same time as they hear voices, while there is no auditory accompaniment to visual eye movements. The strength of a voxel's preference for visual mouth movements was strongly correlated with the magnitude of its auditory speech response and its preference for vocal sounds, suggesting that visual and auditory speech features are coded together in small populations of neurons within the pSTS. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans interacting face to face make use of auditory cues from the talker's voice and visual cues from the talker's mouth to understand speech. The human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a brain region known to be important for speech perception, is complex, with some regions responding to specific visual stimuli and others to specific auditory stimuli. Using BOLD fMRI, we show that the natural statistics of human speech, in which voices co-occur with mouth movements, are reflected in the neural architecture of the pSTS. Different pSTS regions prefer visually presented faces containing either a moving mouth or moving eyes, but only mouth-preferring regions respond strongly to voices. PMID:28179553

Mouth and Voice: A Relationship between Visual and Auditory Preference in the Human Superior Temporal Sulcus.

PubMed

Zhu, Lin L; Beauchamp, Michael S

2017-03-08

Cortex in and around the human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is known to be critical for speech perception. The pSTS responds to both the visual modality (especially biological motion) and the auditory modality (especially human voices). Using fMRI in single subjects with no spatial smoothing, we show that visual and auditory selectivity are linked. Regions of the pSTS were identified that preferred visually presented moving mouths (presented in isolation or as part of a whole face) or moving eyes. Mouth-preferring regions responded strongly to voices and showed a significant preference for vocal compared with nonvocal sounds. In contrast, eye-preferring regions did not respond to either vocal or nonvocal sounds. The converse was also true: regions of the pSTS that showed a significant response to speech or preferred vocal to nonvocal sounds responded more strongly to visually presented mouths than eyes. These findings can be explained by environmental statistics. In natural environments, humans see visual mouth movements at the same time as they hear voices, while there is no auditory accompaniment to visual eye movements. The strength of a voxel's preference for visual mouth movements was strongly correlated with the magnitude of its auditory speech response and its preference for vocal sounds, suggesting that visual and auditory speech features are coded together in small populations of neurons within the pSTS. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans interacting face to face make use of auditory cues from the talker's voice and visual cues from the talker's mouth to understand speech. The human posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a brain region known to be important for speech perception, is complex, with some regions responding to specific visual stimuli and others to specific auditory stimuli. Using BOLD fMRI, we show that the natural statistics of human speech, in which voices co-occur with mouth movements, are reflected in the neural architecture of the pSTS. Different pSTS regions prefer visually presented faces containing either a moving mouth or moving eyes, but only mouth-preferring regions respond strongly to voices. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/372697-12$15.00/0.

Intensity-invariant coding in the auditory system.

PubMed

Barbour, Dennis L

2011-11-01

The auditory system faithfully represents sufficient details from sound sources such that downstream cognitive processes are capable of acting upon this information effectively even in the face of signal uncertainty, degradation or interference. This robust sound source representation leads to an invariance in perception vital for animals to interact effectively with their environment. Due to unique nonlinearities in the cochlea, sound representations early in the auditory system exhibit a large amount of variability as a function of stimulus intensity. In other words, changes in stimulus intensity, such as for sound sources at differing distances, create a unique challenge for the auditory system to encode sounds invariantly across the intensity dimension. This challenge and some strategies available to sensory systems to eliminate intensity as an encoding variable are discussed, with a special emphasis upon sound encoding. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Is auditory perceptual timing a core deficit of developmental coordination disorder?

PubMed

Trainor, Laurel J; Chang, Andrew; Cairney, John; Li, Yao-Chuen

2018-05-09

Time is an essential dimension for perceiving and processing auditory events, and for planning and producing motor behaviors. Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting 5-6% of children that is characterized by deficits in motor skills. Studies show that children with DCD have motor timing and sensorimotor timing deficits. We suggest that auditory perceptual timing deficits may also be core characteristics of DCD. This idea is consistent with evidence from several domains, (1) motor-related brain regions are often involved in auditory timing process; (2) DCD has high comorbidity with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity, which are known to be associated with auditory timing deficits; (3) a few studies report deficits in auditory-motor timing among children with DCD; and (4) our preliminary behavioral and neuroimaging results show that children with DCD at age 6 and 7 have deficits in auditory time discrimination compared to typically developing children. We propose directions for investigating auditory perceptual timing processing in DCD that use various behavioral and neuroimaging approaches. From a clinical perspective, research findings can potentially benefit our understanding of the etiology of DCD, identify early biomarkers of DCD, and can be used to develop evidence-based interventions for DCD involving auditory-motor training. © 2018 The Authors. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The New York Academy of Sciences.

Slow Temporal Integration Enables Robust Neural Coding and Perception of a Cue to Sound Source Location.

PubMed

Brown, Andrew D; Tollin, Daniel J

2016-09-21

In mammals, localization of sound sources in azimuth depends on sensitivity to interaural differences in sound timing (ITD) and level (ILD). Paradoxically, while typical ILD-sensitive neurons of the auditory brainstem require millisecond synchrony of excitatory and inhibitory inputs for the encoding of ILDs, human and animal behavioral ILD sensitivity is robust to temporal stimulus degradations (e.g., interaural decorrelation due to reverberation), or, in humans, bilateral clinical device processing. Here we demonstrate that behavioral ILD sensitivity is only modestly degraded with even complete decorrelation of left- and right-ear signals, suggesting the existence of a highly integrative ILD-coding mechanism. Correspondingly, we find that a majority of auditory midbrain neurons in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (of chinchilla) effectively encode ILDs despite complete decorrelation of left- and right-ear signals. We show that such responses can be accounted for by relatively long windows of bilateral excitatory-inhibitory interaction, which we explicitly measure using trains of narrowband clicks. Neural and behavioral data are compared with the outputs of a simple model of ILD processing with a single free parameter, the duration of excitatory-inhibitory interaction. Behavioral, neural, and modeling data collectively suggest that ILD sensitivity depends on binaural integration of excitation and inhibition within a ≳3 ms temporal window, significantly longer than observed in lower brainstem neurons. This relatively slow integration potentiates a unique role for the ILD system in spatial hearing that may be of particular importance when informative ITD cues are unavailable. In mammalian hearing, interaural differences in the timing (ITD) and level (ILD) of impinging sounds carry critical information about source location. However, natural sounds are often decorrelated between the ears by reverberation and background noise, degrading the fidelity of both ITD and ILD cues. Here we demonstrate that behavioral ILD sensitivity (in humans) and neural ILD sensitivity (in single neurons of the chinchilla auditory midbrain) remain robust under stimulus conditions that render ITD cues undetectable. This result can be explained by "slow" temporal integration arising from several-millisecond-long windows of excitatory-inhibitory interaction evident in midbrain, but not brainstem, neurons. Such integrative coding can account for the preservation of ILD sensitivity despite even extreme temporal degradations in ecological acoustic stimuli. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/369908-14$15.00/0.

Referential Coding Contributes to the Horizontal SMARC Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cho, Yang Seok; Bae, Gi Yeul; Proctor, Robert W.

2012-01-01

The present study tested whether coding of tone pitch relative to a referent contributes to the correspondence effect between the pitch height of an auditory stimulus and the location of a lateralized response. When left-right responses are mapped to high or low pitch tones, performance is better with the high-right/low-left mapping than with the…

Multimodal urgency coding: auditory, visual, and tactile parameters and their impact on perceived urgency.

PubMed

Baldwin, Carryl L; Eisert, Jesse L; Garcia, Andre; Lewis, Bridget; Pratt, Stephanie M; Gonzalez, Christian

2012-01-01

Through a series of investigations involving different levels of contextual fidelity we developed scales of perceived urgency for several dimensions of the auditory, visual, and tactile modalities. Psychophysical ratings of perceived urgency, annoyance, and acceptability as well as behavioral responses to signals in each modality were obtained and analyzed using Steven's Power Law to allow comparison across modalities. Obtained results and their implications for use as in-vehicle alerts and warnings are discussed.

Effects of laterality and pitch height of an auditory accessory stimulus on horizontal response selection: the Simon effect and the SMARC effect.

PubMed

Nishimura, Akio; Yokosawa, Kazuhiko

2009-08-01

In the present article, we investigated the effects of pitch height and the presented ear (laterality) of an auditory stimulus, irrelevant to the ongoing visual task, on horizontal response selection. Performance was better when the response and the stimulated ear spatially corresponded (Simon effect), and when the spatial-musical association of response codes (SMARC) correspondence was maintained-that is, right (left) response with a high-pitched (low-pitched) tone. These findings reveal an automatic activation of spatially and musically associated responses by task-irrelevant auditory accessory stimuli. Pitch height is strong enough to influence the horizontal responses despite modality differences with task target.

A comprehensive catalogue of the coding and non-coding transcripts of the human inner ear

PubMed Central

Corneveaux, Jason J.; Ohmen, Jeffrey; White, Cory; Allen, April N.; Lusis, Aldons J.; Van Camp, Guy; Huentelman, Matthew J.; Friedman, Rick A.

2015-01-01

The mammalian inner ear consists of the cochlea and the vestibular labyrinth (utricle, saccule, and semicircular canals), which participate in both hearing and balance. Proper development and life-long function of these structures involves a highly complex coordinated system of spatial and temporal gene expression. The characterization of the inner ear transcriptome is likely important for the functional study of auditory and vestibular components, yet, primarily due to tissue unavailability, detailed expression catalogues of the human inner ear remain largely incomplete. We report here, for the first time, comprehensive transcriptome characterization of the adult human cochlea, ampulla, saccule and utricle of the vestibule obtained from patients without hearing abnormalities. Using RNA-Seq, we measured the expression of >50,000 predicted genes corresponding to approximately 200,000 transcripts, in the adult inner ear and compared it to 32 other human tissues. First, we identified genes preferentially expressed in the inner ear, and unique either to the vestibule or cochlea. Next, we examined expression levels of specific groups of potentially interesting RNAs, such as genes implicated in hearing loss, long non-coding RNAs, pseudogenes and transcripts subject to nonsense mediated decay (NMD). We uncover the spatial specificity of expression of these RNAs in the hearing/balance system, and reveal evidence of tissue specific NMD. Lastly, we investigated the non-syndromic deafness loci to which no gene has been mapped, and narrow the list of potential candidates for each locus. These data represent the first high-resolution transcriptome catalogue of the adult human inner ear. A comprehensive identification of coding and non-coding RNAs in the inner ear will enable pathways of auditory and vestibular function to be further defined in the study of hearing and balance. Expression data are freely accessible at https://www.tgen.org/home/research/research-divisions/neurogenomics/supplementary-data/inner-ear-transcriptome.aspx PMID:26341477

Contrast Gain Control in Auditory Cortex

PubMed Central

Rabinowitz, Neil C.; Willmore, Ben D.B.; Schnupp, Jan W.H.; King, Andrew J.

2011-01-01

Summary The auditory system must represent sounds with a wide range of statistical properties. One important property is the spectrotemporal contrast in the acoustic environment: the variation in sound pressure in each frequency band, relative to the mean pressure. We show that neurons in ferret auditory cortex rescale their gain to partially compensate for the spectrotemporal contrast of recent stimulation. When contrast is low, neurons increase their gain, becoming more sensitive to small changes in the stimulus, although the effectiveness of contrast gain control is reduced at low mean levels. Gain is primarily determined by contrast near each neuron's preferred frequency, but there is also a contribution from contrast in more distant frequency bands. Neural responses are modulated by contrast over timescales of ∼100 ms. By using contrast gain control to expand or compress the representation of its inputs, the auditory system may be seeking an efficient coding of natural sounds. PMID:21689603

Transformation of temporal sequences in the zebra finch auditory system

PubMed Central

Lim, Yoonseob; Lagoy, Ryan; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G; Gardner, Timothy J

2016-01-01

This study examines how temporally patterned stimuli are transformed as they propagate from primary to secondary zones in the thalamorecipient auditory pallium in zebra finches. Using a new class of synthetic click stimuli, we find a robust mapping from temporal sequences in the primary zone to distinct population vectors in secondary auditory areas. We tested whether songbirds could discriminate synthetic click sequences in an operant setup and found that a robust behavioral discrimination is present for click sequences composed of intervals ranging from 11 ms to 40 ms, but breaks down for stimuli composed of longer inter-click intervals. This work suggests that the analog of the songbird auditory cortex transforms temporal patterns to sequence-selective population responses or ‘spatial codes', and that these distinct population responses contribute to behavioral discrimination of temporally complex sounds. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.18205.001 PMID:27897971

Neural Representation of Concurrent Harmonic Sounds in Monkey Primary Auditory Cortex: Implications for Models of Auditory Scene Analysis

PubMed Central

Steinschneider, Mitchell; Micheyl, Christophe

2014-01-01

The ability to attend to a particular sound in a noisy environment is an essential aspect of hearing. To accomplish this feat, the auditory system must segregate sounds that overlap in frequency and time. Many natural sounds, such as human voices, consist of harmonics of a common fundamental frequency (F0). Such harmonic complex tones (HCTs) evoke a pitch corresponding to their F0. A difference in pitch between simultaneous HCTs provides a powerful cue for their segregation. The neural mechanisms underlying concurrent sound segregation based on pitch differences are poorly understood. Here, we examined neural responses in monkey primary auditory cortex (A1) to two concurrent HCTs that differed in F0 such that they are heard as two separate “auditory objects” with distinct pitches. We found that A1 can resolve, via a rate-place code, the lower harmonics of both HCTs, a prerequisite for deriving their pitches and for their perceptual segregation. Onset asynchrony between the HCTs enhanced the neural representation of their harmonics, paralleling their improved perceptual segregation in humans. Pitches of the concurrent HCTs could also be temporally represented by neuronal phase-locking at their respective F0s. Furthermore, a model of A1 responses using harmonic templates could qualitatively reproduce psychophysical data on concurrent sound segregation in humans. Finally, we identified a possible intracortical homolog of the “object-related negativity” recorded noninvasively in humans, which correlates with the perceptual segregation of concurrent sounds. Findings indicate that A1 contains sufficient spectral and temporal information for segregating concurrent sounds based on differences in pitch. PMID:25209282

Auditory reafferences: the influence of real-time feedback on movement control.

PubMed

Kennel, Christian; Streese, Lukas; Pizzera, Alexandra; Justen, Christoph; Hohmann, Tanja; Raab, Markus

2015-01-01

Auditory reafferences are real-time auditory products created by a person's own movements. Whereas the interdependency of action and perception is generally well studied, the auditory feedback channel and the influence of perceptual processes during movement execution remain largely unconsidered. We argue that movements have a rhythmic character that is closely connected to sound, making it possible to manipulate auditory reafferences online to understand their role in motor control. We examined if step sounds, occurring as a by-product of running, have an influence on the performance of a complex movement task. Twenty participants completed a hurdling task in three auditory feedback conditions: a control condition with normal auditory feedback, a white noise condition in which sound was masked, and a delayed auditory feedback condition. Overall time and kinematic data were collected. Results show that delayed auditory feedback led to a significantly slower overall time and changed kinematic parameters. Our findings complement previous investigations in a natural movement situation with non-artificial auditory cues. Our results support the existing theoretical understanding of action-perception coupling and hold potential for applied work, where naturally occurring movement sounds can be implemented in the motor learning processes.

Preliminary Studies on Differential Expression of Auditory Functional Genes in the Brain After Repeated Blast Exposures

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-01-01

exposed mice showed significant injury (Figure). The injury level was more on the medial contra- lateral side of the brain than the ipsilateral side. The...code) JRRD Volume 49, Number 7, 2012Pages 1153–1162Preliminary studies on differential expression of auditory functional genes in the brain after...hearing- related genes in different regions of the brain 6 h after repeated blast exposures in mice. Preliminary data showed that the expres- sion of

Auditory Spatial Perception: Auditory Localization

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-05-01

difference detectors ( Goldberg and Brown, 1969; Emanuel and Letowski, 2009). These cells are sensitive to binaural differences and perform initial coding of... variation . In particular, ~2/3 of the values (68.2%) will be within one standard deviation from the mean, i.e., within the range [μ - σ, μ + σ]. The...single loudspeaker located either close to the listener’s ears (ញ cm) or about 1 m away at 0°, 45° and/or 90° angles (e.g., ASHA, 1991; Goldberg

Explaining the high voice superiority effect in polyphonic music: evidence from cortical evoked potentials and peripheral auditory models.

PubMed

Trainor, Laurel J; Marie, Céline; Bruce, Ian C; Bidelman, Gavin M

2014-02-01

Natural auditory environments contain multiple simultaneously-sounding objects and the auditory system must parse the incoming complex sound wave they collectively create into parts that represent each of these individual objects. Music often similarly requires processing of more than one voice or stream at the same time, and behavioral studies demonstrate that human listeners show a systematic perceptual bias in processing the highest voice in multi-voiced music. Here, we review studies utilizing event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which support the notions that (1) separate memory traces are formed for two simultaneous voices (even without conscious awareness) in auditory cortex and (2) adults show more robust encoding (i.e., larger ERP responses) to deviant pitches in the higher than in the lower voice, indicating better encoding of the former. Furthermore, infants also show this high-voice superiority effect, suggesting that the perceptual dominance observed across studies might result from neurophysiological characteristics of the peripheral auditory system. Although musically untrained adults show smaller responses in general than musically trained adults, both groups similarly show a more robust cortical representation of the higher than of the lower voice. Finally, years of experience playing a bass-range instrument reduces but does not reverse the high voice superiority effect, indicating that although it can be modified, it is not highly neuroplastic. Results of new modeling experiments examined the possibility that characteristics of middle-ear filtering and cochlear dynamics (e.g., suppression) reflected in auditory nerve firing patterns might account for the higher-voice superiority effect. Simulations show that both place and temporal AN coding schemes well-predict a high-voice superiority across a wide range of interval spacings and registers. Collectively, we infer an innate, peripheral origin for the higher-voice superiority observed in human ERP and psychophysical music listening studies. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

How L2-Learners' Brains React to Code-Switches: An ERP Study with Russian Learners of German

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruigendijk, Esther; Hentschel, Gerd; Zeller, Jan Patrick

2016-01-01

This Event Related Potentials (ERP) study investigates auditory processing of sentences with so-called code-switches in Russian learners of German. It has often been argued that switching between two languages results in extra processing cost, although it is not completely clear yet what exactly causes these costs. ERP presents a good method to…

Auditory attention and multiattribute decision-making during a 33 h sleep-deprivation period: mean performance and between-subject dispersions.

PubMed

Linde, L; Edland, A; Bergström, M

1999-05-01

One purpose of this study was to compare attention in the evening (22:00 h), in the late night (04:00 h), in the morning (10:00 h) and in the afternoon (16:00 h) during a period of complete wakefulness beginning at 08:00 h with a mean daytime performance without sleep deprivation. Another purpose was to investigate sleep deprivation effects on a multi-attribute decision-making task with and without time pressure. Twelve sleep-deprived male students were compared with 12 male non-sleep-deprived students. Both groups were tested five times with an auditory attention and a symbol coding task. Significant declines (p < 0.05) in mean level of performance on the auditory attention task were found at 04:00, 10:00 and 16:00 h for subjects forced to the vigil. However, the effect of the sleep deprivation manifested itself even more in increased between-subject dispersions. There were no differences between time pressure and no time pressure on the decision-making task and no significant differences between sleep-deprived and non-sleep-deprived subjects in decision strategies. In fact, the pattern of decision strategies among the sleep-deprived subject was more similar to a pattern of decision strategies typical for non-stressful conditions than the pattern of decision strategies among the non-sleep-deprived subjects. This result may have been due to the fact that the sleep loss acted as a dearouser. Here too, however, the variances differed significantly among sleep-deprived and non-sleep-deprived subjects, indicating that the sleep-deprived subjects were more variable in their decision strategy pattern than the control group.

Coding Strategies and Implementations of Compressive Sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsai, Tsung-Han

This dissertation studies the coding strategies of computational imaging to overcome the limitation of conventional sensing techniques. The information capacity of conventional sensing is limited by the physical properties of optics, such as aperture size, detector pixels, quantum efficiency, and sampling rate. These parameters determine the spatial, depth, spectral, temporal, and polarization sensitivity of each imager. To increase sensitivity in any dimension can significantly compromise the others. This research implements various coding strategies subject to optical multidimensional imaging and acoustic sensing in order to extend their sensing abilities. The proposed coding strategies combine hardware modification and signal processing to exploiting bandwidth and sensitivity from conventional sensors. We discuss the hardware architecture, compression strategies, sensing process modeling, and reconstruction algorithm of each sensing system. Optical multidimensional imaging measures three or more dimensional information of the optical signal. Traditional multidimensional imagers acquire extra dimensional information at the cost of degrading temporal or spatial resolution. Compressive multidimensional imaging multiplexes the transverse spatial, spectral, temporal, and polarization information on a two-dimensional (2D) detector. The corresponding spectral, temporal and polarization coding strategies adapt optics, electronic devices, and designed modulation techniques for multiplex measurement. This computational imaging technique provides multispectral, temporal super-resolution, and polarization imaging abilities with minimal loss in spatial resolution and noise level while maintaining or gaining higher temporal resolution. The experimental results prove that the appropriate coding strategies may improve hundreds times more sensing capacity. Human auditory system has the astonishing ability in localizing, tracking, and filtering the selected sound sources or information from a noisy environment. Using engineering efforts to accomplish the same task usually requires multiple detectors, advanced computational algorithms, or artificial intelligence systems. Compressive acoustic sensing incorporates acoustic metamaterials in compressive sensing theory to emulate the abilities of sound localization and selective attention. This research investigates and optimizes the sensing capacity and the spatial sensitivity of the acoustic sensor. The well-modeled acoustic sensor allows localizing multiple speakers in both stationary and dynamic auditory scene; and distinguishing mixed conversations from independent sources with high audio recognition rate.

Neural coding of high-frequency tones

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Howes, W. L.

1976-01-01

Available evidence was presented indicating that neural discharges in the auditory nerve display characteristic periodicities in response to any tonal stimulus including high-frequency stimuli, and that this periodicity corresponds to the subjective pitch.

The right hemisphere supports but does not replace left hemisphere auditory function in patients with persisting aphasia.

PubMed

Teki, Sundeep; Barnes, Gareth R; Penny, William D; Iverson, Paul; Woodhead, Zoe V J; Griffiths, Timothy D; Leff, Alexander P

2013-06-01

In this study, we used magnetoencephalography and a mismatch paradigm to investigate speech processing in stroke patients with auditory comprehension deficits and age-matched control subjects. We probed connectivity within and between the two temporal lobes in response to phonemic (different word) and acoustic (same word) oddballs using dynamic causal modelling. We found stronger modulation of self-connections as a function of phonemic differences for control subjects versus aphasics in left primary auditory cortex and bilateral superior temporal gyrus. The patients showed stronger modulation of connections from right primary auditory cortex to right superior temporal gyrus (feed-forward) and from left primary auditory cortex to right primary auditory cortex (interhemispheric). This differential connectivity can be explained on the basis of a predictive coding theory which suggests increased prediction error and decreased sensitivity to phonemic boundaries in the aphasics' speech network in both hemispheres. Within the aphasics, we also found behavioural correlates with connection strengths: a negative correlation between phonemic perception and an inter-hemispheric connection (left superior temporal gyrus to right superior temporal gyrus), and positive correlation between semantic performance and a feedback connection (right superior temporal gyrus to right primary auditory cortex). Our results suggest that aphasics with impaired speech comprehension have less veridical speech representations in both temporal lobes, and rely more on the right hemisphere auditory regions, particularly right superior temporal gyrus, for processing speech. Despite this presumed compensatory shift in network connectivity, the patients remain significantly impaired.

The right hemisphere supports but does not replace left hemisphere auditory function in patients with persisting aphasia

PubMed Central

Barnes, Gareth R.; Penny, William D.; Iverson, Paul; Woodhead, Zoe V. J.; Griffiths, Timothy D.; Leff, Alexander P.

2013-01-01

In this study, we used magnetoencephalography and a mismatch paradigm to investigate speech processing in stroke patients with auditory comprehension deficits and age-matched control subjects. We probed connectivity within and between the two temporal lobes in response to phonemic (different word) and acoustic (same word) oddballs using dynamic causal modelling. We found stronger modulation of self-connections as a function of phonemic differences for control subjects versus aphasics in left primary auditory cortex and bilateral superior temporal gyrus. The patients showed stronger modulation of connections from right primary auditory cortex to right superior temporal gyrus (feed-forward) and from left primary auditory cortex to right primary auditory cortex (interhemispheric). This differential connectivity can be explained on the basis of a predictive coding theory which suggests increased prediction error and decreased sensitivity to phonemic boundaries in the aphasics’ speech network in both hemispheres. Within the aphasics, we also found behavioural correlates with connection strengths: a negative correlation between phonemic perception and an inter-hemispheric connection (left superior temporal gyrus to right superior temporal gyrus), and positive correlation between semantic performance and a feedback connection (right superior temporal gyrus to right primary auditory cortex). Our results suggest that aphasics with impaired speech comprehension have less veridical speech representations in both temporal lobes, and rely more on the right hemisphere auditory regions, particularly right superior temporal gyrus, for processing speech. Despite this presumed compensatory shift in network connectivity, the patients remain significantly impaired. PMID:23715097

Self-Regulation of the Primary Auditory Cortex Attention Via Directed Attention Mediated By Real Time fMRI Neurofeedback

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-05-05

Directed Attention Mediated by Real -Time fMRI Neurofeedback presented at/published to 2017 Radiological Society of North America Conference in...DATE Sherwood - p.1 Self-regulation of the primary auditory cortex attention via directed attention mediated by real -time fMRI neurofeedback M S...auditory cortex hyperactivity by self-regulation of the primary auditory cortex (A 1) based on real -time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback

“When Music Speaks”: Auditory Cortex Morphology as a Neuroanatomical Marker of Language Aptitude and Musicality

PubMed Central

Turker, Sabrina; Reiterer, Susanne M.; Seither-Preisler, Annemarie; Schneider, Peter

2017-01-01

Recent research has shown that the morphology of certain brain regions may indeed correlate with a number of cognitive skills such as musicality or language ability. The main aim of the present study was to explore the extent to which foreign language aptitude, in particular phonetic coding ability, is influenced by the morphology of Heschl’s gyrus (HG; auditory cortex), working memory capacity, and musical ability. In this study, the auditory cortices of German-speaking individuals (N = 30; 13 males/17 females; aged 20–40 years) with high and low scores in a number of language aptitude tests were compared. The subjects’ language aptitude was measured by three different tests, namely a Hindi speech imitation task (phonetic coding ability), an English pronunciation assessment, and the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT). Furthermore, working memory capacity and musical ability were assessed to reveal their relationship with foreign language aptitude. On the behavioral level, significant correlations were found between phonetic coding ability, English pronunciation skills, musical experience, and language aptitude as measured by the MLAT. Parts of all three tests measuring language aptitude correlated positively and significantly with each other, supporting their validity for measuring components of language aptitude. Remarkably, the number of instruments played by subjects showed significant correlations with all language aptitude measures and musicality, whereas, the number of foreign languages did not show any correlations. With regard to the neuroanatomy of auditory cortex, adults with very high scores in the Hindi testing and the musicality test (AMMA) demonstrated a clear predominance of complete posterior HG duplications in the right hemisphere. This may reignite the discussion of the importance of the right hemisphere for language processing, especially when linked or common resources are involved, such as the inter-dependency between phonetic and musical aptitude. PMID:29250017

Musically cued gait-training improves both perceptual and motor timing in Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Benoit, Charles-Etienne; Dalla Bella, Simone; Farrugia, Nicolas; Obrig, Hellmuth; Mainka, Stefan; Kotz, Sonja A

2014-01-01

It is well established that auditory cueing improves gait in patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD). Disease-related reductions in speed and step length can be improved by providing rhythmical auditory cues via a metronome or music. However, effects on cognitive aspects of motor control have yet to be thoroughly investigated. If synchronization of movement to an auditory cue relies on a supramodal timing system involved in perceptual, motor, and sensorimotor integration, auditory cueing can be expected to affect both motor and perceptual timing. Here, we tested this hypothesis by assessing perceptual and motor timing in 15 IPD patients before and after a 4-week music training program with rhythmic auditory cueing. Long-term effects were assessed 1 month after the end of the training. Perceptual and motor timing was evaluated with a battery for the assessment of auditory sensorimotor and timing abilities and compared to that of age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy controls. Prior to training, IPD patients exhibited impaired perceptual and motor timing. Training improved patients' performance in tasks requiring synchronization with isochronous sequences, and enhanced their ability to adapt to durational changes in a sequence in hand tapping tasks. Benefits of cueing extended to time perception (duration discrimination and detection of misaligned beats in musical excerpts). The current results demonstrate that auditory cueing leads to benefits beyond gait and support the idea that coupling gait to rhythmic auditory cues in IPD patients relies on a neuronal network engaged in both perceptual and motor timing.

Impairment of Auditory-Motor Timing and Compensatory Reorganization after Ventral Premotor Cortex Stimulation

PubMed Central

Kornysheva, Katja; Schubotz, Ricarda I.

2011-01-01

Integrating auditory and motor information often requires precise timing as in speech and music. In humans, the position of the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) in the dorsal auditory stream renders this area a node for auditory-motor integration. Yet, it remains unknown whether the PMv is critical for auditory-motor timing and which activity increases help to preserve task performance following its disruption. 16 healthy volunteers participated in two sessions with fMRI measured at baseline and following rTMS (rTMS) of either the left PMv or a control region. Subjects synchronized left or right finger tapping to sub-second beat rates of auditory rhythms in the experimental task, and produced self-paced tapping during spectrally matched auditory stimuli in the control task. Left PMv rTMS impaired auditory-motor synchronization accuracy in the first sub-block following stimulation (p<0.01, Bonferroni corrected), but spared motor timing and attention to task. Task-related activity increased in the homologue right PMv, but did not predict the behavioral effect of rTMS. In contrast, anterior midline cerebellum revealed most pronounced activity increase in less impaired subjects. The present findings suggest a critical role of the left PMv in feed-forward computations enabling accurate auditory-motor timing, which can be compensated by activity modulations in the cerebellum, but not in the homologue region contralateral to stimulation. PMID:21738657

[Functional anatomy of the cochlear nerve and the central auditory system].

PubMed

Simon, E; Perrot, X; Mertens, P

2009-04-01

The auditory pathways are a system of afferent fibers (through the cochlear nerve) and efferent fibers (through the vestibular nerve), which are not limited to a simple information transmitting system but create a veritable integration of the sound stimulus at the different levels, by analyzing its three fundamental elements: frequency (pitch), intensity, and spatial localization of the sound source. From the cochlea to the primary auditory cortex, the auditory fibers are organized anatomically in relation to the characteristic frequency of the sound signal that they transmit (tonotopy). Coding the intensity of the sound signal is based on temporal recruitment (the number of action potentials) and spatial recruitment (the number of inner hair cells recruited near the cell of the frequency that is characteristic of the stimulus). Because of binaural hearing, commissural pathways at each level of the auditory system and integration of the phase shift and the difference in intensity between signals coming from both ears, spatial localization of the sound source is possible. Finally, through the efferent fibers in the vestibular nerve, higher centers exercise control over the activity of the cochlea and adjust the peripheral hearing organ to external sound conditions, thus protecting the auditory system or increasing sensitivity by the attention given to the signal.

Interaural time discrimination of envelopes carried on high-frequency tones as a function of level and interaural carrier mismatch

PubMed Central

Blanks, Deidra A.; Buss, Emily; Grose, John H.; Fitzpatrick, Douglas C.; Hall, Joseph W.

2009-01-01

Objectives The present study investigated interaural time discrimination for binaurally mismatched carrier frequencies in listeners with normal hearing. One goal of the investigation was to gain insights into binaural hearing in patients with bilateral cochlear implants, where the coding of interaural time differences may be limited by mismatches in the neural populations receiving stimulation on each side. Design Temporal envelopes were manipulated to present low frequency timing cues to high frequency auditory channels. Carrier frequencies near 4 kHz were amplitude modulated at 128 Hz via multiplication with a half-wave rectified sinusoid, and that modulation was either in-phase across ears or delayed to one ear. Detection thresholds for non-zero interaural time differences were measured for a range of stimulus levels and a range of carrier frequency mismatches. Data were also collected under conditions designed to limit cues based on stimulus spectral spread, including masking and truncation of sidebands associated with modulation. Results Listeners with normal hearing can detect interaural time differences in the face of substantial mismatches in carrier frequency across ears. Conclusions The processing of interaural time differences in listeners with normal hearing is likely based on spread of excitation into binaurally matched auditory channels. Sensitivity to interaural time differences in listeners with cochlear implants may depend upon spread of current that results in the stimulation of neural populations that share common tonotopic space bilaterally. PMID:18596646

Development of a wireless system for auditory neuroscience.

PubMed

Lukes, A J; Lear, A T; Snider, R K

2001-01-01

In order to study how the auditory cortex extracts communication sounds in a realistic acoustic environment, a wireless system is being developed that will transmit acoustic as well as neural signals. The miniature transmitter will be capable of transmitting two acoustic signals with 37.5 KHz bandwidths (75 KHz sample rate) and 56 neural signals with bandwidths of 9.375 KHz (18.75 KHz sample rate). These signals will be time-division multiplexed into one high bandwidth signal with a 1.2 MHz sample rate. This high bandwidth signal will then be frequency modulated onto a 2.4 GHz carrier, which resides in the industrial, scientic, and medical (ISM) band that is designed for low-power short-range wireless applications. On the receiver side, the signal will be demodulated from the 2.4 GHz carrier and then digitized by an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter. The acoustic and neural signals will be digitally demultiplexed from the multiplexed signal into their respective channels. Oversampling (20 MHz) will allow the reconstruction of the multiplexing clock by a digital signal processor (DSP) that will perform frame and bit synchronization. A frame is a subset of the signal that contains all the channels and several channels tied high and low will signal the start of a frame. This technological development will bring two benefits to auditory neuroscience. It will allow simultaneous recording of many neurons that will permit studies of population codes. It will also allow neural functions to be determined in higher auditory areas by correlating neural and acoustic signals without apriori knowledge of the necessary stimuli.

Early experience shapes vocal neural coding and perception in songbirds

PubMed Central

Woolley, Sarah M. N.

2012-01-01

Songbirds, like humans, are highly accomplished vocal learners. The many parallels between speech and birdsong and conserved features of mammalian and avian auditory systems have led to the emergence of the songbird as a model system for studying the perceptual mechanisms of vocal communication. Laboratory research on songbirds allows the careful control of early life experience and high-resolution analysis of brain function during vocal learning, production and perception. Here, I review what songbird studies have revealed about the role of early experience in the development of vocal behavior, auditory perception and the processing of learned vocalizations by auditory neurons. The findings of these studies suggest general principles for how exposure to vocalizations during development and into adulthood influences the perception of learned vocal signals. PMID:22711657

Reading strategies of Chinese students with severe to profound hearing loss.

PubMed

Cheung, Ka Yan; Leung, Man Tak; McPherson, Bradley

2013-01-01

The present study investigated the significance of auditory discrimination and the use of phonological and orthographic codes during the course of reading development in Chinese students who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH). In this study, the reading behaviors of D/HH students in 2 tasks-a task on auditory perception of onset rime and a synonym decision task-were compared with those of their chronological age-matched and reading level (RL)-matched controls. Cross-group comparison of the performances of participants in the task on auditory perception suggests that poor auditory discrimination ability may be a possible cause of reading problems for D/HH students. In addition, results of the synonym decision task reveal that D/HH students with poor reading ability demonstrate a significantly greater preference for orthographic rather than phonological information, when compared with the D/HH students with good reading ability and their RL-matched controls. Implications for future studies and educational planning are discussed.

Intensity invariance properties of auditory neurons compared to the statistics of relevant natural signals in grasshoppers.

PubMed

Clemens, Jan; Weschke, Gerroth; Vogel, Astrid; Ronacher, Bernhard

2010-04-01

The temporal pattern of amplitude modulations (AM) is often used to recognize acoustic objects. To identify objects reliably, intensity invariant representations have to be formed. We approached this problem within the auditory pathway of grasshoppers. We presented AM patterns modulated at different time scales and intensities. Metric space analysis of neuronal responses allowed us to determine how well, how invariantly, and at which time scales AM frequency is encoded. We find that in some neurons spike-count cues contribute substantially (20-60%) to the decoding of AM frequency at a single intensity. However, such cues are not robust when intensity varies. The general intensity invariance of the system is poor. However, there exists a range of AM frequencies around 83 Hz where intensity invariance of local interneurons is relatively high. In this range, natural communication signals exhibit much variation between species, suggesting an important behavioral role for this frequency band. We hypothesize, just as has been proposed for human speech, that the communication signals might have evolved to match the processing properties of the receivers. This contrasts with optimal coding theory, which postulates that neuronal systems are adapted to the statistics of the relevant signals.

Auditory Proprioceptive Integration: Effects of Real-Time Kinematic Auditory Feedback on Knee Proprioception

PubMed Central

Ghai, Shashank; Schmitz, Gerd; Hwang, Tong-Hun; Effenberg, Alfred O.

2018-01-01

The purpose of the study was to assess the influence of real-time auditory feedback on knee proprioception. Thirty healthy participants were randomly allocated to control (n = 15), and experimental group I (15). The participants performed an active knee-repositioning task using their dominant leg, with/without additional real-time auditory feedback where the frequency was mapped in a convergent manner to two different target angles (40 and 75°). Statistical analysis revealed significant enhancement in knee re-positioning accuracy for the constant and absolute error with real-time auditory feedback, within and across the groups. Besides this convergent condition, we established a second divergent condition. Here, a step-wise transposition of frequency was performed to explore whether a systematic tuning between auditory-proprioceptive repositioning exists. No significant effects were identified in this divergent auditory feedback condition. An additional experimental group II (n = 20) was further included. Here, we investigated the influence of a larger magnitude and directional change of step-wise transposition of the frequency. In a first step, results confirm the findings of experiment I. Moreover, significant effects on knee auditory-proprioception repositioning were evident when divergent auditory feedback was applied. During the step-wise transposition participants showed systematic modulation of knee movements in the opposite direction of transposition. We confirm that knee re-positioning accuracy can be enhanced with concurrent application of real-time auditory feedback and that knee re-positioning can modulated in a goal-directed manner with step-wise transposition of frequency. Clinical implications are discussed with respect to joint position sense in rehabilitation settings. PMID:29568259

Distortions of Subjective Time Perception Within and Across Senses

PubMed Central

van Wassenhove, Virginie; Buonomano, Dean V.; Shimojo, Shinsuke; Shams, Ladan

2008-01-01

Background The ability to estimate the passage of time is of fundamental importance for perceptual and cognitive processes. One experience of time is the perception of duration, which is not isomorphic to physical duration and can be distorted by a number of factors. Yet, the critical features generating these perceptual shifts in subjective duration are not understood. Methodology/Findings We used prospective duration judgments within and across sensory modalities to examine the effect of stimulus predictability and feature change on the perception of duration. First, we found robust distortions of perceived duration in auditory, visual and auditory-visual presentations despite the predictability of the feature changes in the stimuli. For example, a looming disc embedded in a series of steady discs led to time dilation, whereas a steady disc embedded in a series of looming discs led to time compression. Second, we addressed whether visual (auditory) inputs could alter the perception of duration of auditory (visual) inputs. When participants were presented with incongruent audio-visual stimuli, the perceived duration of auditory events could be shortened or lengthened by the presence of conflicting visual information; however, the perceived duration of visual events was seldom distorted by the presence of auditory information and was never perceived shorter than their actual durations. Conclusions/Significance These results support the existence of multisensory interactions in the perception of duration and, importantly, suggest that vision can modify auditory temporal perception in a pure timing task. Insofar as distortions in subjective duration can neither be accounted for by the unpredictability of an auditory, visual or auditory-visual event, we propose that it is the intrinsic features of the stimulus that critically affect subjective time distortions. PMID:18197248

Evaluation of an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory tau effect.

PubMed

Henry, Molly J; McAuley, J Devin; Zaleha, Marta

2009-08-01

This article extends an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory kappa effect proposed by Henry and McAuley (2009a) to the auditory tau effect. Two experiments were conducted using an AXB design in which listeners judged the relative pitch of a middle target tone (X) in ascending and descending three-tone sequences. In Experiment 1, sequences were isochronous, establishing constant fast, medium, and slow velocity conditions. No systematic distortions in perceived target pitch were observed, and thresholds were similar across velocity conditions. Experiment 2 introduced to-be-ignored variations in target timing. Variations in target timing that deviated from constant velocity conditions introduced systematic distortions in perceived target pitch, indicative of a robust auditory tau effect. Consistent with an auditory motion hypothesis, the magnitude of the tau effect was larger at faster velocities. In addition, the tau effect was generally stronger for descending sequences than for ascending sequences. Combined with previous work on the auditory kappa effect, the imputed velocity model and associated auditory motion hypothesis provide a unified quantitative account of both auditory tau and kappa effects. In broader terms, these findings add support to the view that pitch and time relations in auditory patterns are fundamentally interdependent.

Focused and shifting attention in children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure.

PubMed

Mattson, Sarah N; Calarco, Katherine E; Lang, Aimée R

2006-05-01

Attention deficits are a hallmark of the teratogenic effects of alcohol. However, characterization of these deficits remains inconclusive. Children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure and nonexposed controls were evaluated using a paradigm consisting of three conditions: visual focus, auditory focus, and auditory-visual shift of attention. For the focus conditions, participants responded manually to visual or auditory targets. For the shift condition, participants alternated responses between visual targets and auditory targets. For the visual focus condition, alcohol-exposed children had lower accuracy and slower reaction time for all intertarget intervals (ITIs), while on the auditory focus condition, alcohol-exposed children were less accurate but displayed slower reaction time only on the longest ITI. Finally, for the shift condition, the alcohol-exposed group was accurate but had slowed reaction times. These results indicate that children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure have pervasive deficits in visual focused attention and deficits in maintaining auditory attention over time. However, no deficits were noted in the ability to disengage and reengage attention when required to shift attention between visual and auditory stimuli, although reaction times to shift were slower. Copyright (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

Impact of Morphometry, Myelinization and Synaptic Current Strength on Spike Conduction in Human and Cat Spiral Ganglion Neurons

PubMed Central

Rattay, Frank; Potrusil, Thomas; Wenger, Cornelia; Wise, Andrew K.; Glueckert, Rudolf; Schrott-Fischer, Anneliese

2013-01-01

Background Our knowledge about the neural code in the auditory nerve is based to a large extent on experiments on cats. Several anatomical differences between auditory neurons in human and cat are expected to lead to functional differences in speed and safety of spike conduction. Methodology/Principal Findings Confocal microscopy was used to systematically evaluate peripheral and central process diameters, commonness of myelination and morphology of spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) along the cochlea of three human and three cats. Based on these morphometric data, model analysis reveales that spike conduction in SGNs is characterized by four phases: a postsynaptic delay, constant velocity in the peripheral process, a presomatic delay and constant velocity in the central process. The majority of SGNs are type I, connecting the inner hair cells with the brainstem. In contrast to those of humans, type I neurons of the cat are entirely myelinated. Biophysical model evaluation showed delayed and weak spikes in the human soma region as a consequence of a lack of myelin. The simulated spike conduction times are in accordance with normal interwave latencies from auditory brainstem response recordings from man and cat. Simulated 400 pA postsynaptic currents from inner hair cell ribbon synapses were 15 times above threshold. They enforced quick and synchronous spiking. Both of these properties were not present in type II cells as they receive fewer and much weaker (∼26 pA) synaptic stimuli. Conclusions/Significance Wasting synaptic energy boosts spike initiation, which guarantees the rapid transmission of temporal fine structure of auditory signals. However, a lack of myelin in the soma regions of human type I neurons causes a large delay in spike conduction in comparison with cat neurons. The absent myelin, in combination with a longer peripheral process, causes quantitative differences of temporal parameters in the electrically stimulated human cochlea compared to the cat cochlea. PMID:24260179

Selective and Efficient Neural Coding of Communication Signals Depends on Early Acoustic and Social Environment

PubMed Central

Amin, Noopur; Gastpar, Michael; Theunissen, Frédéric E.

2013-01-01

Previous research has shown that postnatal exposure to simple, synthetic sounds can affect the sound representation in the auditory cortex as reflected by changes in the tonotopic map or other relatively simple tuning properties, such as AM tuning. However, their functional implications for neural processing in the generation of ethologically-based perception remain unexplored. Here we examined the effects of noise-rearing and social isolation on the neural processing of communication sounds such as species-specific song, in the primary auditory cortex analog of adult zebra finches. Our electrophysiological recordings reveal that neural tuning to simple frequency-based synthetic sounds is initially established in all the laminae independent of patterned acoustic experience; however, we provide the first evidence that early exposure to patterned sound statistics, such as those found in native sounds, is required for the subsequent emergence of neural selectivity for complex vocalizations and for shaping neural spiking precision in superficial and deep cortical laminae, and for creating efficient neural representations of song and a less redundant ensemble code in all the laminae. Our study also provides the first causal evidence for ‘sparse coding’, such that when the statistics of the stimuli were changed during rearing, as in noise-rearing, that the sparse or optimal representation for species-specific vocalizations disappeared. Taken together, these results imply that a layer-specific differential development of the auditory cortex requires patterned acoustic input, and a specialized and robust sensory representation of complex communication sounds in the auditory cortex requires a rich acoustic and social environment. PMID:23630587

Using the structure of natural scenes and sounds to predict neural response properties in the brain

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deweese, Michael

2014-03-01

The natural scenes and sounds we encounter in the world are highly structured. The fact that animals and humans are so efficient at processing these sensory signals compared with the latest algorithms running on the fastest modern computers suggests that our brains can exploit this structure. We have developed a sparse mathematical representation of speech that minimizes the number of active model neurons needed to represent typical speech sounds. The model learns several well-known acoustic features of speech such as harmonic stacks, formants, onsets and terminations, but we also find more exotic structures in the spectrogra representation of sound such as localized checkerboard patterns and frequency-modulated excitatory subregions flanked by suppressive sidebands. Moreover, several of these novel features resemble neuronal receptive fields reported in the Inferior Colliculus (IC), as well as auditory thalamus (MGBv) and primary auditory cortex (A1), and our model neurons exhibit the same tradeoff in spectrotemporal resolution as has been observed in IC. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that receptive fields of neurons in the ascending mammalian auditory pathway beyond the auditory nerve can be predicted based on coding principles and the statistical properties of recorded sounds. We have also developed a biologically-inspired neural network model of primary visual cortex (V1) that can learn a sparse representation of natural scenes using spiking neurons and strictly local plasticity rules. The representation learned by our model is in good agreement with measured receptive fields in V1, demonstrating that sparse sensory coding can be achieved in a realistic biological setting.

Neural coding of syntactic structure in learned vocalizations in the songbird.

PubMed

Fujimoto, Hisataka; Hasegawa, Taku; Watanabe, Dai

2011-07-06

Although vocal signals including human languages are composed of a finite number of acoustic elements, complex and diverse vocal patterns can be created from combinations of these elements, linked together by syntactic rules. To enable such syntactic vocal behaviors, neural systems must extract the sequence patterns from auditory information and establish syntactic rules to generate motor commands for vocal organs. However, the neural basis of syntactic processing of learned vocal signals remains largely unknown. Here we report that the basal ganglia projecting premotor neurons (HVC(X) neurons) in Bengalese finches represent syntactic rules that generate variable song sequences. When vocalizing an alternative transition segment between song elements called syllables, sparse burst spikes of HVC(X) neurons code the identity of a specific syllable type or a specific transition direction among the alternative trajectories. When vocalizing a variable repetition sequence of the same syllable, HVC(X) neurons not only signal the initiation and termination of the repetition sequence but also indicate the progress and state-of-completeness of the repetition. These different types of syntactic information are frequently integrated within the activity of single HVC(X) neurons, suggesting that syntactic attributes of the individual neurons are not programmed as a basic cellular subtype in advance but acquired in the course of vocal learning and maturation. Furthermore, some auditory-vocal mirroring type HVC(X) neurons display transition selectivity in the auditory phase, much as they do in the vocal phase, suggesting that these songbirds may extract syntactic rules from auditory experience and apply them to form their own vocal behaviors.

Timing matters: the processing of pitch relations

PubMed Central

Weise, Annekathrin; Grimm, Sabine; Trujillo-Barreto, Nelson J.; Schröger, Erich

2014-01-01

The human central auditory system can automatically extract abstract regularities from a variant auditory input. To this end, temporarily separated events need to be related. This study tested whether the timing between events, falling either within or outside the temporal window of integration (~350 ms), impacts the extraction of abstract feature relations. We utilized tone pairs for which tones within but not across pairs revealed a constant pitch relation (e.g., pitch of second tone of a pair higher than pitch of first tone, while absolute pitch values varied across pairs). We measured the mismatch negativity (MMN; the brain’s error signal to auditory regularity violations) to second tones that rarely violated the pitch relation (e.g., pitch of second tone lower). A Short condition in which tone duration (90 ms) and stimulus onset asynchrony between the tones of a pair were short (110 ms) was compared to two conditions, where this onset asynchrony was long (510 ms). In the Long Gap condition, the tone durations were identical to Short (90 ms), but the silent interval was prolonged by 400 ms. In Long Tone, the duration of the first tone was prolonged by 400 ms, while the silent interval was comparable to Short (20 ms). Results show a frontocentral MMN of comparable amplitude in all conditions. Thus, abstract pitch relations can be extracted even when the within-pair timing exceeds the integration period. Source analyses indicate MMN generators in the supratemporal cortex. Interestingly, they were located more anterior in Long Gap than in Short and Long Tone. Moreover, frontal generator activity was found for Long Gap and Long Tone. Thus, the way in which the system automatically registers irregular abstract pitch relations depends on the timing of the events to be linked. Pending that the current MMN data mirror established abstract rule representations coding the regular pitch relation, neural processes building these templates vary with timing. PMID:24966823

The representation of order information in auditory-verbal short-term memory.

PubMed

Kalm, Kristjan; Norris, Dennis

2014-05-14

Here we investigate how order information is represented in auditory-verbal short-term memory (STM). We used fMRI and a serial recall task to dissociate neural activity patterns representing the phonological properties of the items stored in STM from the patterns representing their order. For this purpose, we analyzed fMRI activity patterns elicited by different item sets and different orderings of those items. These fMRI activity patterns were compared with the predictions made by positional and chaining models of serial order. The positional models encode associations between items and their positions in a sequence, whereas the chaining models encode associations between successive items and retain no position information. We show that a set of brain areas in the postero-dorsal stream of auditory processing store associations between items and order as predicted by a positional model. The chaining model of order representation generates a different pattern similarity prediction, which was shown to be inconsistent with the fMRI data. Our results thus favor a neural model of order representation that stores item codes, position codes, and the mapping between them. This study provides the first fMRI evidence for a specific model of order representation in the human brain. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/346879-08$15.00/0.

Anesthetic state modulates excitability but not spectral tuning or neural discrimination in single auditory midbrain neurons

PubMed Central

Schumacher, Joseph W.; Schneider, David M.

2011-01-01

The majority of sensory physiology experiments have used anesthesia to facilitate the recording of neural activity. Current techniques allow researchers to study sensory function in the context of varying behavioral states. To reconcile results across multiple behavioral and anesthetic states, it is important to consider how and to what extent anesthesia plays a role in shaping neural response properties. The role of anesthesia has been the subject of much debate, but the extent to which sensory coding properties are altered by anesthesia has yet to be fully defined. In this study we asked how urethane, an anesthetic commonly used for avian and mammalian sensory physiology, affects the coding of complex communication vocalizations (songs) and simple artificial stimuli in the songbird auditory midbrain. We measured spontaneous and song-driven spike rates, spectrotemporal receptive fields, and neural discriminability from responses to songs in single auditory midbrain neurons. In the same neurons, we recorded responses to pure tone stimuli ranging in frequency and intensity. Finally, we assessed the effect of urethane on population-level representations of birdsong. Results showed that intrinsic neural excitability is significantly depressed by urethane but that spectral tuning, single neuron discriminability, and population representations of song do not differ significantly between unanesthetized and anesthetized animals. PMID:21543752

Connectivity in the human brain dissociates entropy and complexity of auditory inputs☆

PubMed Central

Nastase, Samuel A.; Iacovella, Vittorio; Davis, Ben; Hasson, Uri

2015-01-01

Complex systems are described according to two central dimensions: (a) the randomness of their output, quantified via entropy; and (b) their complexity, which reflects the organization of a system's generators. Whereas some approaches hold that complexity can be reduced to uncertainty or entropy, an axiom of complexity science is that signals with very high or very low entropy are generated by relatively non-complex systems, while complex systems typically generate outputs with entropy peaking between these two extremes. In understanding their environment, individuals would benefit from coding for both input entropy and complexity; entropy indexes uncertainty and can inform probabilistic coding strategies, whereas complexity reflects a concise and abstract representation of the underlying environmental configuration, which can serve independent purposes, e.g., as a template for generalization and rapid comparisons between environments. Using functional neuroimaging, we demonstrate that, in response to passively processed auditory inputs, functional integration patterns in the human brain track both the entropy and complexity of the auditory signal. Connectivity between several brain regions scaled monotonically with input entropy, suggesting sensitivity to uncertainty, whereas connectivity between other regions tracked entropy in a convex manner consistent with sensitivity to input complexity. These findings suggest that the human brain simultaneously tracks the uncertainty of sensory data and effectively models their environmental generators. PMID:25536493

Stuttering adults' lack of pre-speech auditory modulation normalizes when speaking with delayed auditory feedback.

PubMed

Daliri, Ayoub; Max, Ludo

2018-02-01

Auditory modulation during speech movement planning is limited in adults who stutter (AWS), but the functional relevance of the phenomenon itself remains unknown. We investigated for AWS and adults who do not stutter (AWNS) (a) a potential relationship between pre-speech auditory modulation and auditory feedback contributions to speech motor learning and (b) the effect on pre-speech auditory modulation of real-time versus delayed auditory feedback. Experiment I used a sensorimotor adaptation paradigm to estimate auditory-motor speech learning. Using acoustic speech recordings, we quantified subjects' formant frequency adjustments across trials when continually exposed to formant-shifted auditory feedback. In Experiment II, we used electroencephalography to determine the same subjects' extent of pre-speech auditory modulation (reductions in auditory evoked potential N1 amplitude) when probe tones were delivered prior to speaking versus not speaking. To manipulate subjects' ability to monitor real-time feedback, we included speaking conditions with non-altered auditory feedback (NAF) and delayed auditory feedback (DAF). Experiment I showed that auditory-motor learning was limited for AWS versus AWNS, and the extent of learning was negatively correlated with stuttering frequency. Experiment II yielded several key findings: (a) our prior finding of limited pre-speech auditory modulation in AWS was replicated; (b) DAF caused a decrease in auditory modulation for most AWNS but an increase for most AWS; and (c) for AWS, the amount of auditory modulation when speaking with DAF was positively correlated with stuttering frequency. Lastly, AWNS showed no correlation between pre-speech auditory modulation (Experiment II) and extent of auditory-motor learning (Experiment I) whereas AWS showed a negative correlation between these measures. Thus, findings suggest that AWS show deficits in both pre-speech auditory modulation and auditory-motor learning; however, limited pre-speech modulation is not directly related to limited auditory-motor adaptation; and in AWS, DAF paradoxically tends to normalize their otherwise limited pre-speech auditory modulation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contextual effects of noise on vocalization encoding in primary auditory cortex

PubMed Central

Ni, Ruiye; Bender, David A.; Shanechi, Amirali M.; Gamble, Jeffrey R.

2016-01-01

Robust auditory perception plays a pivotal function for processing behaviorally relevant sounds, particularly with distractions from the environment. The neuronal coding enabling this ability, however, is still not well understood. In this study, we recorded single-unit activity from the primary auditory cortex (A1) of awake marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus) while delivering conspecific vocalizations degraded by two different background noises: broadband white noise and vocalization babble. Noise effects on neural representation of target vocalizations were quantified by measuring the responses' similarity to those elicited by natural vocalizations as a function of signal-to-noise ratio. A clustering approach was used to describe the range of response profiles by reducing the population responses to a summary of four response classes (robust, balanced, insensitive, and brittle) under both noise conditions. This clustering approach revealed that, on average, approximately two-thirds of the neurons change their response class when encountering different noises. Therefore, the distortion induced by one particular masking background in single-unit responses is not necessarily predictable from that induced by another, suggesting the low likelihood of a unique group of noise-invariant neurons across different background conditions in A1. Regarding noise influence on neural activities, the brittle response group showed addition of spiking activity both within and between phrases of vocalizations relative to clean vocalizations, whereas the other groups generally showed spiking activity suppression within phrases, and the alteration between phrases was noise dependent. Overall, the variable single-unit responses, yet consistent response types, imply that primate A1 performs scene analysis through the collective activity of multiple neurons. NEW & NOTEWORTHY The understanding of where and how auditory scene analysis is accomplished is of broad interest to neuroscientists. In this paper, we systematically investigated neuronal coding of multiple vocalizations degraded by two distinct noises at various signal-to-noise ratios in nonhuman primates. In the process, we uncovered heterogeneity of single-unit representations for different auditory scenes yet homogeneity of responses across the population. PMID:27881720

Contextual effects of noise on vocalization encoding in primary auditory cortex.

PubMed

Ni, Ruiye; Bender, David A; Shanechi, Amirali M; Gamble, Jeffrey R; Barbour, Dennis L

2017-02-01

Robust auditory perception plays a pivotal function for processing behaviorally relevant sounds, particularly with distractions from the environment. The neuronal coding enabling this ability, however, is still not well understood. In this study, we recorded single-unit activity from the primary auditory cortex (A1) of awake marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus) while delivering conspecific vocalizations degraded by two different background noises: broadband white noise and vocalization babble. Noise effects on neural representation of target vocalizations were quantified by measuring the responses' similarity to those elicited by natural vocalizations as a function of signal-to-noise ratio. A clustering approach was used to describe the range of response profiles by reducing the population responses to a summary of four response classes (robust, balanced, insensitive, and brittle) under both noise conditions. This clustering approach revealed that, on average, approximately two-thirds of the neurons change their response class when encountering different noises. Therefore, the distortion induced by one particular masking background in single-unit responses is not necessarily predictable from that induced by another, suggesting the low likelihood of a unique group of noise-invariant neurons across different background conditions in A1. Regarding noise influence on neural activities, the brittle response group showed addition of spiking activity both within and between phrases of vocalizations relative to clean vocalizations, whereas the other groups generally showed spiking activity suppression within phrases, and the alteration between phrases was noise dependent. Overall, the variable single-unit responses, yet consistent response types, imply that primate A1 performs scene analysis through the collective activity of multiple neurons. The understanding of where and how auditory scene analysis is accomplished is of broad interest to neuroscientists. In this paper, we systematically investigated neuronal coding of multiple vocalizations degraded by two distinct noises at various signal-to-noise ratios in nonhuman primates. In the process, we uncovered heterogeneity of single-unit representations for different auditory scenes yet homogeneity of responses across the population. Copyright © 2017 the American Physiological Society.

Do you see what I hear? Vantage point preference and visual dominance in a time-space synaesthete.

PubMed

Jarick, Michelle; Stewart, Mark T; Smilek, Daniel; Dixon, Michael J

2013-01-01

Time-space synaesthetes "see" time units organized in a spatial form. While the structure might be invariant for most synaesthetes, the perspective by which some view their calendar is somewhat flexible. One well-studied synaesthete L adopts different viewpoints for months seen vs. heard. Interestingly, L claims to prefer her auditory perspective, even though the month names are represented visually upside down. To verify this, we used a spatial-cueing task that included audiovisual month cues. These cues were either congruent with L's preferred "auditory" viewpoint (auditory-only and auditory + month inverted) or incongruent (upright visual-only and auditory + month upright). Our prediction was that L would show enhanced cueing effects (larger response time difference between valid and invalid targets) following the audiovisual congruent cues since both elicit the "preferred" auditory perspective. Also, when faced with conflicting cues, we predicted L would choose the preferred auditory perspective over the visual perspective. As we expected, L did show enhanced cueing effects following the audiovisual congruent cues that corresponded with her preferred auditory perspective, but that the visual perspective dominated when L was faced with both viewpoints simultaneously. The results are discussed with relation to the reification hypothesis of sequence space synaesthesia (Eagleman, 2009).

Role of N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptors in Action-Based Predictive Coding Deficits in Schizophrenia.

PubMed

Kort, Naomi S; Ford, Judith M; Roach, Brian J; Gunduz-Bruce, Handan; Krystal, John H; Jaeger, Judith; Reinhart, Robert M G; Mathalon, Daniel H

2017-03-15

Recent theoretical models of schizophrenia posit that dysfunction of the neural mechanisms subserving predictive coding contributes to symptoms and cognitive deficits, and this dysfunction is further posited to result from N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor (NMDAR) hypofunction. Previously, by examining auditory cortical responses to self-generated speech sounds, we demonstrated that predictive coding during vocalization is disrupted in schizophrenia. To test the hypothesized contribution of NMDAR hypofunction to this disruption, we examined the effects of the NMDAR antagonist, ketamine, on predictive coding during vocalization in healthy volunteers and compared them with the effects of schizophrenia. In two separate studies, the N1 component of the event-related potential elicited by speech sounds during vocalization (talk) and passive playback (listen) were compared to assess the degree of N1 suppression during vocalization, a putative measure of auditory predictive coding. In the crossover study, 31 healthy volunteers completed two randomly ordered test days, a saline day and a ketamine day. Event-related potentials during the talk/listen task were obtained before infusion and during infusion on both days, and N1 amplitudes were compared across days. In the case-control study, N1 amplitudes from 34 schizophrenia patients and 33 healthy control volunteers were compared. N1 suppression to self-produced vocalizations was significantly and similarly diminished by ketamine (Cohen's d = 1.14) and schizophrenia (Cohen's d = .85). Disruption of NMDARs causes dysfunction in predictive coding during vocalization in a manner similar to the dysfunction observed in schizophrenia patients, consistent with the theorized contribution of NMDAR hypofunction to predictive coding deficits in schizophrenia. Copyright © 2016 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

FTAP: a Linux-based program for tapping and music experiments.

PubMed

Finney, S A

2001-02-01

This paper describes FTAP, a flexible data collection system for tapping and music experiments. FTAP runs on standard PC hardware with the Linux operating system and can process input keystrokes and auditory output with reliable millisecond resolution. It uses standard MIDI devices for input and output and is particularly flexible in the area of auditory feedback manipulation. FTAP can run a wide variety of experiments, including synchronization/continuation tasks (Wing & Kristofferson, 1973), synchronization tasks combined with delayed auditory feedback (Aschersleben & Prinz, 1997), continuation tasks with isolated feedback perturbations (Wing, 1977), and complex alterations of feedback in music performance (Finney, 1997). Such experiments have often been implemented with custom hardware and software systems, but with FTAP they can be specified by a simple ASCII text parameter file. FTAP is available at no cost in source-code form.

Hearing in noisy environments: noise invariance and contrast gain control

PubMed Central

Willmore, Ben D B; Cooke, James E; King, Andrew J

2014-01-01

Contrast gain control has recently been identified as a fundamental property of the auditory system. Electrophysiological recordings in ferrets have shown that neurons continuously adjust their gain (their sensitivity to change in sound level) in response to the contrast of sounds that are heard. At the level of the auditory cortex, these gain changes partly compensate for changes in sound contrast. This means that sounds which are structurally similar, but have different contrasts, have similar neuronal representations in the auditory cortex. As a result, the cortical representation is relatively invariant to stimulus contrast and robust to the presence of noise in the stimulus. In the inferior colliculus (an important subcortical auditory structure), gain changes are less reliably compensatory, suggesting that contrast- and noise-invariant representations are constructed gradually as one ascends the auditory pathway. In addition to noise invariance, contrast gain control provides a variety of computational advantages over static neuronal representations; it makes efficient use of neuronal dynamic range, may contribute to redundancy-reducing, sparse codes for sound and allows for simpler decoding of population responses. The circuits underlying auditory contrast gain control are still under investigation. As in the visual system, these circuits may be modulated by factors other than stimulus contrast, forming a potential neural substrate for mediating the effects of attention as well as interactions between the senses. PMID:24907308

Congenital amusia: a cognitive disorder limited to resolved harmonics and with no peripheral basis.

PubMed

Cousineau, Marion; Oxenham, Andrew J; Peretz, Isabelle

2015-01-01

Pitch plays a fundamental role in audition, from speech and music perception to auditory scene analysis. Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder that appears to affect primarily pitch and melody perception. Pitch is normally conveyed by the spectro-temporal fine structure of low harmonics, but some pitch information is available in the temporal envelope produced by the interactions of higher harmonics. Using 10 amusic subjects and 10 matched controls, we tested the hypothesis that amusics suffer exclusively from impaired processing of spectro-temporal fine structure. We also tested whether the inability of amusics to process acoustic temporal fine structure extends beyond pitch by measuring sensitivity to interaural time differences, which also rely on temporal fine structure. Further tests were carried out on basic intensity and spectral resolution. As expected, pitch perception based on spectro-temporal fine structure was impaired in amusics; however, no significant deficits were observed in amusics' ability to perceive the pitch conveyed via temporal-envelope cues. Sensitivity to interaural time differences was also not significantly different between the amusic and control groups, ruling out deficits in the peripheral coding of temporal fine structure. Finally, no significant differences in intensity or spectral resolution were found between the amusic and control groups. The results demonstrate a pitch-specific deficit in fine spectro-temporal information processing in amusia that seems unrelated to temporal or spectral coding in the auditory periphery. These results are consistent with the view that there are distinct mechanisms dedicated to processing resolved and unresolved harmonics in the general population, the former being altered in congenital amusia while the latter is spared. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Synaptic transmission at the endbulb of Held deteriorates during age‐related hearing loss

PubMed Central

Manis, Paul B.

2016-01-01

Key points Synaptic transmission at the endbulb of Held was assessed by whole‐cell patch clamp recordings from auditory neurons in mature (2–4 months) and aged (20–26 months) mice.Synaptic transmission is degraded in aged mice, which may contribute to the decline in neural processing of the central auditory system during age‐related hearing loss.The changes in synaptic transmission in aged mice can be partially rescued by improving calcium buffering, or decreasing action potential‐evoked calcium influx.These experiments suggest potential mechanisms, such as regulating intraterminal calcium, that could be manipulated to improve the fidelity of transmission at the aged endbulb of Held. Abstract Age‐related hearing loss (ARHL) is associated with changes to the auditory periphery that raise sensory thresholds and alter coding, and is accompanied by alterations in excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission, and intrinsic excitability in the circuits of the central auditory system. However, it remains unclear how synaptic transmission changes at the first central auditory synapses during ARHL. Using mature (2–4 months) and old (20–26 months) CBA/CaJ mice, we studied synaptic transmission at the endbulb of Held. Mature and old mice showed no difference in either spontaneous quantal synaptic transmission or low frequency evoked synaptic transmission at the endbulb of Held. However, when challenged with sustained high frequency stimulation, synapses in old mice exhibited increased asynchronous transmitter release and reduced synchronous release. This suggests that the transmission of temporally precise information is degraded at the endbulb during ARHL. Increasing intraterminal calcium buffering with EGTA‐AM or decreasing calcium influx with ω‐agatoxin IVA decreased the amount of asynchronous release and restored synchronous release in old mice. In addition, recovery from depression following high frequency trains was faster in old mice, but was restored to a normal time course by EGTA‐AM treatment. These results suggest that intraterminal calcium in old endbulbs may rise to abnormally high levels during high rates of auditory nerve firing, or that calcium‐dependent processes involved in release are altered with age. These observations suggest that ARHL is associated with a decrease in temporal precision of synaptic release at the first central auditory synapse, which may contribute to perceptual deficits in hearing. PMID:27618790

Auditory-motor entrainment and phonological skills: precise auditory timing hypothesis (PATH).

PubMed

Tierney, Adam; Kraus, Nina

2014-01-01

Phonological skills are enhanced by music training, but the mechanisms enabling this cross-domain enhancement remain unknown. To explain this cross-domain transfer, we propose a precise auditory timing hypothesis (PATH) whereby entrainment practice is the core mechanism underlying enhanced phonological abilities in musicians. Both rhythmic synchronization and language skills such as consonant discrimination, detection of word and phrase boundaries, and conversational turn-taking rely on the perception of extremely fine-grained timing details in sound. Auditory-motor timing is an acoustic feature which meets all five of the pre-conditions necessary for cross-domain enhancement to occur (Patel, 2011, 2012, 2014). There is overlap between the neural networks that process timing in the context of both music and language. Entrainment to music demands more precise timing sensitivity than does language processing. Moreover, auditory-motor timing integration captures the emotion of the trainee, is repeatedly practiced, and demands focused attention. The PATH predicts that musical training emphasizing entrainment will be particularly effective in enhancing phonological skills.

Vocalization frequency and duration are coded in separate hindbrain nuclei.

PubMed

Chagnaud, Boris P; Baker, Robert; Bass, Andrew H

2011-06-14

Temporal patterning is an essential feature of neural networks producing precisely timed behaviours such as vocalizations that are widely used in vertebrate social communication. Here we show that intrinsic and network properties of separate hindbrain neuronal populations encode the natural call attributes of frequency and duration in vocal fish. Intracellular structure/function analyses indicate that call duration is encoded by a sustained membrane depolarization in vocal prepacemaker neurons that innervate downstream pacemaker neurons. Pacemaker neurons, in turn, encode call frequency by rhythmic, ultrafast oscillations in their membrane potential. Pharmacological manipulations show prepacemaker activity to be independent of pacemaker function, thus accounting for natural variation in duration which is the predominant feature distinguishing call types. Prepacemaker neurons also innervate key hindbrain auditory nuclei thereby effectively serving as a call-duration corollary discharge. We propose that premotor compartmentalization of neurons coding distinct acoustic attributes is a fundamental trait of hindbrain vocal pattern generators among vertebrates.

Vocalization frequency and duration are coded in separate hindbrain nuclei

PubMed Central

Chagnaud, Boris P.; Baker, Robert; Bass, Andrew H.

2011-01-01

Temporal patterning is an essential feature of neural networks producing precisely timed behaviours such as vocalizations that are widely used in vertebrate social communication. Here we show that intrinsic and network properties of separate hindbrain neuronal populations encode the natural call attributes of frequency and duration in vocal fish. Intracellular structure/function analyses indicate that call duration is encoded by a sustained membrane depolarization in vocal prepacemaker neurons that innervate downstream pacemaker neurons. Pacemaker neurons, in turn, encode call frequency by rhythmic, ultrafast oscillations in their membrane potential. Pharmacological manipulations show prepacemaker activity to be independent of pacemaker function, thus accounting for natural variation in duration which is the predominant feature distinguishing call types. Prepacemaker neurons also innervate key hindbrain auditory nuclei thereby effectively serving as a call-duration corollary discharge. We propose that premotor compartmentalization of neurons coding distinct acoustic attributes is a fundamental trait of hindbrain vocal pattern generators among vertebrates. PMID:21673667

Opponent Coding of Sound Location (Azimuth) in Planum Temporale is Robust to Sound-Level Variations

PubMed Central

Derey, Kiki; Valente, Giancarlo; de Gelder, Beatrice; Formisano, Elia

2016-01-01

Coding of sound location in auditory cortex (AC) is only partially understood. Recent electrophysiological research suggests that neurons in mammalian auditory cortex are characterized by broad spatial tuning and a preference for the contralateral hemifield, that is, a nonuniform sampling of sound azimuth. Additionally, spatial selectivity decreases with increasing sound intensity. To accommodate these findings, it has been proposed that sound location is encoded by the integrated activity of neuronal populations with opposite hemifield tuning (“opponent channel model”). In this study, we investigated the validity of such a model in human AC with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a phase-encoding paradigm employing binaural stimuli recorded individually for each participant. In all subjects, we observed preferential fMRI responses to contralateral azimuth positions. Additionally, in most AC locations, spatial tuning was broad and not level invariant. We derived an opponent channel model of the fMRI responses by subtracting the activity of contralaterally tuned regions in bilateral planum temporale. This resulted in accurate decoding of sound azimuth location, which was unaffected by changes in sound level. Our data thus support opponent channel coding as a neural mechanism for representing acoustic azimuth in human AC. PMID:26545618

Auditory sequence analysis and phonological skill

PubMed Central

Grube, Manon; Kumar, Sukhbinder; Cooper, Freya E.; Turton, Stuart; Griffiths, Timothy D.

2012-01-01

This work tests the relationship between auditory and phonological skill in a non-selected cohort of 238 school students (age 11) with the specific hypothesis that sound-sequence analysis would be more relevant to phonological skill than the analysis of basic, single sounds. Auditory processing was assessed across the domains of pitch, time and timbre; a combination of six standard tests of literacy and language ability was used to assess phonological skill. A significant correlation between general auditory and phonological skill was demonstrated, plus a significant, specific correlation between measures of phonological skill and the auditory analysis of short sequences in pitch and time. The data support a limited but significant link between auditory and phonological ability with a specific role for sound-sequence analysis, and provide a possible new focus for auditory training strategies to aid language development in early adolescence. PMID:22951739

Combined electric and acoustic hearing performance with Zebra® speech processor: speech reception, place, and temporal coding evaluation.

PubMed

Vaerenberg, Bart; Péan, Vincent; Lesbros, Guillaume; De Ceulaer, Geert; Schauwers, Karen; Daemers, Kristin; Gnansia, Dan; Govaerts, Paul J

2013-06-01

To assess the auditory performance of Digisonic(®) cochlear implant users with electric stimulation (ES) and electro-acoustic stimulation (EAS) with special attention to the processing of low-frequency temporal fine structure. Six patients implanted with a Digisonic(®) SP implant and showing low-frequency residual hearing were fitted with the Zebra(®) speech processor providing both electric and acoustic stimulation. Assessment consisted of monosyllabic speech identification tests in quiet and in noise at different presentation levels, and a pitch discrimination task using harmonic and disharmonic intonating complex sounds ( Vaerenberg et al., 2011 ). These tests investigate place and time coding through pitch discrimination. All tasks were performed with ES only and with EAS. Speech results in noise showed significant improvement with EAS when compared to ES. Whereas EAS did not yield better results in the harmonic intonation test, the improvements in the disharmonic intonation test were remarkable, suggesting better coding of pitch cues requiring phase locking. These results suggest that patients with residual hearing in the low-frequency range still have good phase-locking capacities, allowing them to process fine temporal information. ES relies mainly on place coding but provides poor low-frequency temporal coding, whereas EAS also provides temporal coding in the low-frequency range. Patients with residual phase-locking capacities can make use of these cues.

Transient human auditory cortex activation during volitional attention shifting

PubMed Central

Uhlig, Christian Harm; Gutschalk, Alexander

2017-01-01

While strong activation of auditory cortex is generally found for exogenous orienting of attention, endogenous, intra-modal shifting of auditory attention has not yet been demonstrated to evoke transient activation of the auditory cortex. Here, we used fMRI to test if endogenous shifting of attention is also associated with transient activation of the auditory cortex. In contrast to previous studies, attention shifts were completely self-initiated and not cued by transient auditory or visual stimuli. Stimuli were two dichotic, continuous streams of tones, whose perceptual grouping was not ambiguous. Participants were instructed to continuously focus on one of the streams and switch between the two after a while, indicating the time and direction of each attentional shift by pressing one of two response buttons. The BOLD response around the time of the button presses revealed robust activation of the auditory cortex, along with activation of a distributed task network. To test if the transient auditory cortex activation was specifically related to auditory orienting, a self-paced motor task was added, where participants were instructed to ignore the auditory stimulation while they pressed the response buttons in alternation and at a similar pace. Results showed that attentional orienting produced stronger activity in auditory cortex, but auditory cortex activation was also observed for button presses without focused attention to the auditory stimulus. The response related to attention shifting was stronger contralateral to the side where attention was shifted to. Contralateral-dominant activation was also observed in dorsal parietal cortex areas, confirming previous observations for auditory attention shifting in studies that used auditory cues. PMID:28273110

Evaluation of Evidence for Altered Behavior and Auditory Deficits in Fishes Due to Human-Generated Noise Sources

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-04-01

prepared by the Research and Animal Care Branch, Code 2351, of the Biosciences Division, Code 235, SSC San Diego. This is a work of the United...and Animal Care Branch Under authority of M. Rothe, Head Biosciences Division i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In this study, we have evaluated peer... sharks , skates, and rays) and teleost fishes (modern bony fishes) and provide recommendations for research to address remaining issues. Clear responses

You are only as old as you sound: auditory aftereffects in vocal age perception.

PubMed

Zäske, Romi; Schweinberger, Stefan R

2011-12-01

High-level adaptation not only biases the perception of faces, but also causes transient distortions in auditory perception of non-linguistic voice information about gender, identity, and emotional intonation. Here we report a novel auditory aftereffect in perceiving vocal age: age estimates were elevated in age-morphed test voices when preceded by adaptor voices of young speakers (∼20 yrs), compared to old adaptor voices (∼70 yrs). This vocal age aftereffect (VAAE) complements a recently reported face aftereffect (Schweinberger et al., 2010) and points to selective neuronal coding of vocal age. Intriguingly, post-adaptation assessment revealed that VAAEs could persist for minutes after adaptation, although reduced in magnitude. As an important qualification, VAAEs during post-adaptation were modulated by gender congruency between speaker and listener. For both male and female listeners, VAAEs were much reduced for test voices of opposite gender. Overall, this study establishes a new auditory aftereffect in the perception of vocal age. We offer a tentative sociobiological explanation for the differential, gender-dependent recovery from vocal age adaptation. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Visual form predictions facilitate auditory processing at the N1.

PubMed

Paris, Tim; Kim, Jeesun; Davis, Chris

2017-02-20

Auditory-visual (AV) events often involve a leading visual cue (e.g. auditory-visual speech) that allows the perceiver to generate predictions about the upcoming auditory event. Electrophysiological evidence suggests that when an auditory event is predicted, processing is sped up, i.e., the N1 component of the ERP occurs earlier (N1 facilitation). However, it is not clear (1) whether N1 facilitation is based specifically on predictive rather than multisensory integration and (2) which particular properties of the visual cue it is based on. The current experiment used artificial AV stimuli in which visual cues predicted but did not co-occur with auditory cues. Visual form cues (high and low salience) and the auditory-visual pairing were manipulated so that auditory predictions could be based on form and timing or on timing only. The results showed that N1 facilitation occurred only for combined form and temporal predictions. These results suggest that faster auditory processing (as indicated by N1 facilitation) is based on predictive processing generated by a visual cue that clearly predicts both what and when the auditory stimulus will occur. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Neural evidence for predictive coding in auditory cortex during speech production.

PubMed

Okada, Kayoko; Matchin, William; Hickok, Gregory

2018-02-01

Recent models of speech production suggest that motor commands generate forward predictions of the auditory consequences of those commands, that these forward predications can be used to monitor and correct speech output, and that this system is hierarchically organized (Hickok, Houde, & Rong, Neuron, 69(3), 407--422, 2011; Pickering & Garrod, Behavior and Brain Sciences, 36(4), 329--347, 2013). Recent psycholinguistic research has shown that internally generated speech (i.e., imagined speech) produces different types of errors than does overt speech (Oppenheim & Dell, Cognition, 106(1), 528--537, 2008; Oppenheim & Dell, Memory & Cognition, 38(8), 1147-1160, 2010). These studies suggest that articulated speech might involve predictive coding at additional levels than imagined speech. The current fMRI experiment investigates neural evidence of predictive coding in speech production. Twenty-four participants from UC Irvine were recruited for the study. Participants were scanned while they were visually presented with a sequence of words that they reproduced in sync with a visual metronome. On each trial, they were cued to either silently articulate the sequence or to imagine the sequence without overt articulation. As expected, silent articulation and imagined speech both engaged a left hemisphere network previously implicated in speech production. A contrast of silent articulation with imagined speech revealed greater activation for articulated speech in inferior frontal cortex, premotor cortex and the insula in the left hemisphere, consistent with greater articulatory load. Although both conditions were silent, this contrast also produced significantly greater activation in auditory cortex in dorsal superior temporal gyrus in both hemispheres. We suggest that these activations reflect forward predictions arising from additional levels of the perceptual/motor hierarchy that are involved in monitoring the intended speech output.

Divergent evolutionary rates in vertebrate and mammalian specific conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) in echolocating mammals.

PubMed

Davies, Kalina T J; Tsagkogeorga, Georgia; Rossiter, Stephen J

2014-12-19

The majority of DNA contained within vertebrate genomes is non-coding, with a certain proportion of this thought to play regulatory roles during development. Conserved Non-coding Elements (CNEs) are an abundant group of putative regulatory sequences that are highly conserved across divergent groups and thus assumed to be under strong selective constraint. Many CNEs may contain regulatory factor binding sites, and their frequent spatial association with key developmental genes - such as those regulating sensory system development - suggests crucial roles in regulating gene expression and cellular patterning. Yet surprisingly little is known about the molecular evolution of CNEs across diverse mammalian taxa or their role in specific phenotypic adaptations. We examined 3,110 vertebrate-specific and ~82,000 mammalian-specific CNEs across 19 and 9 mammalian orders respectively, and tested for changes in the rate of evolution of CNEs located in the proximity of genes underlying the development or functioning of auditory systems. As we focused on CNEs putatively associated with genes underlying the development/functioning of auditory systems, we incorporated echolocating taxa in our dataset because of their highly specialised and derived auditory systems. Phylogenetic reconstructions of concatenated CNEs broadly recovered accepted mammal relationships despite high levels of sequence conservation. We found that CNE substitution rates were highest in rodents and lowest in primates, consistent with previous findings. Comparisons of CNE substitution rates from several genomic regions containing genes linked to auditory system development and hearing revealed differences between echolocating and non-echolocating taxa. Wider taxonomic sampling of four CNEs associated with the homeobox genes Hmx2 and Hmx3 - which are required for inner ear development - revealed family-wise variation across diverse bat species. Specifically within one family of echolocating bats that utilise frequency-modulated echolocation calls varying widely in frequency and intensity high levels of sequence divergence were found. Levels of selective constraint acting on CNEs differed both across genomic locations and taxa, with observed variation in substitution rates of CNEs among bat species. More work is needed to determine whether this variation can be linked to echolocation, and wider taxonomic sampling is necessary to fully document levels of conservation in CNEs across diverse taxa.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of auditory attention synchronize with speech

PubMed Central

Wöstmann, Malte; Herrmann, Björn; Maess, Burkhard

2016-01-01

Attention plays a fundamental role in selectively processing stimuli in our environment despite distraction. Spatial attention induces increasing and decreasing power of neural alpha oscillations (8–12 Hz) in brain regions ipsilateral and contralateral to the locus of attention, respectively. This study tested whether the hemispheric lateralization of alpha power codes not just the spatial location but also the temporal structure of the stimulus. Participants attended to spoken digits presented to one ear and ignored tightly synchronized distracting digits presented to the other ear. In the magnetoencephalogram, spatial attention induced lateralization of alpha power in parietal, but notably also in auditory cortical regions. This alpha power lateralization was not maintained steadily but fluctuated in synchrony with the speech rate and lagged the time course of low-frequency (1–5 Hz) sensory synchronization. Higher amplitude of alpha power modulation at the speech rate was predictive of a listener’s enhanced performance of stream-specific speech comprehension. Our findings demonstrate that alpha power lateralization is modulated in tune with the sensory input and acts as a spatiotemporal filter controlling the read-out of sensory content. PMID:27001861

Adaptation in the auditory midbrain of the barn owl (Tyto alba) induced by tonal double stimulation.

PubMed

Singheiser, Martin; Ferger, Roland; von Campenhausen, Mark; Wagner, Hermann

2012-02-01

During hunting, the barn owl typically listens to several successive sounds as generated, for example, by rustling mice. As auditory cells exhibit adaptive coding, the earlier stimuli may influence the detection of the later stimuli. This situation was mimicked with two double-stimulus paradigms, and adaptation was investigated in neurons of the barn owl's central nucleus of the inferior colliculus. Each double-stimulus paradigm consisted of a first or reference stimulus and a second stimulus (probe). In one paradigm (second level tuning), the probe level was varied, whereas in the other paradigm (inter-stimulus interval tuning), the stimulus interval between the first and second stimulus was changed systematically. Neurons were stimulated with monaural pure tones at the best frequency, while the response was recorded extracellularly. The responses to the probe were significantly reduced when the reference stimulus and probe had the same level and the inter-stimulus interval was short. This indicated response adaptation, which could be compensated for by an increase of the probe level of 5-7 dB over the reference level, if the latter was in the lower half of the dynamic range of a neuron's rate-level function. Recovery from adaptation could be best fitted with a double exponential showing a fast (1.25 ms) and a slow (800 ms) component. These results suggest that neurons in the auditory system show dynamic coding properties to tonal double stimulation that might be relevant for faithful upstream signal propagation. Furthermore, the overall stimulus level of the masker also seems to affect the recovery capabilities of auditory neurons. © 2012 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience © 2012 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Auditory hedonic phenotypes in dementia: A behavioural and neuroanatomical analysis

PubMed Central

Fletcher, Phillip D.; Downey, Laura E.; Golden, Hannah L.; Clark, Camilla N.; Slattery, Catherine F.; Paterson, Ross W.; Schott, Jonathan M.; Rohrer, Jonathan D.; Rossor, Martin N.; Warren, Jason D.

2015-01-01

Patients with dementia may exhibit abnormally altered liking for environmental sounds and music but such altered auditory hedonic responses have not been studied systematically. Here we addressed this issue in a cohort of 73 patients representing major canonical dementia syndromes (behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), semantic dementia (SD), progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) amnestic Alzheimer's disease (AD)) using a semi-structured caregiver behavioural questionnaire and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of patients' brain MR images. Behavioural responses signalling abnormal aversion to environmental sounds, aversion to music or heightened pleasure in music (‘musicophilia’) occurred in around half of the cohort but showed clear syndromic and genetic segregation, occurring in most patients with bvFTD but infrequently in PNFA and more commonly in association with MAPT than C9orf72 mutations. Aversion to sounds was the exclusive auditory phenotype in AD whereas more complex phenotypes including musicophilia were common in bvFTD and SD. Auditory hedonic alterations correlated with grey matter loss in a common, distributed, right-lateralised network including antero-mesial temporal lobe, insula, anterior cingulate and nucleus accumbens. Our findings suggest that abnormalities of auditory hedonic processing are a significant issue in common dementias. Sounds may constitute a novel probe of brain mechanisms for emotional salience coding that are targeted by neurodegenerative disease. PMID:25929717

New Perspectives on Assessing Amplification Effects

PubMed Central

Souza, Pamela E.; Tremblay, Kelly L.

2006-01-01

Clinicians have long been aware of the range of performance variability with hearing aids. Despite improvements in technology, there remain many instances of well-selected and appropriately fitted hearing aids whereby the user reports minimal improvement in speech understanding. This review presents a multistage framework for understanding how a hearing aid affects performance. Six stages are considered: (1) acoustic content of the signal, (2) modification of the signal by the hearing aid, (3) interaction between sound at the output of the hearing aid and the listener's ear, (4) integrity of the auditory system, (5) coding of available acoustic cues by the listener's auditory system, and (6) correct identification of the speech sound. Within this framework, this review describes methodology and research on 2 new assessment techniques: acoustic analysis of speech measured at the output of the hearing aid and auditory evoked potentials recorded while the listener wears hearing aids. Acoustic analysis topics include the relationship between conventional probe microphone tests and probe microphone measurements using speech, appropriate procedures for such tests, and assessment of signal-processing effects on speech acoustics and recognition. Auditory evoked potential topics include an overview of physiologic measures of speech processing and the effect of hearing loss and hearing aids on cortical auditory evoked potential measurements in response to speech. Finally, the clinical utility of these procedures is discussed. PMID:16959734

A Neural Mechanism for Time-Window Separation Resolves Ambiguity of Adaptive Coding

PubMed Central

Hildebrandt, K. Jannis; Ronacher, Bernhard; Hennig, R. Matthias; Benda, Jan

2015-01-01

The senses of animals are confronted with changing environments and different contexts. Neural adaptation is one important tool to adjust sensitivity to varying intensity ranges. For instance, in a quiet night outdoors, our hearing is more sensitive than when we are confronted with the plurality of sounds in a large city during the day. However, adaptation also removes available information on absolute sound levels and may thus cause ambiguity. Experimental data on the trade-off between benefits and loss through adaptation is scarce and very few mechanisms have been proposed to resolve it. We present an example where adaptation is beneficial for one task—namely, the reliable encoding of the pattern of an acoustic signal—but detrimental for another—the localization of the same acoustic stimulus. With a combination of neurophysiological data, modeling, and behavioral tests, we show that adaptation in the periphery of the auditory pathway of grasshoppers enables intensity-invariant coding of amplitude modulations, but at the same time, degrades information available for sound localization. We demonstrate how focusing the response of localization neurons to the onset of relevant signals separates processing of localization and pattern information temporally. In this way, the ambiguity of adaptive coding can be circumvented and both absolute and relative levels can be processed using the same set of peripheral neurons. PMID:25761097

Understanding The Neural Mechanisms Involved In Sensory Control Of Voice Production

PubMed Central

Parkinson, Amy L.; Flagmeier, Sabina G.; Manes, Jordan L.; Larson, Charles R.; Rogers, Bill; Robin, Donald A.

2012-01-01

Auditory feedback is important for the control of voice fundamental frequency (F0). In the present study we used neuroimaging to identify regions of the brain responsible for sensory control of the voice. We used a pitch-shift paradigm where subjects respond to an alteration, or shift, of voice pitch auditory feedback with a reflexive change in F0. To determine the neural substrates involved in these audio-vocal responses, subjects underwent fMRI scanning while vocalizing with or without pitch-shifted feedback. The comparison of shifted and unshifted vocalization revealed activation bilaterally in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) in response to the pitch shifted feedback. We hypothesize that the STG activity is related to error detection by auditory error cells located in the superior temporal cortex and efference copy mechanisms whereby this region is responsible for the coding of a mismatch between actual and predicted voice F0. PMID:22406500

Adaptation to stimulus statistics in the perception and neural representation of auditory space.

PubMed

Dahmen, Johannes C; Keating, Peter; Nodal, Fernando R; Schulz, Andreas L; King, Andrew J

2010-06-24

Sensory systems are known to adapt their coding strategies to the statistics of their environment, but little is still known about the perceptual implications of such adjustments. We investigated how auditory spatial processing adapts to stimulus statistics by presenting human listeners and anesthetized ferrets with noise sequences in which interaural level differences (ILD) rapidly fluctuated according to a Gaussian distribution. The mean of the distribution biased the perceived laterality of a subsequent stimulus, whereas the distribution's variance changed the listeners' spatial sensitivity. The responses of neurons in the inferior colliculus changed in line with these perceptual phenomena. Their ILD preference adjusted to match the stimulus distribution mean, resulting in large shifts in rate-ILD functions, while their gain adapted to the stimulus variance, producing pronounced changes in neural sensitivity. Our findings suggest that processing of auditory space is geared toward emphasizing relative spatial differences rather than the accurate representation of absolute position.

Partial information can be transmitted in an auditory channel: inferences from lateralized readiness potentials.

PubMed

Gong, Diankun; Hu, Jiehui; Yao, Dezhong

2012-04-01

With the two-choice go/no-go paradigm, we investigated whether timbre attribute can be transmitted as partial information from the stimulus identification stage to the response preparation stage in auditory tone processing. We manipulated two attributes of the stimulus: timbre (piano vs. violin) and acoustic intensity (soft vs. loud) to ensure an earlier processing of timbre than intensity. We associated the timbre attribute more with go trials. Results showed that lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were consistently elicited in no-go trials. This showed that the timbre attribute had been transmitted to the response preparation stage before the intensity attribute was processed in the stimuli identification stage. Such a result provides evidence for the continuous model and asynchronous discrete coding (ADC) model in information processing. We suggest that partial information can be transmitted in an auditory channel. Copyright © 2011 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

SoundView: an auditory guidance system based on environment understanding for the visually impaired people.

PubMed

Nie, Min; Ren, Jie; Li, Zhengjun; Niu, Jinhai; Qiu, Yihong; Zhu, Yisheng; Tong, Shanbao

2009-01-01

Without visual information, the blind people live in various hardships with shopping, reading, finding objects and etc. Therefore, we developed a portable auditory guide system, called SoundView, for visually impaired people. This prototype system consists of a mini-CCD camera, a digital signal processing unit and an earphone, working with built-in customizable auditory coding algorithms. Employing environment understanding techniques, SoundView processes the images from a camera and detects objects tagged with barcodes. The recognized objects in the environment are then encoded into stereo speech signals for the blind though an earphone. The user would be able to recognize the type, motion state and location of the interested objects with the help of SoundView. Compared with other visual assistant techniques, SoundView is object-oriented and has the advantages of cheap cost, smaller size, light weight, low power consumption and easy customization.

Auditory and visual interhemispheric communication in musicians and non-musicians.

PubMed

Woelfle, Rebecca; Grahn, Jessica A

2013-01-01

The corpus callosum (CC) is a brain structure composed of axon fibres linking the right and left hemispheres. Musical training is associated with larger midsagittal cross-sectional area of the CC, suggesting that interhemispheric communication may be faster in musicians. Here we compared interhemispheric transmission times (ITTs) for musicians and non-musicians. ITT was measured by comparing simple reaction times to stimuli presented to the same hemisphere that controlled a button-press response (uncrossed reaction time), or to the contralateral hemisphere (crossed reaction time). Both visual and auditory stimuli were tested. We predicted that the crossed-uncrossed difference (CUD) for musicians would be smaller than for non-musicians as a result of faster interhemispheric transfer times. We did not expect a difference in CUDs between the visual and auditory modalities for either musicians or non-musicians, as previous work indicates that interhemispheric transfer may happen through the genu of the CC, which contains motor fibres rather than sensory fibres. There were no significant differences in CUDs between musicians and non-musicians. However, auditory CUDs were significantly smaller than visual CUDs. Although this auditory-visual difference was larger in musicians than non-musicians, the interaction between modality and musical training was not significant. Therefore, although musical training does not significantly affect ITT, the crossing of auditory information between hemispheres appears to be faster than visual information, perhaps because subcortical pathways play a greater role for auditory interhemispheric transfer.

Auditory priming improves neural synchronization in auditory-motor entrainment.

PubMed

Crasta, Jewel E; Thaut, Michael H; Anderson, Charles W; Davies, Patricia L; Gavin, William J

2018-05-22

Neurophysiological research has shown that auditory and motor systems interact during movement to rhythmic auditory stimuli through a process called entrainment. This study explores the neural oscillations underlying auditory-motor entrainment using electroencephalography. Forty young adults were randomly assigned to one of two control conditions, an auditory-only condition or a motor-only condition, prior to a rhythmic auditory-motor synchronization condition (referred to as combined condition). Participants assigned to the auditory-only condition auditory-first group) listened to 400 trials of auditory stimuli presented every 800 ms, while those in the motor-only condition (motor-first group) were asked to tap rhythmically every 800 ms without any external stimuli. Following their control condition, all participants completed an auditory-motor combined condition that required tapping along with auditory stimuli every 800 ms. As expected, the neural processes for the combined condition for each group were different compared to their respective control condition. Time-frequency analysis of total power at an electrode site on the left central scalp (C3) indicated that the neural oscillations elicited by auditory stimuli, especially in the beta and gamma range, drove the auditory-motor entrainment. For the combined condition, the auditory-first group had significantly lower evoked power for a region of interest representing sensorimotor processing (4-20 Hz) and less total power in a region associated with anticipation and predictive timing (13-16 Hz) than the motor-first group. Thus, the auditory-only condition served as a priming facilitator of the neural processes in the combined condition, more so than the motor-only condition. Results suggest that even brief periods of rhythmic training of the auditory system leads to neural efficiency facilitating the motor system during the process of entrainment. These findings have implications for interventions using rhythmic auditory stimulation. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Single Neurons in the Avian Auditory Cortex Encode Individual Identity and Propagation Distance in Naturally Degraded Communication Calls.

PubMed

Mouterde, Solveig C; Elie, Julie E; Mathevon, Nicolas; Theunissen, Frédéric E

2017-03-29

One of the most complex tasks performed by sensory systems is "scene analysis": the interpretation of complex signals as behaviorally relevant objects. The study of this problem, universal to species and sensory modalities, is particularly challenging in audition, where sounds from various sources and localizations, degraded by propagation through the environment, sum to form a single acoustical signal. Here we investigated in a songbird model, the zebra finch, the neural substrate for ranging and identifying a single source. We relied on ecologically and behaviorally relevant stimuli, contact calls, to investigate the neural discrimination of individual vocal signature as well as sound source distance when calls have been degraded through propagation in a natural environment. Performing electrophysiological recordings in anesthetized birds, we found neurons in the auditory forebrain that discriminate individual vocal signatures despite long-range degradation, as well as neurons discriminating propagation distance, with varying degrees of multiplexing between both information types. Moreover, the neural discrimination performance of individual identity was not affected by propagation-induced degradation beyond what was induced by the decreased intensity. For the first time, neurons with distance-invariant identity discrimination properties as well as distance-discriminant neurons are revealed in the avian auditory cortex. Because these neurons were recorded in animals that had prior experience neither with the vocalizers of the stimuli nor with long-range propagation of calls, we suggest that this neural population is part of a general-purpose system for vocalizer discrimination and ranging. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Understanding how the brain makes sense of the multitude of stimuli that it continually receives in natural conditions is a challenge for scientists. Here we provide a new understanding of how the auditory system extracts behaviorally relevant information, the vocalizer identity and its distance to the listener, from acoustic signals that have been degraded by long-range propagation in natural conditions. We show, for the first time, that single neurons, in the auditory cortex of zebra finches, are capable of discriminating the individual identity and sound source distance in conspecific communication calls. The discrimination of identity in propagated calls relies on a neural coding that is robust to intensity changes, signals' quality, and decreases in the signal-to-noise ratio. Copyright © 2017 Mouterde et al.

Connectivity in the human brain dissociates entropy and complexity of auditory inputs.

PubMed

Nastase, Samuel A; Iacovella, Vittorio; Davis, Ben; Hasson, Uri

2015-03-01

Complex systems are described according to two central dimensions: (a) the randomness of their output, quantified via entropy; and (b) their complexity, which reflects the organization of a system's generators. Whereas some approaches hold that complexity can be reduced to uncertainty or entropy, an axiom of complexity science is that signals with very high or very low entropy are generated by relatively non-complex systems, while complex systems typically generate outputs with entropy peaking between these two extremes. In understanding their environment, individuals would benefit from coding for both input entropy and complexity; entropy indexes uncertainty and can inform probabilistic coding strategies, whereas complexity reflects a concise and abstract representation of the underlying environmental configuration, which can serve independent purposes, e.g., as a template for generalization and rapid comparisons between environments. Using functional neuroimaging, we demonstrate that, in response to passively processed auditory inputs, functional integration patterns in the human brain track both the entropy and complexity of the auditory signal. Connectivity between several brain regions scaled monotonically with input entropy, suggesting sensitivity to uncertainty, whereas connectivity between other regions tracked entropy in a convex manner consistent with sensitivity to input complexity. These findings suggest that the human brain simultaneously tracks the uncertainty of sensory data and effectively models their environmental generators. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Feature Assignment in Perception of Auditory Figure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gregg, Melissa K.; Samuel, Arthur G.

2012-01-01

Because the environment often includes multiple sounds that overlap in time, listeners must segregate a sound of interest (the auditory figure) from other co-occurring sounds (the unattended auditory ground). We conducted a series of experiments to clarify the principles governing the extraction of auditory figures. We distinguish between auditory…

Human Engineer’s Guide to Auditory Displays. Volume 2. Elements of Signal Reception and Resolution Affecting Auditory Displays.

DTIC Science & Technology

1984-08-01

90de It noce..etrv wnd identify by block numberl .’-- This work reviews the areas of monaural and binaural signal detection, auditory discrimination And...AUDITORY DISPLAYS This work reviews the areas of monaural and binaural signal detection, auditory discrimination and localization, and reaction times to...pertaining to the major areas of auditory processing in humans. The areas covered in the reviews presented here are monaural and binaural siqnal detection

Do you see what I hear? Vantage point preference and visual dominance in a time-space synaesthete

PubMed Central

Jarick, Michelle; Stewart, Mark T.; Smilek, Daniel; Dixon, Michael J.

2013-01-01

Time-space synaesthetes “see” time units organized in a spatial form. While the structure might be invariant for most synaesthetes, the perspective by which some view their calendar is somewhat flexible. One well-studied synaesthete L adopts different viewpoints for months seen vs. heard. Interestingly, L claims to prefer her auditory perspective, even though the month names are represented visually upside down. To verify this, we used a spatial-cueing task that included audiovisual month cues. These cues were either congruent with L's preferred “auditory” viewpoint (auditory-only and auditory + month inverted) or incongruent (upright visual-only and auditory + month upright). Our prediction was that L would show enhanced cueing effects (larger response time difference between valid and invalid targets) following the audiovisual congruent cues since both elicit the “preferred” auditory perspective. Also, when faced with conflicting cues, we predicted L would choose the preferred auditory perspective over the visual perspective. As we expected, L did show enhanced cueing effects following the audiovisual congruent cues that corresponded with her preferred auditory perspective, but that the visual perspective dominated when L was faced with both viewpoints simultaneously. The results are discussed with relation to the reification hypothesis of sequence space synaesthesia (Eagleman, 2009). PMID:24137140

Auditory brainstem response latency in forward masking, a marker of sensory deficits in listeners with normal hearing thresholds

PubMed Central

Mehraei, Golbarg; Gallardo, Andreu Paredes; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G.; Dau, Torsten

2017-01-01

In rodent models, acoustic exposure too modest to elevate hearing thresholds can nonetheless cause auditory nerve fiber deafferentation, interfering with the coding of supra-threshold sound. Low-spontaneous rate nerve fibers, important for encoding acoustic information at supra-threshold levels and in noise, are more susceptible to degeneration than high-spontaneous rate fibers. The change in auditory brainstem response (ABR) wave-V latency with noise level has been shown to be associated with auditory nerve deafferentation. Here, we measured ABR in a forward masking paradigm and evaluated wave-V latency changes with increasing masker-to-probe intervals. In the same listeners, behavioral forward masking detection thresholds were measured. We hypothesized that 1) auditory nerve fiber deafferentation increases forward masking thresholds and increases wave-V latency and 2) a preferential loss of low-SR fibers results in a faster recovery of wave-V latency as the slow contribution of these fibers is reduced. Results showed that in young audiometrically normal listeners, a larger change in wave-V latency with increasing masker-to-probe interval was related to a greater effect of a preceding masker behaviorally. Further, the amount of wave-V latency change with masker-to-probe interval was positively correlated with the rate of change in forward masking detection thresholds. Although we cannot rule out central contributions, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that auditory nerve fiber deafferentation occurs in humans and may predict how well individuals can hear in noisy environments. PMID:28159652

Visual Enhancement of Illusory Phenomenal Accents in Non-Isochronous Auditory Rhythms

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Musical rhythms encompass temporal patterns that often yield regular metrical accents (e.g., a beat). There have been mixed results regarding perception as a function of metrical saliency, namely, whether sensitivity to a deviant was greater in metrically stronger or weaker positions. Besides, effects of metrical position have not been examined in non-isochronous rhythms, or with respect to multisensory influences. This study was concerned with two main issues: (1) In non-isochronous auditory rhythms with clear metrical accents, how would sensitivity to a deviant be modulated by metrical positions? (2) Would the effects be enhanced by multisensory information? Participants listened to strongly metrical rhythms with or without watching a point-light figure dance to the rhythm in the same meter, and detected a slight loudness increment. Both conditions were presented with or without an auditory interference that served to impair auditory metrical perception. Sensitivity to a deviant was found greater in weak beat than in strong beat positions, consistent with the Predictive Coding hypothesis and the idea of metrically induced illusory phenomenal accents. The visual rhythm of dance hindered auditory detection, but more so when the latter was itself less impaired. This pattern suggested that the visual and auditory rhythms were perceptually integrated to reinforce metrical accentuation, yielding more illusory phenomenal accents and thus lower sensitivity to deviants, in a manner consistent with the principle of inverse effectiveness. Results were discussed in the predictive framework for multisensory rhythms involving observed movements and possible mediation of the motor system. PMID:27880850

Conversion of Phase Information into a Spike-Count Code by Bursting Neurons

PubMed Central

Samengo, Inés; Montemurro, Marcelo A.

2010-01-01

Single neurons in the cerebral cortex are immersed in a fluctuating electric field, the local field potential (LFP), which mainly originates from synchronous synaptic input into the local neural neighborhood. As shown by recent studies in visual and auditory cortices, the angular phase of the LFP at the time of spike generation adds significant extra information about the external world, beyond the one contained in the firing rate alone. However, no biologically plausible mechanism has yet been suggested that allows downstream neurons to infer the phase of the LFP at the soma of their pre-synaptic afferents. Therefore, so far there is no evidence that the nervous system can process phase information. Here we study a model of a bursting pyramidal neuron, driven by a time-dependent stimulus. We show that the number of spikes per burst varies systematically with the phase of the fluctuating input at the time of burst onset. The mapping between input phase and number of spikes per burst is a robust response feature for a broad range of stimulus statistics. Our results suggest that cortical bursting neurons could play a crucial role in translating LFP phase information into an easily decodable spike count code. PMID:20300632

Looming auditory collision warnings for driving.

PubMed

Gray, Rob

2011-02-01

A driving simulator was used to compare the effectiveness of increasing intensity (looming) auditory warning signals with other types of auditory warnings. Auditory warnings have been shown to speed driver reaction time in rear-end collision situations; however, it is not clear which type of signal is the most effective. Although verbal and symbolic (e.g., a car horn) warnings have faster response times than abstract warnings, they often lead to more response errors. Participants (N=20) experienced four nonlooming auditory warnings (constant intensity, pulsed, ramped, and car horn), three looming auditory warnings ("veridical," "early," and "late"), and a no-warning condition. In 80% of the trials, warnings were activated when a critical response was required, and in 20% of the trials, the warnings were false alarms. For the early (late) looming warnings, the rate of change of intensity signaled a time to collision (TTC) that was shorter (longer) than the actual TTC. Veridical looming and car horn warnings had significantly faster brake reaction times (BRT) compared with the other nonlooming warnings (by 80 to 160 ms). However, the number of braking responses in false alarm conditions was significantly greater for the car horn. BRT increased significantly and systematically as the TTC signaled by the looming warning was changed from early to veridical to late. Looming auditory warnings produce the best combination of response speed and accuracy. The results indicate that looming auditory warnings can be used to effectively warn a driver about an impending collision.

Levels of Syntactic Realization in Oral Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Eric

Two contrasting theories of reading are reviewed in light of recent research in psycholinguistics. A strictly "visual" model of fluent reading is contrasted with several mediational theories where auditory or articulatory coding is deemed necessary for comprehension. Surveying the research in visual information processing, oral reading,…

Auditory perceptual simulation: Simulating speech rates or accents?

PubMed

Zhou, Peiyun; Christianson, Kiel

2016-07-01

When readers engage in Auditory Perceptual Simulation (APS) during silent reading, they mentally simulate characteristics of voices attributed to a particular speaker or a character depicted in the text. Previous research found that auditory perceptual simulation of a faster native English speaker during silent reading led to shorter reading times that auditory perceptual simulation of a slower non-native English speaker. Yet, it was uncertain whether this difference was triggered by the different speech rates of the speakers, or by the difficulty of simulating an unfamiliar accent. The current study investigates this question by comparing faster Indian-English speech and slower American-English speech in the auditory perceptual simulation paradigm. Analyses of reading times of individual words and the full sentence reveal that the auditory perceptual simulation effect again modulated reading rate, and auditory perceptual simulation of the faster Indian-English speech led to faster reading rates compared to auditory perceptual simulation of the slower American-English speech. The comparison between this experiment and the data from Zhou and Christianson (2016) demonstrate further that the "speakers'" speech rates, rather than the difficulty of simulating a non-native accent, is the primary mechanism underlying auditory perceptual simulation effects. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Differential sensory cortical involvement in auditory and visual sensorimotor temporal recalibration: Evidence from transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

PubMed

Aytemür, Ali; Almeida, Nathalia; Lee, Kwang-Hyuk

2017-02-01

Adaptation to delayed sensory feedback following an action produces a subjective time compression between the action and the feedback (temporal recalibration effect, TRE). TRE is important for sensory delay compensation to maintain a relationship between causally related events. It is unclear whether TRE is a sensory modality-specific phenomenon. In 3 experiments employing a sensorimotor synchronization task, we investigated this question using cathodal transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS). We found that cathodal tDCS over the visual cortex, and to a lesser extent over the auditory cortex, produced decreased visual TRE. However, both auditory and visual cortex tDCS did not produce any measurable effects on auditory TRE. Our study revealed different nature of TRE in auditory and visual domains. Visual-motor TRE, which is more variable than auditory TRE, is a sensory modality-specific phenomenon, modulated by the auditory cortex. The robustness of auditory-motor TRE, unaffected by tDCS, suggests the dominance of the auditory system in temporal processing, by providing a frame of reference in the realignment of sensorimotor timing signals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Visual Timing of Structured Dance Movements Resembles Auditory Rhythm Perception

PubMed Central

Su, Yi-Huang; Salazar-López, Elvira

2016-01-01

Temporal mechanisms for processing auditory musical rhythms are well established, in which a perceived beat is beneficial for timing purposes. It is yet unknown whether such beat-based timing would also underlie visual perception of temporally structured, ecological stimuli connected to music: dance. In this study, we investigated whether observers extracted a visual beat when watching dance movements to assist visual timing of these movements. Participants watched silent videos of dance sequences and reproduced the movement duration by mental recall. We found better visual timing for limb movements with regular patterns in the trajectories than without, similar to the beat advantage for auditory rhythms. When movements involved both the arms and the legs, the benefit of a visual beat relied only on the latter. The beat-based advantage persisted despite auditory interferences that were temporally incongruent with the visual beat, arguing for the visual nature of these mechanisms. Our results suggest that visual timing principles for dance parallel their auditory counterparts for music, which may be based on common sensorimotor coupling. These processes likely yield multimodal rhythm representations in the scenario of music and dance. PMID:27313900

Visual Timing of Structured Dance Movements Resembles Auditory Rhythm Perception.

PubMed

Su, Yi-Huang; Salazar-López, Elvira

2016-01-01

Temporal mechanisms for processing auditory musical rhythms are well established, in which a perceived beat is beneficial for timing purposes. It is yet unknown whether such beat-based timing would also underlie visual perception of temporally structured, ecological stimuli connected to music: dance. In this study, we investigated whether observers extracted a visual beat when watching dance movements to assist visual timing of these movements. Participants watched silent videos of dance sequences and reproduced the movement duration by mental recall. We found better visual timing for limb movements with regular patterns in the trajectories than without, similar to the beat advantage for auditory rhythms. When movements involved both the arms and the legs, the benefit of a visual beat relied only on the latter. The beat-based advantage persisted despite auditory interferences that were temporally incongruent with the visual beat, arguing for the visual nature of these mechanisms. Our results suggest that visual timing principles for dance parallel their auditory counterparts for music, which may be based on common sensorimotor coupling. These processes likely yield multimodal rhythm representations in the scenario of music and dance.

Temporal Influence on Awareness

DTIC Science & Technology

1995-12-01

43 38. Test Setup Timing: Measured vs Expected Modal Delays (in ms) ............. 46 39. Experiment I: visual and auditory stimuli...presented simultaneously; visual- auditory delay=Oms, visual-visual delay=0ms ....... .......................... 47 40. Experiment II: visual and auditory ...stimuli presented in order; visual- auditory de- lay=Oms, visual-visual delay=variable ................................ 48 41. Experiment II: visual and

Auditory Processing of Amplitude Envelope Rise Time in Adults Diagnosed with Developmental Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pasquini, Elisabeth S.; Corriveau, Kathleen H.; Goswami, Usha

2007-01-01

Studies of basic (nonspeech) auditory processing in adults thought to have developmental dyslexia have yielded a variety of data. Yet there has been little consensus regarding the explanatory value of auditory processing in accounting for reading difficulties. Recently, however, a number of studies of basic auditory processing in children with…

Reproduction of auditory and visual standards in monochannel cochlear implant users.

PubMed

Kanabus, Magdalena; Szelag, Elzbieta; Kolodziejczyk, Iwona; Szuchnik, Joanna

2004-01-01

The temporal reproduction of standard durations ranging from 1 to 9 seconds was investigated in monochannel cochlear implant (CI) users and in normally hearing subjects for the auditory and visual modality. The results showed that the pattern of performance in patients depended on their level of auditory comprehension. Results for CI users, who displayed relatively good auditory comprehension, did not differ from that of normally hearing subjects for both modalities. Patients with poor auditory comprehension significantly overestimated shorter auditory standards (1, 1.5 and 2.5 s), compared to both patients with good comprehension and controls. For the visual modality the between-group comparisons were not significant. These deficits in the reproduction of auditory standards were explained in accordance with both the attentional-gate model and the role of working memory in prospective time judgment. The impairments described above can influence the functioning of the temporal integration mechanism that is crucial for auditory speech comprehension on the level of words and phrases. We postulate that the deficits in time reproduction of short standards may be one of the possible reasons for poor speech understanding in monochannel CI users.

Predictions of Speech Chimaera Intelligibility Using Auditory Nerve Mean-Rate and Spike-Timing Neural Cues.

PubMed

Wirtzfeld, Michael R; Ibrahim, Rasha A; Bruce, Ian C

2017-10-01

Perceptual studies of speech intelligibility have shown that slow variations of acoustic envelope (ENV) in a small set of frequency bands provides adequate information for good perceptual performance in quiet, whereas acoustic temporal fine-structure (TFS) cues play a supporting role in background noise. However, the implications for neural coding are prone to misinterpretation because the mean-rate neural representation can contain recovered ENV cues from cochlear filtering of TFS. We investigated ENV recovery and spike-time TFS coding using objective measures of simulated mean-rate and spike-timing neural representations of chimaeric speech, in which either the ENV or the TFS is replaced by another signal. We (a) evaluated the levels of mean-rate and spike-timing neural information for two categories of chimaeric speech, one retaining ENV cues and the other TFS; (b) examined the level of recovered ENV from cochlear filtering of TFS speech; (c) examined and quantified the contribution to recovered ENV from spike-timing cues using a lateral inhibition network (LIN); and (d) constructed linear regression models with objective measures of mean-rate and spike-timing neural cues and subjective phoneme perception scores from normal-hearing listeners. The mean-rate neural cues from the original ENV and recovered ENV partially accounted for perceptual score variability, with additional variability explained by the recovered ENV from the LIN-processed TFS speech. The best model predictions of chimaeric speech intelligibility were found when both the mean-rate and spike-timing neural cues were included, providing further evidence that spike-time coding of TFS cues is important for intelligibility when the speech envelope is degraded.

Auditory peripersonal space in humans.

PubMed

Farnè, Alessandro; Làdavas, Elisabetta

2002-10-01

In the present study we report neuropsychological evidence of the existence of an auditory peripersonal space representation around the head in humans and its characteristics. In a group of right brain-damaged patients with tactile extinction, we found that a sound delivered near the ipsilesional side of the head (20 cm) strongly extinguished a tactile stimulus delivered to the contralesional side of the head (cross-modal auditory-tactile extinction). By contrast, when an auditory stimulus was presented far from the head (70 cm), cross-modal extinction was dramatically reduced. This spatially specific cross-modal extinction was most consistently found (i.e., both in the front and back spaces) when a complex sound was presented, like a white noise burst. Pure tones produced spatially specific cross-modal extinction when presented in the back space, but not in the front space. In addition, the most severe cross-modal extinction emerged when sounds came from behind the head, thus showing that the back space is more sensitive than the front space to the sensory interaction of auditory-tactile inputs. Finally, when cross-modal effects were investigated by reversing the spatial arrangement of cross-modal stimuli (i.e., touch on the right and sound on the left), we found that an ipsilesional tactile stimulus, although inducing a small amount of cross-modal tactile-auditory extinction, did not produce any spatial-specific effect. Therefore, the selective aspects of cross-modal interaction found near the head cannot be explained by a competition between a damaged left spatial representation and an intact right spatial representation. Thus, consistent with neurophysiological evidence from monkeys, our findings strongly support the existence, in humans, of an integrated cross-modal system coding auditory and tactile stimuli near the body, that is, in the peripersonal space.

Auditory and Visual Interhemispheric Communication in Musicians and Non-Musicians

PubMed Central

Woelfle, Rebecca; Grahn, Jessica A.

2013-01-01

The corpus callosum (CC) is a brain structure composed of axon fibres linking the right and left hemispheres. Musical training is associated with larger midsagittal cross-sectional area of the CC, suggesting that interhemispheric communication may be faster in musicians. Here we compared interhemispheric transmission times (ITTs) for musicians and non-musicians. ITT was measured by comparing simple reaction times to stimuli presented to the same hemisphere that controlled a button-press response (uncrossed reaction time), or to the contralateral hemisphere (crossed reaction time). Both visual and auditory stimuli were tested. We predicted that the crossed-uncrossed difference (CUD) for musicians would be smaller than for non-musicians as a result of faster interhemispheric transfer times. We did not expect a difference in CUDs between the visual and auditory modalities for either musicians or non-musicians, as previous work indicates that interhemispheric transfer may happen through the genu of the CC, which contains motor fibres rather than sensory fibres. There were no significant differences in CUDs between musicians and non-musicians. However, auditory CUDs were significantly smaller than visual CUDs. Although this auditory-visual difference was larger in musicians than non-musicians, the interaction between modality and musical training was not significant. Therefore, although musical training does not significantly affect ITT, the crossing of auditory information between hemispheres appears to be faster than visual information, perhaps because subcortical pathways play a greater role for auditory interhemispheric transfer. PMID:24386382

Noise-robust speech recognition through auditory feature detection and spike sequence decoding.

PubMed

Schafer, Phillip B; Jin, Dezhe Z

2014-03-01

Speech recognition in noisy conditions is a major challenge for computer systems, but the human brain performs it routinely and accurately. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems that are inspired by neuroscience can potentially bridge the performance gap between humans and machines. We present a system for noise-robust isolated word recognition that works by decoding sequences of spikes from a population of simulated auditory feature-detecting neurons. Each neuron is trained to respond selectively to a brief spectrotemporal pattern, or feature, drawn from the simulated auditory nerve response to speech. The neural population conveys the time-dependent structure of a sound by its sequence of spikes. We compare two methods for decoding the spike sequences--one using a hidden Markov model-based recognizer, the other using a novel template-based recognition scheme. In the latter case, words are recognized by comparing their spike sequences to template sequences obtained from clean training data, using a similarity measure based on the length of the longest common sub-sequence. Using isolated spoken digits from the AURORA-2 database, we show that our combined system outperforms a state-of-the-art robust speech recognizer at low signal-to-noise ratios. Both the spike-based encoding scheme and the template-based decoding offer gains in noise robustness over traditional speech recognition methods. Our system highlights potential advantages of spike-based acoustic coding and provides a biologically motivated framework for robust ASR development.

Speech perception in individuals with auditory dys-synchrony.

PubMed

Kumar, U A; Jayaram, M

2011-03-01

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of lengthening the transition duration of selected speech segments upon the perception of those segments in individuals with auditory dys-synchrony. Thirty individuals with auditory dys-synchrony participated in the study, along with 30 age-matched normal hearing listeners. Eight consonant-vowel syllables were used as auditory stimuli. Two experiments were conducted. Experiment one measured the 'just noticeable difference' time: the smallest prolongation of the speech sound transition duration which was noticeable by the subject. In experiment two, speech sounds were modified by lengthening the transition duration by multiples of the just noticeable difference time, and subjects' speech identification scores for the modified speech sounds were assessed. Subjects with auditory dys-synchrony demonstrated poor processing of temporal auditory information. Lengthening of speech sound transition duration improved these subjects' perception of both the placement and voicing features of the speech syllables used. These results suggest that innovative speech processing strategies which enhance temporal cues may benefit individuals with auditory dys-synchrony.

The role of temporal structure in the investigation of sensory memory, auditory scene analysis, and speech perception: a healthy-aging perspective.

PubMed

Rimmele, Johanna Maria; Sussman, Elyse; Poeppel, David

2015-02-01

Listening situations with multiple talkers or background noise are common in everyday communication and are particularly demanding for older adults. Here we review current research on auditory perception in aging individuals in order to gain insights into the challenges of listening under noisy conditions. Informationally rich temporal structure in auditory signals--over a range of time scales from milliseconds to seconds--renders temporal processing central to perception in the auditory domain. We discuss the role of temporal structure in auditory processing, in particular from a perspective relevant for hearing in background noise, and focusing on sensory memory, auditory scene analysis, and speech perception. Interestingly, these auditory processes, usually studied in an independent manner, show considerable overlap of processing time scales, even though each has its own 'privileged' temporal regimes. By integrating perspectives on temporal structure processing in these three areas of investigation, we aim to highlight similarities typically not recognized. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The role of temporal structure in the investigation of sensory memory, auditory scene analysis, and speech perception: A healthy-aging perspective

PubMed Central

Rimmele, Johanna Maria; Sussman, Elyse; Poeppel, David

2014-01-01

Listening situations with multiple talkers or background noise are common in everyday communication and are particularly demanding for older adults. Here we review current research on auditory perception in aging individuals in order to gain insights into the challenges of listening under noisy conditions. Informationally rich temporal structure in auditory signals - over a range of time scales from milliseconds to seconds - renders temporal processing central to perception in the auditory domain. We discuss the role of temporal structure in auditory processing, in particular from a perspective relevant for hearing in background noise, and focusing on sensory memory, auditory scene analysis, and speech perception. Interestingly, these auditory processes, usually studied in an independent manner, show considerable overlap of processing time scales, even though each has its own ‚privileged‘ temporal regimes. By integrating perspectives on temporal structure processing in these three areas of investigation, we aim to highlight similarities typically not recognized. PMID:24956028

Opponent Coding of Sound Location (Azimuth) in Planum Temporale is Robust to Sound-Level Variations.

PubMed

Derey, Kiki; Valente, Giancarlo; de Gelder, Beatrice; Formisano, Elia

2016-01-01

Coding of sound location in auditory cortex (AC) is only partially understood. Recent electrophysiological research suggests that neurons in mammalian auditory cortex are characterized by broad spatial tuning and a preference for the contralateral hemifield, that is, a nonuniform sampling of sound azimuth. Additionally, spatial selectivity decreases with increasing sound intensity. To accommodate these findings, it has been proposed that sound location is encoded by the integrated activity of neuronal populations with opposite hemifield tuning ("opponent channel model"). In this study, we investigated the validity of such a model in human AC with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a phase-encoding paradigm employing binaural stimuli recorded individually for each participant. In all subjects, we observed preferential fMRI responses to contralateral azimuth positions. Additionally, in most AC locations, spatial tuning was broad and not level invariant. We derived an opponent channel model of the fMRI responses by subtracting the activity of contralaterally tuned regions in bilateral planum temporale. This resulted in accurate decoding of sound azimuth location, which was unaffected by changes in sound level. Our data thus support opponent channel coding as a neural mechanism for representing acoustic azimuth in human AC. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press.

A neural circuit transforming temporal periodicity information into a rate-based representation in the mammalian auditory system.

PubMed

Dicke, Ulrike; Ewert, Stephan D; Dau, Torsten; Kollmeier, Birger

2007-01-01

Periodic amplitude modulations (AMs) of an acoustic stimulus are presumed to be encoded in temporal activity patterns of neurons in the cochlear nucleus. Physiological recordings indicate that this temporal AM code is transformed into a rate-based periodicity code along the ascending auditory pathway. The present study suggests a neural circuit for the transformation from the temporal to the rate-based code. Due to the neural connectivity of the circuit, bandpass shaped rate modulation transfer functions are obtained that correspond to recorded functions of inferior colliculus (IC) neurons. In contrast to previous modeling studies, the present circuit does not employ a continuously changing temporal parameter to obtain different best modulation frequencies (BMFs) of the IC bandpass units. Instead, different BMFs are yielded from varying the number of input units projecting onto different bandpass units. In order to investigate the compatibility of the neural circuit with a linear modulation filterbank analysis as proposed in psychophysical studies, complex stimuli such as tones modulated by the sum of two sinusoids, narrowband noise, and iterated rippled noise were processed by the model. The model accounts for the encoding of AM depth over a large dynamic range and for modulation frequency selective processing of complex sounds.

Relating the variability of tone-burst otoacoustic emission and auditory brainstem response latencies to the underlying cochlear mechanics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Verhulst, Sarah; Shera, Christopher A.

2015-12-01

Forward and reverse cochlear latency and its relation to the frequency tuning of the auditory filters can be assessed using tone bursts (TBs). Otoacoustic emissions (TBOAEs) estimate the cochlear roundtrip time, while auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) to the same stimuli aim at measuring the auditory filter buildup time. Latency ratios are generally close to two and controversy exists about the relationship of this ratio to cochlear mechanics. We explored why the two methods provide different estimates of filter buildup time, and ratios with large inter-subject variability, using a time-domain model for OAEs and ABRs. We compared latencies for twenty models, in which all parameters but the cochlear irregularities responsible for reflection-source OAEs were identical, and found that TBOAE latencies were much more variable than ABR latencies. Multiple reflection-sources generated within the evoking stimulus bandwidth were found to shape the TBOAE envelope and complicate the interpretation of TBOAE latency and TBOAE/ABR ratios in terms of auditory filter tuning.

Activity in the left auditory cortex is associated with individual impulsivity in time discounting.

PubMed

Han, Ruokang; Takahashi, Taiki; Miyazaki, Akane; Kadoya, Tomoka; Kato, Shinya; Yokosawa, Koichi

2015-01-01

Impulsivity dictates individual decision-making behavior. Therefore, it can reflect consumption behavior and risk of addiction and thus underlies social activities as well. Neuroscience has been applied to explain social activities; however, the brain function controlling impulsivity has remained unclear. It is known that impulsivity is related to individual time perception, i.e., a person who perceives a certain physical time as being longer is impulsive. Here we show that activity of the left auditory cortex is related to individual impulsivity. Individual impulsivity was evaluated by a self-answered questionnaire in twelve healthy right-handed adults, and activities of the auditory cortices of bilateral hemispheres when listening to continuous tones were recorded by magnetoencephalography. Sustained activity of the left auditory cortex was significantly correlated to impulsivity, that is, larger sustained activity indicated stronger impulsivity. The results suggest that the left auditory cortex represent time perception, probably because the area is involved in speech perception, and that it represents impulsivity indirectly.

Time-Varying Vocal Folds Vibration Detection Using a 24 GHz Portable Auditory Radar

PubMed Central

Hong, Hong; Zhao, Heng; Peng, Zhengyu; Li, Hui; Gu, Chen; Li, Changzhi; Zhu, Xiaohua

2016-01-01

Time-varying vocal folds vibration information is of crucial importance in speech processing, and the traditional devices to acquire speech signals are easily smeared by the high background noise and voice interference. In this paper, we present a non-acoustic way to capture the human vocal folds vibration using a 24-GHz portable auditory radar. Since the vocal folds vibration only reaches several millimeters, the high operating frequency and the 4 × 4 array antennas are applied to achieve the high sensitivity. The Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) based algorithm is proposed to decompose the radar-detected auditory signal into a sequence of intrinsic modes firstly, and then, extract the time-varying vocal folds vibration frequency from the corresponding mode. Feasibility demonstration, evaluation, and comparison are conducted with tonal and non-tonal languages, and the low relative errors show a high consistency between the radar-detected auditory time-varying vocal folds vibration and acoustic fundamental frequency, except that the auditory radar significantly improves the frequency-resolving power. PMID:27483261

Time-Varying Vocal Folds Vibration Detection Using a 24 GHz Portable Auditory Radar.

PubMed

Hong, Hong; Zhao, Heng; Peng, Zhengyu; Li, Hui; Gu, Chen; Li, Changzhi; Zhu, Xiaohua

2016-07-28

Time-varying vocal folds vibration information is of crucial importance in speech processing, and the traditional devices to acquire speech signals are easily smeared by the high background noise and voice interference. In this paper, we present a non-acoustic way to capture the human vocal folds vibration using a 24-GHz portable auditory radar. Since the vocal folds vibration only reaches several millimeters, the high operating frequency and the 4 × 4 array antennas are applied to achieve the high sensitivity. The Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) based algorithm is proposed to decompose the radar-detected auditory signal into a sequence of intrinsic modes firstly, and then, extract the time-varying vocal folds vibration frequency from the corresponding mode. Feasibility demonstration, evaluation, and comparison are conducted with tonal and non-tonal languages, and the low relative errors show a high consistency between the radar-detected auditory time-varying vocal folds vibration and acoustic fundamental frequency, except that the auditory radar significantly improves the frequency-resolving power.

Status Report on Speech Research, July 1994-December 1995.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fowler, Carol A., Ed.

This publication (one of a series) contains 19 articles which report the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instruments for its investigation, and practical applications. Articles are: "Speech Perception Deficits in Poor Readers: Auditory Processing or Phonological Coding?" (Maria Mody and others); "Auditory…

Teaching Suggestions: Exceptional Child Program.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burrows, Patricia G., Ed.

A variety of activities to improve auditory, visual, motor, and academic skills of learning disabled children are presented for teachers' use. Activities are grouped under perceptual skills and color coded for easy access. Given for each activity are the names (such as Milkman Mixup), idea or purpose (one example is improvement of fine motor…

Auditory display as feedback for a novel eye-tracking system for sterile operating room interaction.

PubMed

Black, David; Unger, Michael; Fischer, Nele; Kikinis, Ron; Hahn, Horst; Neumuth, Thomas; Glaser, Bernhard

2018-01-01

The growing number of technical systems in the operating room has increased attention on developing touchless interaction methods for sterile conditions. However, touchless interaction paradigms lack the tactile feedback found in common input devices such as mice and keyboards. We propose a novel touchless eye-tracking interaction system with auditory display as a feedback method for completing typical operating room tasks. Auditory display provides feedback concerning the selected input into the eye-tracking system as well as a confirmation of the system response. An eye-tracking system with a novel auditory display using both earcons and parameter-mapping sonification was developed to allow touchless interaction for six typical scrub nurse tasks. An evaluation with novice participants compared auditory display with visual display with respect to reaction time and a series of subjective measures. When using auditory display to substitute for the lost tactile feedback during eye-tracking interaction, participants exhibit reduced reaction time compared to using visual-only display. In addition, the auditory feedback led to lower subjective workload and higher usefulness and system acceptance ratings. Due to the absence of tactile feedback for eye-tracking and other touchless interaction methods, auditory display is shown to be a useful and necessary addition to new interaction concepts for the sterile operating room, reducing reaction times while improving subjective measures, including usefulness, user satisfaction, and cognitive workload.

Dual Coding of Frequency Modulation in the Ventral Cochlear Nucleus.

PubMed

Paraouty, Nihaad; Stasiak, Arkadiusz; Lorenzi, Christian; Varnet, Léo; Winter, Ian M

2018-04-25

Frequency modulation (FM) is a common acoustic feature of natural sounds and is known to play a role in robust sound source recognition. Auditory neurons show precise stimulus-synchronized discharge patterns that may be used for the representation of low-rate FM. However, it remains unclear whether this representation is based on synchronization to slow temporal envelope (ENV) cues resulting from cochlear filtering or phase locking to faster temporal fine structure (TFS) cues. To investigate the plausibility of those encoding schemes, single units of the ventral cochlear nucleus of guinea pigs of either sex were recorded in response to sine FM tones centered at the unit's best frequency (BF). The results show that, in contrast to high-BF units, for modulation depths within the receptive field, low-BF units (<4 kHz) demonstrate good phase locking to TFS. For modulation depths extending beyond the receptive field, the discharge patterns follow the ENV and fluctuate at the modulation rate. The receptive field proved to be a good predictor of the ENV responses for most primary-like and chopper units. The current in vivo data also reveal a high level of diversity in responses across unit types. TFS cues are mainly conveyed by low-frequency and primary-like units and ENV cues by chopper and onset units. The diversity of responses exhibited by cochlear nucleus neurons provides a neural basis for a dual-coding scheme of FM in the brainstem based on both ENV and TFS cues. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Natural sounds, including speech, convey informative temporal modulations in frequency. Understanding how the auditory system represents those frequency modulations (FM) has important implications as robust sound source recognition depends crucially on the reception of low-rate FM cues. Here, we recorded 115 single-unit responses from the ventral cochlear nucleus in response to FM and provide the first physiological evidence of a dual-coding mechanism of FM via synchronization to temporal envelope cues and phase locking to temporal fine structure cues. We also demonstrate a diversity of neural responses with different coding specializations. These results support the dual-coding scheme proposed by psychophysicists to account for FM sensitivity in humans and provide new insights on how this might be implemented in the early stages of the auditory pathway. Copyright © 2018 the authors 0270-6474/18/384123-15$15.00/0.

Audio-tactile integration and the influence of musical training.

PubMed

Kuchenbuch, Anja; Paraskevopoulos, Evangelos; Herholz, Sibylle C; Pantev, Christo

2014-01-01

Perception of our environment is a multisensory experience; information from different sensory systems like the auditory, visual and tactile is constantly integrated. Complex tasks that require high temporal and spatial precision of multisensory integration put strong demands on the underlying networks but it is largely unknown how task experience shapes multisensory processing. Long-term musical training is an excellent model for brain plasticity because it shapes the human brain at functional and structural levels, affecting a network of brain areas. In the present study we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate how audio-tactile perception is integrated in the human brain and if musicians show enhancement of the corresponding activation compared to non-musicians. Using a paradigm that allowed the investigation of combined and separate auditory and tactile processing, we found a multisensory incongruency response, generated in frontal, cingulate and cerebellar regions, an auditory mismatch response generated mainly in the auditory cortex and a tactile mismatch response generated in frontal and cerebellar regions. The influence of musical training was seen in the audio-tactile as well as in the auditory condition, indicating enhanced higher-order processing in musicians, while the sources of the tactile MMN were not influenced by long-term musical training. Consistent with the predictive coding model, more basic, bottom-up sensory processing was relatively stable and less affected by expertise, whereas areas for top-down models of multisensory expectancies were modulated by training.

Decoding auditory spatial and emotional information encoding using multivariate versus univariate techniques.

PubMed

Kryklywy, James H; Macpherson, Ewan A; Mitchell, Derek G V

2018-04-01

Emotion can have diverse effects on behaviour and perception, modulating function in some circumstances, and sometimes having little effect. Recently, it was identified that part of the heterogeneity of emotional effects could be due to a dissociable representation of emotion in dual pathway models of sensory processing. Our previous fMRI experiment using traditional univariate analyses showed that emotion modulated processing in the auditory 'what' but not 'where' processing pathway. The current study aims to further investigate this dissociation using a more recently emerging multi-voxel pattern analysis searchlight approach. While undergoing fMRI, participants localized sounds of varying emotional content. A searchlight multi-voxel pattern analysis was conducted to identify activity patterns predictive of sound location and/or emotion. Relative to the prior univariate analysis, MVPA indicated larger overlapping spatial and emotional representations of sound within early secondary regions associated with auditory localization. However, consistent with the univariate analysis, these two dimensions were increasingly segregated in late secondary and tertiary regions of the auditory processing streams. These results, while complimentary to our original univariate analyses, highlight the utility of multiple analytic approaches for neuroimaging, particularly for neural processes with known representations dependent on population coding.

Continuous time wavelet entropy of auditory evoked potentials.

PubMed

Cek, M Emre; Ozgoren, Murat; Savaci, F Acar

2010-01-01

In this paper, the continuous time wavelet entropy (CTWE) of auditory evoked potentials (AEP) has been characterized by evaluating the relative wavelet energies (RWE) in specified EEG frequency bands. Thus, the rapid variations of CTWE due to the auditory stimulation could be detected in post-stimulus time interval. This approach removes the probability of missing the information hidden in short time intervals. The discrete time and continuous time wavelet based wavelet entropy variations were compared on non-target and target AEP data. It was observed that CTWE can also be an alternative method to analyze entropy as a function of time. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A comparative study of simple auditory reaction time in blind (congenitally) and sighted subjects.

PubMed

Gandhi, Pritesh Hariprasad; Gokhale, Pradnya A; Mehta, H B; Shah, C J

2013-07-01

Reaction time is the time interval between the application of a stimulus and the appearance of appropriate voluntary response by a subject. It involves stimulus processing, decision making, and response programming. Reaction time study has been popular due to their implication in sports physiology. Reaction time has been widely studied as its practical implications may be of great consequence e.g., a slower than normal reaction time while driving can have grave results. To study simple auditory reaction time in congenitally blind subjects and in age sex matched sighted subjects. To compare the simple auditory reaction time between congenitally blind subjects and healthy control subjects. STUDY HAD BEEN CARRIED OUT IN TWO GROUPS: The 1(st) of 50 congenitally blind subjects and 2(nd) group comprises of 50 healthy controls. It was carried out on Multiple Choice Reaction Time Apparatus, Inco Ambala Ltd. (Accuracy±0.001 s) in a sitting position at Government Medical College and Hospital, Bhavnagar and at a Blind School, PNR campus, Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India. Simple auditory reaction time response with four different type of sound (horn, bell, ring, and whistle) was recorded in both groups. According to our study, there is no significant different in reaction time between congenital blind and normal healthy persons. Blind individuals commonly utilize tactual and auditory cues for information and orientation and they reliance on touch and audition, together with more practice in using these modalities to guide behavior, is often reflected in better performance of blind relative to sighted participants in tactile or auditory discrimination tasks, but there is not any difference in reaction time between congenitally blind and sighted people.

Interhemispheric transfer time in patients with auditory hallucinations: an auditory event-related potential study.

PubMed

Henshall, Katherine R; Sergejew, Alex A; McKay, Colette M; Rance, Gary; Shea, Tracey L; Hayden, Melissa J; Innes-Brown, Hamish; Copolov, David L

2012-05-01

Central auditory processing in schizophrenia patients with a history of auditory hallucinations has been reported to be impaired, and abnormalities of interhemispheric transfer have been implicated in these patients. This study examined interhemispheric functional connectivity between auditory cortical regions, using temporal information obtained from latency measures of the auditory N1 evoked potential. Interhemispheric Transfer Times (IHTTs) were compared across 3 subject groups: schizophrenia patients who had experienced auditory hallucinations, schizophrenia patients without a history of auditory hallucinations, and normal controls. Pure tones and single-syllable words were presented monaurally to each ear, while EEG was recorded continuously. IHTT was calculated for each stimulus type by comparing the latencies of the auditory N1 evoked potential recorded contralaterally and ipsilaterally to the ear of stimulation. The IHTTs for pure tones did not differ between groups. For word stimuli, the IHTT was significantly different across the 3 groups: the IHTT was close to zero in normal controls, was highest in the AH group, and was negative (shorter latencies ipsilaterally) in the nonAH group. Differences in IHTTs may be attributed to transcallosal dysfunction in the AH group, but altered or reversed cerebral lateralization in nonAH participants is also possible. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Distribution of glutamatergic, GABAergic, and glycinergic neurons in the auditory pathways of macaque monkeys.

PubMed

Ito, T; Inoue, K; Takada, M

2015-12-03

Macaque monkeys use complex communication calls and are regarded as a model for studying the coding and decoding of complex sound in the auditory system. However, little is known about the distribution of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the auditory system of macaque monkeys. In this study, we examined the overall distribution of cell bodies that expressed mRNAs for VGLUT1, and VGLUT2 (markers for glutamatergic neurons), GAD67 (a marker for GABAergic neurons), and GLYT2 (a marker for glycinergic neurons) in the auditory system of the Japanese macaque. In addition, we performed immunohistochemistry for VGLUT1, VGLUT2, and GAD67 in order to compare the distribution of proteins and mRNAs. We found that most of the excitatory neurons in the auditory brainstem expressed VGLUT2. In contrast, the expression of VGLUT1 mRNA was restricted to the auditory cortex (AC), periolivary nuclei, and cochlear nuclei (CN). The co-expression of GAD67 and GLYT2 mRNAs was common in the ventral nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (VNLL), CN, and superior olivary complex except for the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body, which expressed GLYT2 alone. In contrast, the dorsal nucleus of the lateral lemniscus, inferior colliculus, thalamus, and AC expressed GAD67 alone. The absence of co-expression of VGLUT1 and VGLUT2 in the medial geniculate, medial superior olive, and VNLL suggests that synaptic responses in the target neurons of these nuclei may be different between rodents and macaque monkeys. Copyright © 2015 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Experience and information loss in auditory and visual memory.

PubMed

Gloede, Michele E; Paulauskas, Emily E; Gregg, Melissa K

2017-07-01

Recent studies show that recognition memory for sounds is inferior to memory for pictures. Four experiments were conducted to examine the nature of auditory and visual memory. Experiments 1-3 were conducted to evaluate the role of experience in auditory and visual memory. Participants received a study phase with pictures/sounds, followed by a recognition memory test. Participants then completed auditory training with each of the sounds, followed by a second memory test. Despite auditory training in Experiments 1 and 2, visual memory was superior to auditory memory. In Experiment 3, we found that it is possible to improve auditory memory, but only after 3 days of specific auditory training and 3 days of visual memory decay. We examined the time course of information loss in auditory and visual memory in Experiment 4 and found a trade-off between visual and auditory recognition memory: Visual memory appears to have a larger capacity, while auditory memory is more enduring. Our results indicate that visual and auditory memory are inherently different memory systems and that differences in visual and auditory recognition memory performance may be due to the different amounts of experience with visual and auditory information, as well as structurally different neural circuitry specialized for information retention.

Moving in time: Bayesian causal inference explains movement coordination to auditory beats

PubMed Central

Elliott, Mark T.; Wing, Alan M.; Welchman, Andrew E.

2014-01-01

Many everyday skilled actions depend on moving in time with signals that are embedded in complex auditory streams (e.g. musical performance, dancing or simply holding a conversation). Such behaviour is apparently effortless; however, it is not known how humans combine auditory signals to support movement production and coordination. Here, we test how participants synchronize their movements when there are potentially conflicting auditory targets to guide their actions. Participants tapped their fingers in time with two simultaneously presented metronomes of equal tempo, but differing in phase and temporal regularity. Synchronization therefore depended on integrating the two timing cues into a single-event estimate or treating the cues as independent and thereby selecting one signal over the other. We show that a Bayesian inference process explains the situations in which participants choose to integrate or separate signals, and predicts motor timing errors. Simulations of this causal inference process demonstrate that this model provides a better description of the data than other plausible models. Our findings suggest that humans exploit a Bayesian inference process to control movement timing in situations where the origin of auditory signals needs to be resolved. PMID:24850915

Combined Auditory and Vibrotactile Feedback for Human-Machine-Interface Control.

PubMed

Thorp, Elias B; Larson, Eric; Stepp, Cara E

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the addition of binary vibrotactile stimulation to continuous auditory feedback (vowel synthesis) for human-machine interface (HMI) control. Sixteen healthy participants controlled facial surface electromyography to achieve 2-D targets (vowels). Eight participants used only real-time auditory feedback to locate targets whereas the other eight participants were additionally alerted to having achieved targets with confirmatory vibrotactile stimulation at the index finger. All participants trained using their assigned feedback modality (auditory alone or combined auditory and vibrotactile) over three sessions on three days and completed a fourth session on the third day using novel targets to assess generalization. Analyses of variance performed on the 1) percentage of targets reached and 2) percentage of trial time at the target revealed a main effect for feedback modality: participants using combined auditory and vibrotactile feedback performed significantly better than those using auditory feedback alone. No effect was found for session or the interaction of feedback modality and session, indicating a successful generalization to novel targets but lack of improvement over training sessions. Future research is necessary to determine the cognitive cost associated with combined auditory and vibrotactile feedback during HMI control.

Auditory hallucinations and PTSD in ex-POWS.

PubMed

Crompton, Laura; Lahav, Yael; Solomon, Zahava

2017-01-01

Literature has suggested that auditory hallucinations might be prevalent in the general population and could be linked to the experience of trauma. This prospective study examines the prevalence of auditory hallucinations in trauma survivors and its association with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, over time. Former prisoners of war (ex-POWs) from the 1973 Yom Kippur War (n = 99) with and without PTSD and comparable veterans (n = 103) were assessed twice, in 1991 (T1) and 2003 (T2) in regard to auditory hallucinations and PTSD symptoms. Findings indicated that ex-POWs who suffered from PTSD reported higher levels of auditory hallucinations at T2 as well as increased hallucinations over time, compared to ex-POWs without PTSD and combatants who did not endure captivity. The relation between PTSD and auditory hallucinations was unidirectional, so that the PTSD overall score at T1 predicted an increase in auditory hallucinations between T1 and T2, but not vice versa. Assessing the role of PTSD clusters in predicting hallucinations revealed that intrusion symptoms had a unique contribution, compared to avoidance and hyperarousal symptoms. The findings suggest that auditory hallucinations might be a consequence of the posttraumatic reaction among veterans.

Auditory Reserve and the Legacy of Auditory Experience

PubMed Central

Skoe, Erika; Kraus, Nina

2014-01-01

Musical training during childhood has been linked to more robust encoding of sound later in life. We take this as evidence for an auditory reserve: a mechanism by which individuals capitalize on earlier life experiences to promote auditory processing. We assert that early auditory experiences guide how the reserve develops and is maintained over the lifetime. Experiences that occur after childhood, or which are limited in nature, are theorized to affect the reserve, although their influence on sensory processing may be less long-lasting and may potentially fade over time if not repeated. This auditory reserve may help to explain individual differences in how individuals cope with auditory impoverishment or loss of sensorineural function. PMID:25405381

Speech Evoked Auditory Brainstem Response in Stuttering

PubMed Central

Tahaei, Ali Akbar; Ashayeri, Hassan; Pourbakht, Akram; Kamali, Mohammad

2014-01-01

Auditory processing deficits have been hypothesized as an underlying mechanism for stuttering. Previous studies have demonstrated abnormal responses in subjects with persistent developmental stuttering (PDS) at the higher level of the central auditory system using speech stimuli. Recently, the potential usefulness of speech evoked auditory brainstem responses in central auditory processing disorders has been emphasized. The current study used the speech evoked ABR to investigate the hypothesis that subjects with PDS have specific auditory perceptual dysfunction. Objectives. To determine whether brainstem responses to speech stimuli differ between PDS subjects and normal fluent speakers. Methods. Twenty-five subjects with PDS participated in this study. The speech-ABRs were elicited by the 5-formant synthesized syllable/da/, with duration of 40 ms. Results. There were significant group differences for the onset and offset transient peaks. Subjects with PDS had longer latencies for the onset and offset peaks relative to the control group. Conclusions. Subjects with PDS showed a deficient neural timing in the early stages of the auditory pathway consistent with temporal processing deficits and their abnormal timing may underlie to their disfluency. PMID:25215262

Study on the application of the time-compressed speech in children.

PubMed

Padilha, Fernanda Yasmin Odila Maestri Miguel; Pinheiro, Maria Madalena Canina

2017-11-09

To analyze the performance of children without alteration of central auditory processing in the Time-compressed Speech Test. This is a descriptive, observational, cross-sectional study. Study participants were 22 children aged 7-11 years without central auditory processing disorders. The following instruments were used to assess whether these children presented central auditory processing disorders: Scale of Auditory Behaviors, simplified evaluation of central auditory processing, and Dichotic Test of Digits (binaural integration stage). The Time-compressed Speech Test was applied to the children without auditory changes. The participants presented better performance in the list of monosyllabic words than in the list of disyllabic words, but with no statistically significant difference. No influence on test performance was observed with respect to order of presentation of the lists and the variables gender and ear. Regarding age, difference in performance was observed only in the list of disyllabic words. The mean score of children in the Time-compressed Speech Test was lower than that of adults reported in the national literature. Difference in test performance was observed only with respect to the age variable for the list of disyllabic words. No difference was observed in the order of presentation of the lists or in the type of stimulus.

Primary Auditory Cortex is Required for Anticipatory Motor Response.

PubMed

Li, Jingcheng; Liao, Xiang; Zhang, Jianxiong; Wang, Meng; Yang, Nian; Zhang, Jun; Lv, Guanghui; Li, Haohong; Lu, Jian; Ding, Ran; Li, Xingyi; Guang, Yu; Yang, Zhiqi; Qin, Han; Jin, Wenjun; Zhang, Kuan; He, Chao; Jia, Hongbo; Zeng, Shaoqun; Hu, Zhian; Nelken, Israel; Chen, Xiaowei

2017-06-01

The ability of the brain to predict future events based on the pattern of recent sensory experience is critical for guiding animal's behavior. Neocortical circuits for ongoing processing of sensory stimuli are extensively studied, but their contributions to the anticipation of upcoming sensory stimuli remain less understood. We, therefore, used in vivo cellular imaging and fiber photometry to record mouse primary auditory cortex to elucidate its role in processing anticipated stimulation. We found neuronal ensembles in layers 2/3, 4, and 5 which were activated in relationship to anticipated sound events following rhythmic stimulation. These neuronal activities correlated with the occurrence of anticipatory motor responses in an auditory learning task. Optogenetic manipulation experiments revealed an essential role of such neuronal activities in producing the anticipatory behavior. These results strongly suggest that the neural circuits of primary sensory cortex are critical for coding predictive information and transforming it into anticipatory motor behavior. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Working memory for pitch, timbre, and words

PubMed Central

Tillmann, Barbara

2012-01-01

Aiming to further our understanding of fundamental mechanisms of auditory working memory (WM), the present study compared performance for three auditory materials (words, tones, timbres). In a forward recognition task (Experiment 1) participants indicated whether the order of the items in the second sequence was the same as in the first sequence. In a backward recognition task (Experiment 2) participants indicated whether the items of the second sequence were played in the correct backward order. In Experiment 3 participants performed an articulatory suppression task during the retention delay of the backward task. To investigate potential length effects the number of items per sequence was manipulated. Overall findings underline the benefit of a cross-material experimental approach and suggest that human auditory WM is not a unitary system. Whereas WM processes for timbres differed from those for tones and words, similarities and differences were observed for words and tones: Both types of stimuli appear to rely on rehearsal mechanisms, but might differ in the involved sensorimotor codes. PMID:23116413

A high-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI dataset from complex natural stimulation with an audio movie.

PubMed

Hanke, Michael; Baumgartner, Florian J; Ibe, Pierre; Kaule, Falko R; Pollmann, Stefan; Speck, Oliver; Zinke, Wolf; Stadler, Jörg

2014-01-01

Here we present a high-resolution functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) dataset - 20 participants recorded at high field strength (7 Tesla) during prolonged stimulation with an auditory feature film ("Forrest Gump"). In addition, a comprehensive set of auxiliary data (T1w, T2w, DTI, susceptibility-weighted image, angiography) as well as measurements to assess technical and physiological noise components have been acquired. An initial analysis confirms that these data can be used to study common and idiosyncratic brain response patterns to complex auditory stimulation. Among the potential uses of this dataset are the study of auditory attention and cognition, language and music perception, and social perception. The auxiliary measurements enable a large variety of additional analysis strategies that relate functional response patterns to structural properties of the brain. Alongside the acquired data, we provide source code and detailed information on all employed procedures - from stimulus creation to data analysis. In order to facilitate replicative and derived works, only free and open-source software was utilized.

The Representation of Prediction Error in Auditory Cortex

PubMed Central

Rubin, Jonathan; Ulanovsky, Nachum; Tishby, Naftali

2016-01-01

To survive, organisms must extract information from the past that is relevant for their future. How this process is expressed at the neural level remains unclear. We address this problem by developing a novel approach from first principles. We show here how to generate low-complexity representations of the past that produce optimal predictions of future events. We then illustrate this framework by studying the coding of ‘oddball’ sequences in auditory cortex. We find that for many neurons in primary auditory cortex, trial-by-trial fluctuations of neuronal responses correlate with the theoretical prediction error calculated from the short-term past of the stimulation sequence, under constraints on the complexity of the representation of this past sequence. In some neurons, the effect of prediction error accounted for more than 50% of response variability. Reliable predictions often depended on a representation of the sequence of the last ten or more stimuli, although the representation kept only few details of that sequence. PMID:27490251

Information-Theoretic Properties of Auditory Sequences Dynamically Influence Expectation and Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agres, Kat; Abdallah, Samer; Pearce, Marcus

2018-01-01

A basic function of cognition is to detect regularities in sensory input to facilitate the prediction and recognition of future events. It has been proposed that these implicit expectations arise from an internal predictive coding model, based on knowledge acquired through processes such as statistical learning, but it is unclear how different…

Speech Perception Deficits in Poor Readers: Auditory Processing or Phonological Coding?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mody, Maria; And Others

1997-01-01

Forty second-graders, 20 good and 20 poor readers, completed a /ba/-/da/ temporal order judgment (TOJ) task. The groups did not differ in TOJ when /ba/ and /da/ were paired with more easily discriminated syllables. Poor readers' difficulties with /ba/-/da/ reflected perceptual confusion between phonetically similar syllables rather than difficulty…

Searching for Syllabic Coding Units in Speech Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dumay, Nicolas; Content, Alain

2012-01-01

Two auditory priming experiments tested whether the effect of final phonological overlap relies on syllabic representations. Amount of shared phonemic information and syllabic status of the overlap between nonword primes and targets were varied orthogonally. In the related conditions, CV.CCVC items shared the last syllable (e.g., vi.klyd-p[image…

A basic study on universal design of auditory signals in automobiles.

PubMed

Yamauchi, Katsuya; Choi, Jong-dae; Maiguma, Ryo; Takada, Masayuki; Iwamiya, Shin-ichiro

2004-11-01

In this paper, the impression of various kinds of auditory signals currently used in automobiles and a comprehensive evaluation were measured by a semantic differential method. The desirable acoustic characteristic was examined for each type of auditory signal. Sharp sounds with dominant high-frequency components were not suitable for auditory signals in automobiles. This trend is expedient for the aged whose auditory sensitivity in the high frequency region is lower. When intermittent sounds were used, a longer OFF time was suitable. Generally, "dull (not sharp)" and "calm" sounds were appropriate for auditory signals. Furthermore, the comparison between the frequency spectrum of interior noise in automobiles and that of suitable sounds for various auditory signals indicates that the suitable sounds are not easily masked. The suitable auditory signals for various purposes is a good solution from the viewpoint of universal design.

Basic Auditory Processing and Developmental Dyslexia in Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Hsiao-Lan Sharon; Huss, Martina; Hamalainen, Jarmo A.; Goswami, Usha

2012-01-01

The present study explores the relationship between basic auditory processing of sound rise time, frequency, duration and intensity, phonological skills (onset-rime and tone awareness, sound blending, RAN, and phonological memory) and reading disability in Chinese. A series of psychometric, literacy, phonological, auditory, and character…

Understanding the Implications of Neural Population Activity on Behavior

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Briguglio, John

Learning how neural activity in the brain leads to the behavior we exhibit is one of the fundamental questions in Neuroscience. In this dissertation, several lines of work are presented to that use principles of neural coding to understand behavior. In one line of work, we formulate the efficient coding hypothesis in a non-traditional manner in order to test human perceptual sensitivity to complex visual textures. We find a striking agreement between how variable a particular texture signal is and how sensitive humans are to its presence. This reveals that the efficient coding hypothesis is still a guiding principle for neural organization beyond the sensory periphery, and that the nature of cortical constraints differs from the peripheral counterpart. In another line of work, we relate frequency discrimination acuity to neural responses from auditory cortex in mice. It has been previously observed that optogenetic manipulation of auditory cortex, in addition to changing neural responses, evokes changes in behavioral frequency discrimination. We are able to account for changes in frequency discrimination acuity on an individual basis by examining the Fisher information from the neural population with and without optogenetic manipulation. In the third line of work, we address the question of what a neural population should encode given that its inputs are responses from another group of neurons. Drawing inspiration from techniques in machine learning, we train Deep Belief Networks on fake retinal data and show the emergence of Garbor-like filters, reminiscent of responses in primary visual cortex. In the last line of work, we model the state of a cortical excitatory-inhibitory network during complex adaptive stimuli. Using a rate model with Wilson-Cowan dynamics, we demonstrate that simple non-linearities in the signal transferred from inhibitory to excitatory neurons can account for real neural recordings taken from auditory cortex. This work establishes and tests a variety of hypotheses that will be useful in helping to understand the relationship between neural activity and behavior as recorded neural populations continue to grow.

Empirical validation of the triple-code model of numerical processing for complex math operations using functional MRI and group Independent Component Analysis of the mental addition and subtraction of fractions.

PubMed

Schmithorst, Vincent J; Brown, Rhonda Douglas

2004-07-01

The suitability of a previously hypothesized triple-code model of numerical processing, involving analog magnitude, auditory verbal, and visual Arabic codes of representation, was investigated for the complex mathematical task of the mental addition and subtraction of fractions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 15 normal adult subjects were processed using exploratory group Independent Component Analysis (ICA). Separate task-related components were found with activation in bilateral inferior parietal, left perisylvian, and ventral occipitotemporal areas. These results support the hypothesized triple-code model corresponding to the activated regions found in the individual components and indicate that the triple-code model may be a suitable framework for analyzing the neuropsychological bases of the performance of complex mathematical tasks. Copyright 2004 Elsevier Inc.

Psychoacoustics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moore, Brian C. J.

Psychoacoustics psychological is concerned with the relationships between the physical characteristics of sounds and their perceptual attributes. This chapter describes: the absolute sensitivity of the auditory system for detecting weak sounds and how that sensitivity varies with frequency; the frequency selectivity of the auditory system (the ability to resolve or hear out the sinusoidal components in a complex sound) and its characterization in terms of an array of auditory filters; the processes that influence the masking of one sound by another; the range of sound levels that can be processed by the auditory system; the perception and modeling of loudness; level discrimination; the temporal resolution of the auditory system (the ability to detect changes over time); the perception and modeling of pitch for pure and complex tones; the perception of timbre for steady and time-varying sounds; the perception of space and sound localization; and the mechanisms underlying auditory scene analysis that allow the construction of percepts corresponding to individual sounds sources when listening to complex mixtures of sounds.

Sensory coding and cognitive processing of sound in Veterans with blast exposure

PubMed Central

Bressler, Scott; Goldberg, Hannah; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara

2017-01-01

Recent anecdotal reports from VA audiology clinics as well as a few published studies have identified a sub-population of Service Members seeking treatment for problems communicating in everyday, noisy listening environments despite having normal to near-normal hearing thresholds. Because of their increased risk of exposure to dangerous levels of prolonged noise and transient explosive blast events, communication problems in these soldiers could be due to either hearing loss (traditional or “hidden”) in the auditory sensory periphery or from blast-induced injury to cortical networks associated with attention. We found that out of the 14 blast-exposed Service Members recruited for this study, 12 had hearing thresholds in the normal to near-normal range. A majority of these participants reported having problems specifically related to failures with selective attention. Envelope following responses (EFRs) measuring neural coding fidelity of the auditory brainstem to suprathreshold sounds were similar between blast-exposed and non-blast controls. Blast-exposed subjects performed substantially worse than non-blast controls in an auditory selective attention task in which listeners classified the melodic contour (rising, falling, or “zig-zagging”) of one of three simultaneous, competing tone sequences. Salient pitch and spatial differences made for easy segregation of the three concurrent melodies. Poor performance in the blast-exposed subjects was associated with weaker evoked response potentials (ERPs) in frontal EEG channels, as well as a failure of attention to enhance the neural responses evoked by a sequence when it was the target compared to when it was a distractor. These results suggest that communication problems in these listeners cannot be explained by compromised sensory representations in the auditory periphery, but rather point to lingering blast-induced damage to cortical networks implicated in the control of attention. Because all study participants also suffered from post-traumatic disorder (PTSD), follow-up studies are required to tease apart the contributions of PTSD and blast-induced injury on cognitive performance. PMID:27815131

Auditory-visual speech integration by prelinguistic infants: perception of an emergent consonant in the McGurk effect.

PubMed

Burnham, Denis; Dodd, Barbara

2004-12-01

The McGurk effect, in which auditory [ba] dubbed onto [ga] lip movements is perceived as "da" or "tha," was employed in a real-time task to investigate auditory-visual speech perception in prelingual infants. Experiments 1A and 1B established the validity of real-time dubbing for producing the effect. In Experiment 2, 4 1/2-month-olds were tested in a habituation-test paradigm, in which an auditory-visual stimulus was presented contingent upon visual fixation of a live face. The experimental group was habituated to a McGurk stimulus (auditory [ba] visual [ga]), and the control group to matching auditory-visual [ba]. Each group was then presented with three auditory-only test trials, [ba], [da], and [(delta)a] (as in then). Visual-fixation durations in test trials showed that the experimental group treated the emergent percept in the McGurk effect, [da] or [(delta)a], as familiar (even though they had not heard these sounds previously) and [ba] as novel. For control group infants [da] and [(delta)a] were no more familiar than [ba]. These results are consistent with infants' perception of the McGurk effect, and support the conclusion that prelinguistic infants integrate auditory and visual speech information. Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Temporal factors affecting somatosensory–auditory interactions in speech processing

PubMed Central

Ito, Takayuki; Gracco, Vincent L.; Ostry, David J.

2014-01-01

Speech perception is known to rely on both auditory and visual information. However, sound-specific somatosensory input has been shown also to influence speech perceptual processing (Ito et al., 2009). In the present study, we addressed further the relationship between somatosensory information and speech perceptual processing by addressing the hypothesis that the temporal relationship between orofacial movement and sound processing contributes to somatosensory–auditory interaction in speech perception. We examined the changes in event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to multisensory synchronous (simultaneous) and asynchronous (90 ms lag and lead) somatosensory and auditory stimulation compared to individual unisensory auditory and somatosensory stimulation alone. We used a robotic device to apply facial skin somatosensory deformations that were similar in timing and duration to those experienced in speech production. Following synchronous multisensory stimulation the amplitude of the ERP was reliably different from the two unisensory potentials. More importantly, the magnitude of the ERP difference varied as a function of the relative timing of the somatosensory–auditory stimulation. Event-related activity change due to stimulus timing was seen between 160 and 220 ms following somatosensory onset, mostly around the parietal area. The results demonstrate a dynamic modulation of somatosensory–auditory convergence and suggest the contribution of somatosensory information for speech processing process is dependent on the specific temporal order of sensory inputs in speech production. PMID:25452733

Filling-in visual motion with sounds.

PubMed

Väljamäe, A; Soto-Faraco, S

2008-10-01

Information about the motion of objects can be extracted by multiple sensory modalities, and, as a consequence, object motion perception typically involves the integration of multi-sensory information. Often, in naturalistic settings, the flow of such information can be rather discontinuous (e.g. a cat racing through the furniture in a cluttered room is partly seen and partly heard). This study addressed audio-visual interactions in the perception of time-sampled object motion by measuring adaptation after-effects. We found significant auditory after-effects following adaptation to unisensory auditory and visual motion in depth, sampled at 12.5 Hz. The visually induced (cross-modal) auditory motion after-effect was eliminated if visual adaptors flashed at half of the rate (6.25 Hz). Remarkably, the addition of the high-rate acoustic flutter (12.5 Hz) to this ineffective, sparsely time-sampled, visual adaptor restored the auditory after-effect to a level comparable to what was seen with high-rate bimodal adaptors (flashes and beeps). Our results suggest that this auditory-induced reinstatement of the motion after-effect from the poor visual signals resulted from the occurrence of sound-induced illusory flashes. This effect was found to be dependent both on the directional congruency between modalities and on the rate of auditory flutter. The auditory filling-in of time-sampled visual motion supports the feasibility of using reduced frame rate visual content in multisensory broadcasting and virtual reality applications.

Mapping feature-sensitivity and attentional modulation in human auditory cortex with functional magnetic resonance imaging

PubMed Central

Paltoglou, Aspasia E; Sumner, Christian J; Hall, Deborah A

2011-01-01

Feature-specific enhancement refers to the process by which selectively attending to a particular stimulus feature specifically increases the response in the same region of the brain that codes that stimulus property. Whereas there are many demonstrations of this mechanism in the visual system, the evidence is less clear in the auditory system. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined this process for two complex sound features, namely frequency modulation (FM) and spatial motion. The experimental design enabled us to investigate whether selectively attending to FM and spatial motion enhanced activity in those auditory cortical areas that were sensitive to the two features. To control for attentional effort, the difficulty of the target-detection tasks was matched as closely as possible within listeners. Locations of FM-related and motion-related activation were broadly compatible with previous research. The results also confirmed a general enhancement across the auditory cortex when either feature was being attended to, as compared with passive listening. The feature-specific effects of selective attention revealed the novel finding of enhancement for the nonspatial (FM) feature, but not for the spatial (motion) feature. However, attention to spatial features also recruited several areas outside the auditory cortex. Further analyses led us to conclude that feature-specific effects of selective attention are not statistically robust, and appear to be sensitive to the choice of fMRI experimental design and localizer contrast. PMID:21447093

[Perception and selectivity of sound duration in the central auditory midbrain].

PubMed

Wang, Xin; Li, An-An; Wu, Fei-Jian

2010-08-25

Sound duration plays important role in acoustic communication. Information of acoustic signal is mainly encoded in the amplitude and frequency spectrum of different durations. Duration selective neurons exist in the central auditory system including inferior colliculus (IC) of frog, bat, mouse and chinchilla, etc., and they are important in signal recognition and feature detection. Two generally accepted models, which are "coincidence detector model" and "anti-coincidence detector model", have been raised to explain the mechanism of neural selective responses to sound durations based on the study of IC neurons in bats. Although they are different in details, they both emphasize the importance of synaptic integration of excitatory and inhibitory inputs, and are able to explain the responses of most duration-selective neurons. However, both of the hypotheses need to be improved since other sound parameters, such as spectral pattern, amplitude and repetition rate, could affect the duration selectivity of the neurons. The dynamic changes of sound parameters are believed to enable the animal to effectively perform recognition of behavior related acoustic signals. Under free field sound stimulation, we analyzed the neural responses in the IC and auditory cortex of mouse and bat to sounds with different duration, frequency and amplitude, using intracellular or extracellular recording techniques. Based on our work and previous studies, this article reviews the properties of duration selectivity in central auditory system and discusses the mechanisms of duration selectivity and the effect of other sound parameters on the duration coding of auditory neurons.

Human cortical responses to slow and fast binaural beats reveal multiple mechanisms of binaural hearing.

PubMed

Ross, Bernhard; Miyazaki, Takahiro; Thompson, Jessica; Jamali, Shahab; Fujioka, Takako

2014-10-15

When two tones with slightly different frequencies are presented to both ears, they interact in the central auditory system and induce the sensation of a beating sound. At low difference frequencies, we perceive a single sound, which is moving across the head between the left and right ears. The percept changes to loudness fluctuation, roughness, and pitch with increasing beat rate. To examine the neural representations underlying these different perceptions, we recorded neuromagnetic cortical responses while participants listened to binaural beats at a continuously varying rate between 3 Hz and 60 Hz. Binaural beat responses were analyzed as neuromagnetic oscillations following the trajectory of the stimulus rate. Responses were largest in the 40-Hz gamma range and at low frequencies. Binaural beat responses at 3 Hz showed opposite polarity in the left and right auditory cortices. We suggest that this difference in polarity reflects the opponent neural population code for representing sound location. Binaural beats at any rate induced gamma oscillations. However, the responses were largest at 40-Hz stimulation. We propose that the neuromagnetic gamma oscillations reflect postsynaptic modulation that allows for precise timing of cortical neural firing. Systematic phase differences between bilateral responses suggest that separate sound representations of a sound object exist in the left and right auditory cortices. We conclude that binaural processing at the cortical level occurs with the same temporal acuity as monaural processing whereas the identification of sound location requires further interpretation and is limited by the rate of object representations. Copyright © 2014 the American Physiological Society.

Effects of various electrode configurations on music perception, intonation and speaker gender identification.

PubMed

Landwehr, Markus; Fürstenberg, Dirk; Walger, Martin; von Wedel, Hasso; Meister, Hartmut

2014-01-01

Advances in speech coding strategies and electrode array designs for cochlear implants (CIs) predominantly aim at improving speech perception. Current efforts are also directed at transmitting appropriate cues of the fundamental frequency (F0) to the auditory nerve with respect to speech quality, prosody, and music perception. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of various electrode configurations and coding strategies on speech intonation identification, speaker gender identification, and music quality rating. In six MED-EL CI users electrodes were selectively deactivated in order to simulate different insertion depths and inter-electrode distances when using the high definition continuous interleaved sampling (HDCIS) and fine structure processing (FSP) speech coding strategies. Identification of intonation and speaker gender was determined and music quality rating was assessed. For intonation identification HDCIS was robust against the different electrode configurations, whereas fine structure processing showed significantly worse results when a short electrode depth was simulated. In contrast, speaker gender recognition was not affected by electrode configuration or speech coding strategy. Music quality rating was sensitive to electrode configuration. In conclusion, the three experiments revealed different outcomes, even though they all addressed the reception of F0 cues. Rapid changes in F0, as seen with intonation, were the most sensitive to electrode configurations and coding strategies. In contrast, electrode configurations and coding strategies did not show large effects when F0 information was available over a longer time period, as seen with speaker gender. Music quality relies on additional spectral cues other than F0, and was poorest when a shallow insertion was simulated.

Acquired word deafness, and the temporal grain of sound representation in the primary auditory cortex.

PubMed

Phillips, D P; Farmer, M E

1990-11-15

This paper explores the nature of the processing disorder which underlies the speech discrimination deficit in the syndrome of acquired word deafness following from pathology to the primary auditory cortex. A critical examination of the evidence on this disorder revealed the following. First, the most profound forms of the condition are expressed not only in an isolation of the cerebral linguistic processor from auditory input, but in a failure of even the perceptual elaboration of the relevant sounds. Second, in agreement with earlier studies, we conclude that the perceptual dimension disturbed in word deafness is a temporal one. We argue, however, that it is not a generalized disorder of auditory temporal processing, but one which is largely restricted to the processing of sounds with temporal content in the milliseconds to tens-of-milliseconds time frame. The perceptual elaboration of sounds with temporal content outside that range, in either direction, may survive the disorder. Third, we present neurophysiological evidence that the primary auditory cortex has a special role in the representation of auditory events in that time frame, but not in the representation of auditory events with temporal grains outside that range.

Seeing the Song: Left Auditory Structures May Track Auditory-Visual Dynamic Alignment

PubMed Central

Mossbridge, Julia A.; Grabowecky, Marcia; Suzuki, Satoru

2013-01-01

Auditory and visual signals generated by a single source tend to be temporally correlated, such as the synchronous sounds of footsteps and the limb movements of a walker. Continuous tracking and comparison of the dynamics of auditory-visual streams is thus useful for the perceptual binding of information arising from a common source. Although language-related mechanisms have been implicated in the tracking of speech-related auditory-visual signals (e.g., speech sounds and lip movements), it is not well known what sensory mechanisms generally track ongoing auditory-visual synchrony for non-speech signals in a complex auditory-visual environment. To begin to address this question, we used music and visual displays that varied in the dynamics of multiple features (e.g., auditory loudness and pitch; visual luminance, color, size, motion, and organization) across multiple time scales. Auditory activity (monitored using auditory steady-state responses, ASSR) was selectively reduced in the left hemisphere when the music and dynamic visual displays were temporally misaligned. Importantly, ASSR was not affected when attentional engagement with the music was reduced, or when visual displays presented dynamics clearly dissimilar to the music. These results appear to suggest that left-lateralized auditory mechanisms are sensitive to auditory-visual temporal alignment, but perhaps only when the dynamics of auditory and visual streams are similar. These mechanisms may contribute to correct auditory-visual binding in a busy sensory environment. PMID:24194873

Dividing time: concurrent timing of auditory and visual events by young and elderly adults.

PubMed

McAuley, J Devin; Miller, Jonathan P; Wang, Mo; Pang, Kevin C H

2010-07-01

This article examines age differences in individual's ability to produce the durations of learned auditory and visual target events either in isolation (focused attention) or concurrently (divided attention). Young adults produced learned target durations equally well in focused and divided attention conditions. Older adults, in contrast, showed an age-related increase in timing variability in divided attention conditions that tended to be more pronounced for visual targets than for auditory targets. Age-related impairments were associated with a decrease in working memory span; moreover, the relationship between working memory and timing performance was largest for visual targets in divided attention conditions.

Working memory deficits in boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): An examination of orthographic coding and episodic buffer processes.

PubMed

Alderson, R Matt; Kasper, Lisa J; Patros, Connor H G; Hudec, Kristen L; Tarle, Stephanie J; Lea, Sarah E

2015-01-01

The episodic buffer component of working memory was examined in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and typically developing peers (TD). Thirty-two children (ADHD = 16, TD = 16) completed three versions of a phonological working memory task that varied with regard to stimulus presentation modality (auditory, visual, or dual auditory and visual), as well as a visuospatial task. Children with ADHD experienced the largest magnitude working memory deficits when phonological stimuli were presented via a unimodal, auditory format. Their performance improved during visual and dual modality conditions but remained significantly below the performance of children in the TD group. In contrast, the TD group did not exhibit performance differences between the auditory- and visual-phonological conditions but recalled significantly more stimuli during the dual-phonological condition. Furthermore, relative to TD children, children with ADHD recalled disproportionately fewer phonological stimuli as set sizes increased, regardless of presentation modality. Finally, an examination of working memory components indicated that the largest magnitude between-group difference was associated with the central executive. Collectively, these findings suggest that ADHD-related working memory deficits reflect a combination of impaired central executive and phonological storage/rehearsal processes, as well as an impaired ability to benefit from bound multimodal information processed by the episodic buffer.

Auditory and audio-visual processing in patients with cochlear, auditory brainstem, and auditory midbrain implants: An EEG study.

PubMed

Schierholz, Irina; Finke, Mareike; Kral, Andrej; Büchner, Andreas; Rach, Stefan; Lenarz, Thomas; Dengler, Reinhard; Sandmann, Pascale

2017-04-01

There is substantial variability in speech recognition ability across patients with cochlear implants (CIs), auditory brainstem implants (ABIs), and auditory midbrain implants (AMIs). To better understand how this variability is related to central processing differences, the current electroencephalography (EEG) study compared hearing abilities and auditory-cortex activation in patients with electrical stimulation at different sites of the auditory pathway. Three different groups of patients with auditory implants (Hannover Medical School; ABI: n = 6, CI: n = 6; AMI: n = 2) performed a speeded response task and a speech recognition test with auditory, visual, and audio-visual stimuli. Behavioral performance and cortical processing of auditory and audio-visual stimuli were compared between groups. ABI and AMI patients showed prolonged response times on auditory and audio-visual stimuli compared with NH listeners and CI patients. This was confirmed by prolonged N1 latencies and reduced N1 amplitudes in ABI and AMI patients. However, patients with central auditory implants showed a remarkable gain in performance when visual and auditory input was combined, in both speech and non-speech conditions, which was reflected by a strong visual modulation of auditory-cortex activation in these individuals. In sum, the results suggest that the behavioral improvement for audio-visual conditions in central auditory implant patients is based on enhanced audio-visual interactions in the auditory cortex. Their findings may provide important implications for the optimization of electrical stimulation and rehabilitation strategies in patients with central auditory prostheses. Hum Brain Mapp 38:2206-2225, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Auditory agnosia due to long-term severe hydrocephalus caused by spina bifida - specific auditory pathway versus nonspecific auditory pathway.

PubMed

Zhang, Qing; Kaga, Kimitaka; Hayashi, Akimasa

2011-07-01

A 27-year-old female showed auditory agnosia after long-term severe hydrocephalus due to congenital spina bifida. After years of hydrocephalus, she gradually suffered from hearing loss in her right ear at 19 years of age, followed by her left ear. During the time when she retained some ability to hear, she experienced severe difficulty in distinguishing verbal, environmental, and musical instrumental sounds. However, her auditory brainstem response and distortion product otoacoustic emissions were largely intact in the left ear. Her bilateral auditory cortices were preserved, as shown by neuroimaging, whereas her auditory radiations were severely damaged owing to progressive hydrocephalus. Although she had a complete bilateral hearing loss, she felt great pleasure when exposed to music. After years of self-training to read lips, she regained fluent ability to communicate. Clinical manifestations of this patient indicate that auditory agnosia can occur after long-term hydrocephalus due to spina bifida; the secondary auditory pathway may play a role in both auditory perception and hearing rehabilitation.

Contribution of auditory working memory to speech understanding in mandarin-speaking cochlear implant users.

PubMed

Tao, Duoduo; Deng, Rui; Jiang, Ye; Galvin, John J; Fu, Qian-Jie; Chen, Bing

2014-01-01

To investigate how auditory working memory relates to speech perception performance by Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) users. Auditory working memory and speech perception was measured in Mandarin-speaking CI and normal-hearing (NH) participants. Working memory capacity was measured using forward digit span and backward digit span; working memory efficiency was measured using articulation rate. Speech perception was assessed with: (a) word-in-sentence recognition in quiet, (b) word-in-sentence recognition in speech-shaped steady noise at +5 dB signal-to-noise ratio, (c) Chinese disyllable recognition in quiet, (d) Chinese lexical tone recognition in quiet. Self-reported school rank was also collected regarding performance in schoolwork. There was large inter-subject variability in auditory working memory and speech performance for CI participants. Working memory and speech performance were significantly poorer for CI than for NH participants. All three working memory measures were strongly correlated with each other for both CI and NH participants. Partial correlation analyses were performed on the CI data while controlling for demographic variables. Working memory efficiency was significantly correlated only with sentence recognition in quiet when working memory capacity was partialled out. Working memory capacity was correlated with disyllable recognition and school rank when efficiency was partialled out. There was no correlation between working memory and lexical tone recognition in the present CI participants. Mandarin-speaking CI users experience significant deficits in auditory working memory and speech performance compared with NH listeners. The present data suggest that auditory working memory may contribute to CI users' difficulties in speech understanding. The present pattern of results with Mandarin-speaking CI users is consistent with previous auditory working memory studies with English-speaking CI users, suggesting that the lexical importance of voice pitch cues (albeit poorly coded by the CI) did not influence the relationship between working memory and speech perception.

Varieties of Musical Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bharucha, J. Jamshed; Curtis, Meagan; Paroo, Kaivon

2006-01-01

In this paper, we argue that music cognition involves the use of acoustic and auditory codes to evoke a variety of conscious experiences. The variety of domains that are encompassed by music is so diverse that it is unclear whether a single domain of structure or experience is defining. Music is best understood as a form of communication in which…

Automatic and Controlled Attention Processes in Auditory Detection.

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-02-01

DC 20380 1 Dr. Genevieve Hddad Progri Manager 1 Special Assistant for Marine Life Sciences Directorate Corps Matters AFOBR Code lOOM Bolling AFB, DC...INC. UIVERSITY PLAZA, SUM 10 1 Dr. Kenneth B. Cross O1160 0. STATE ST. Macape Sciences, Inc. OREM, Ur 84057 P.O. Drawer Ql i anta Bar ara,0 Dr. Pat

Dual-Task Crosstalk between Saccades and Manual Responses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huestegge, Lynn; Koch, Iring

2009-01-01

Between-task crosstalk has been discussed as an important source for dual-task costs. In this study, the authors examine concurrently performed saccades and manual responses as a means of studying the role of response-code conflict between 2 tasks. In Experiment 1, participants responded to an imperative auditory stimulus with a left or a right…

Auditory pathways: anatomy and physiology.

PubMed

Pickles, James O

2015-01-01

This chapter outlines the anatomy and physiology of the auditory pathways. After a brief analysis of the external, middle ears, and cochlea, the responses of auditory nerve fibers are described. The central nervous system is analyzed in more detail. A scheme is provided to help understand the complex and multiple auditory pathways running through the brainstem. The multiple pathways are based on the need to preserve accurate timing while extracting complex spectral patterns in the auditory input. The auditory nerve fibers branch to give two pathways, a ventral sound-localizing stream, and a dorsal mainly pattern recognition stream, which innervate the different divisions of the cochlear nucleus. The outputs of the two streams, with their two types of analysis, are progressively combined in the inferior colliculus and onwards, to produce the representation of what can be called the "auditory objects" in the external world. The progressive extraction of critical features in the auditory stimulus in the different levels of the central auditory system, from cochlear nucleus to auditory cortex, is described. In addition, the auditory centrifugal system, running from cortex in multiple stages to the organ of Corti of the cochlea, is described. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Temporal integration at consecutive processing stages in the auditory pathway of the grasshopper.

PubMed

Wirtssohn, Sarah; Ronacher, Bernhard

2015-04-01

Temporal integration in the auditory system of locusts was quantified by presenting single clicks and click pairs while performing intracellular recordings. Auditory neurons were studied at three processing stages, which form a feed-forward network in the metathoracic ganglion. Receptor neurons and most first-order interneurons ("local neurons") encode the signal envelope, while second-order interneurons ("ascending neurons") tend to extract more complex, behaviorally relevant sound features. In different neuron types of the auditory pathway we found three response types: no significant temporal integration (some ascending neurons), leaky energy integration (receptor neurons and some local neurons), and facilitatory processes (some local and ascending neurons). The receptor neurons integrated input over very short time windows (<2 ms). Temporal integration on longer time scales was found at subsequent processing stages, indicative of within-neuron computations and network activity. These different strategies, realized at separate processing stages and in parallel neuronal pathways within one processing stage, could enable the grasshopper's auditory system to evaluate longer time windows and thus to implement temporal filters, while at the same time maintaining a high temporal resolution. Copyright © 2015 the American Physiological Society.

Assessing the Role of Place and Timing Cues in Coding Frequency and Amplitude Modulation as a Function of Age.

PubMed

Whiteford, Kelly L; Kreft, Heather A; Oxenham, Andrew J

2017-08-01

Natural sounds can be characterized by their fluctuations in amplitude and frequency. Ageing may affect sensitivity to some forms of fluctuations more than others. The present study used individual differences across a wide age range (20-79 years) to test the hypothesis that slow-rate, low-carrier frequency modulation (FM) is coded by phase-locked auditory-nerve responses to temporal fine structure (TFS), whereas fast-rate FM is coded via rate-place (tonotopic) cues, based on amplitude modulation (AM) of the temporal envelope after cochlear filtering. Using a low (500 Hz) carrier frequency, diotic FM and AM detection thresholds were measured at slow (1 Hz) and fast (20 Hz) rates in 85 listeners. Frequency selectivity and TFS coding were assessed using forward masking patterns and interaural phase disparity tasks (slow dichotic FM), respectively. Comparable interaural level disparity tasks (slow and fast dichotic AM and fast dichotic FM) were measured to control for effects of binaural processing not specifically related to TFS coding. Thresholds in FM and AM tasks were correlated, even across tasks thought to use separate peripheral codes. Age was correlated with slow and fast FM thresholds in both diotic and dichotic conditions. The relationship between age and AM thresholds was generally not significant. Once accounting for AM sensitivity, only diotic slow-rate FM thresholds remained significantly correlated with age. Overall, results indicate stronger effects of age on FM than AM. However, because of similar effects for both slow and fast FM when not accounting for AM sensitivity, the effects cannot be unambiguously ascribed to TFS coding.

Passive stimulation and behavioral training differentially transform temporal processing in the inferior colliculus and primary auditory cortex

PubMed Central

Beitel, Ralph E.; Schreiner, Christoph E.; Leake, Patricia A.

2016-01-01

In profoundly deaf cats, behavioral training with intracochlear electric stimulation (ICES) can improve temporal processing in the primary auditory cortex (AI). To investigate whether similar effects are manifest in the auditory midbrain, ICES was initiated in neonatally deafened cats either during development after short durations of deafness (8 wk of age) or in adulthood after long durations of deafness (≥3.5 yr). All of these animals received behaviorally meaningless, “passive” ICES. Some animals also received behavioral training with ICES. Two long-deaf cats received no ICES prior to acute electrophysiological recording. After several months of passive ICES and behavioral training, animals were anesthetized, and neuronal responses to pulse trains of increasing rates were recorded in the central (ICC) and external (ICX) nuclei of the inferior colliculus. Neuronal temporal response patterns (repetition rate coding, minimum latencies, response precision) were compared with results from recordings made in the AI of the same animals (Beitel RE, Vollmer M, Raggio MW, Schreiner CE. J Neurophysiol 106: 944–959, 2011; Vollmer M, Beitel RE. J Neurophysiol 106: 2423–2436, 2011). Passive ICES in long-deaf cats remediated severely degraded temporal processing in the ICC and had no effects in the ICX. In contrast to observations in the AI, behaviorally relevant ICES had no effects on temporal processing in the ICC or ICX, with the single exception of shorter latencies in the ICC in short-deaf cats. The results suggest that independent of deafness duration passive stimulation and behavioral training differentially transform temporal processing in auditory midbrain and cortex, and primary auditory cortex emerges as a pivotal site for behaviorally driven neuronal temporal plasticity in the deaf cat. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Behaviorally relevant vs. passive electric stimulation of the auditory nerve differentially affects neuronal temporal processing in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICC) and the primary auditory cortex (AI) in profoundly short-deaf and long-deaf cats. Temporal plasticity in the ICC depends on a critical amount of electric stimulation, independent of its behavioral relevance. In contrast, the AI emerges as a pivotal site for behaviorally driven neuronal temporal plasticity in the deaf auditory system. PMID:27733594

Training in rapid auditory processing ameliorates auditory comprehension in aphasic patients: a randomized controlled pilot study.

PubMed

Szelag, Elzbieta; Lewandowska, Monika; Wolak, Tomasz; Seniow, Joanna; Poniatowska, Renata; Pöppel, Ernst; Szymaszek, Aneta

2014-03-15

Experimental studies have often reported close associations between rapid auditory processing and language competency. The present study was aimed at improving auditory comprehension in aphasic patients following specific training in the perception of temporal order (TO) of events. We tested 18 aphasic patients showing both comprehension and TO perception deficits. Auditory comprehension was assessed by the Token Test, phonemic awareness and Voice-Onset-Time Test. The TO perception was assessed using auditory Temporal-Order-Threshold, defined as the shortest interval between two consecutive stimuli, necessary to report correctly their before-after relation. Aphasic patients participated in eight 45-minute sessions of either specific temporal training (TT, n=11) aimed to improve sequencing abilities, or control non-temporal training (NT, n=7) focussed on volume discrimination. The TT yielded improved TO perception; moreover, a transfer of improvement was observed from the time domain to the language domain, which was untrained during the training. The NT did not improve either the TO perception or comprehension in any language test. These results are in agreement with previous literature studies which proved ameliorated language competency following the TT in language-learning-impaired or dyslexic children. Our results indicated for the first time such benefits also in aphasic patients. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Rapid measurement of auditory filter shape in mice using the auditory brainstem response and notched noise.

PubMed

Lina, Ioan A; Lauer, Amanda M

2013-04-01

The notched noise method is an effective procedure for measuring frequency resolution and auditory filter shapes in both human and animal models of hearing. Briefly, auditory filter shape and bandwidth estimates are derived from masked thresholds for tones presented in noise containing widening spectral notches. As the spectral notch widens, increasingly less of the noise falls within the auditory filter and the tone becomes more detectible until the notch width exceeds the filter bandwidth. Behavioral procedures have been used for the derivation of notched noise auditory filter shapes in mice; however, the time and effort needed to train and test animals on these tasks renders a constraint on the widespread application of this testing method. As an alternative procedure, we combined relatively non-invasive auditory brainstem response (ABR) measurements and the notched noise method to estimate auditory filters in normal-hearing mice at center frequencies of 8, 11.2, and 16 kHz. A complete set of simultaneous masked thresholds for a particular tone frequency were obtained in about an hour. ABR-derived filter bandwidths broadened with increasing frequency, consistent with previous studies. The ABR notched noise procedure provides a fast alternative to estimating frequency selectivity in mice that is well-suited to high through-put or time-sensitive screening. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Hearing sounds, understanding actions: action representation in mirror neurons.

PubMed

Kohler, Evelyne; Keysers, Christian; Umiltà, M Alessandra; Fogassi, Leonardo; Gallese, Vittorio; Rizzolatti, Giacomo

2002-08-02

Many object-related actions can be recognized by their sound. We found neurons in monkey premotor cortex that discharge when the animal performs a specific action and when it hears the related sound. Most of the neurons also discharge when the monkey observes the same action. These audiovisual mirror neurons code actions independently of whether these actions are performed, heard, or seen. This discovery in the monkey homolog of Broca's area might shed light on the origin of language: audiovisual mirror neurons code abstract contents-the meaning of actions-and have the auditory access typical of human language to these contents.

Auditory perception and the control of spatially coordinated action of deaf and hearing children.

PubMed

Savelsbergh, G J; Netelenbos, J B; Whiting, H T

1991-03-01

From birth onwards, auditory stimulation directs and intensifies visual orientation behaviour. In deaf children, by definition, auditory perception cannot take place and cannot, therefore, make a contribution to visual orientation to objects approaching from outside the initial field of view. In experiment 1, a difference in catching ability is demonstrated between deaf and hearing children (10-13 years of age) when the ball approached from the periphery or from outside the field of view. No differences in catching ability between the two groups occurred when the ball approached from within the field of view. A second experiment was conducted in order to determine if differences in catching ability between deaf and hearing children could be attributed to execution of slow orientating movements and/or slow reaction time as a result of the auditory loss. The deaf children showed slower reaction times. No differences were found in movement times between deaf and hearing children. Overall, the findings suggest that a lack of auditory stimulation during development can lead to deficiencies in the coordination of actions such as catching which are both spatially and temporally constrained.

Characterization of the blood-oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response in cat auditory cortex using high-field fMRI.

PubMed

Brown, Trecia A; Joanisse, Marc F; Gati, Joseph S; Hughes, Sarah M; Nixon, Pam L; Menon, Ravi S; Lomber, Stephen G

2013-01-01

Much of what is known about the cortical organization for audition in humans draws from studies of auditory cortex in the cat. However, these data build largely on electrophysiological recordings that are both highly invasive and provide less evidence concerning macroscopic patterns of brain activation. Optical imaging, using intrinsic signals or dyes, allows visualization of surface-based activity but is also quite invasive. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) overcomes these limitations by providing a large-scale perspective of distributed activity across the brain in a non-invasive manner. The present study used fMRI to characterize stimulus-evoked activity in auditory cortex of an anesthetized (ketamine/isoflurane) cat, focusing specifically on the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal time course. Functional images were acquired for adult cats in a 7 T MRI scanner. To determine the BOLD signal time course, we presented 1s broadband noise bursts between widely spaced scan acquisitions at randomized delays (1-12 s in 1s increments) prior to each scan. Baseline trials in which no stimulus was presented were also acquired. Our results indicate that the BOLD response peaks at about 3.5s in primary auditory cortex (AI) and at about 4.5 s in non-primary areas (AII, PAF) of cat auditory cortex. The observed peak latency is within the range reported for humans and non-human primates (3-4 s). The time course of hemodynamic activity in cat auditory cortex also occurs on a comparatively shorter scale than in cat visual cortex. The results of this study will provide a foundation for future auditory fMRI studies in the cat to incorporate these hemodynamic response properties into appropriate analyses of cat auditory cortex. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A psychophysiological evaluation of the perceived urgency of auditory warning signals

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burt, J. L.; Bartolome, D. S.; Burdette, D. W.; Comstock, J. R. Jr

1995-01-01

One significant concern that pilots have about cockpit auditory warnings is that the signals presently used lack a sense of priority. The relationship between auditory warning sound parameters and perceived urgency is, therefore, an important topic of enquiry in aviation psychology. The present investigation examined the relationship among subjective assessments of urgency, reaction time, and brainwave activity with three auditory warning signals. Subjects performed a tracking task involving automated and manual conditions, and were presented with auditory warnings having various levels of perceived and situational urgency. Subjective assessments revealed that subjects were able to rank warnings on an urgency scale, but rankings were altered after warnings were mapped to a situational urgency scale. Reaction times differed between automated and manual tracking task conditions, and physiological data showed attentional differences in response to perceived and situational warning urgency levels. This study shows that the use of physiological measures sensitive to attention and arousal, in conjunction with behavioural and subjective measures, may lead to the design of auditory warnings that produce a sense of urgency in an operator that matches the urgency of the situation.

Temporal processing dysfunction in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Carroll, Christine A; Boggs, Jennifer; O'Donnell, Brian F; Shekhar, Anantha; Hetrick, William P

2008-07-01

Schizophrenia may be associated with a fundamental disturbance in the temporal coordination of information processing in the brain, leading to classic symptoms of schizophrenia such as thought disorder and disorganized and contextually inappropriate behavior. Despite the growing interest and centrality of time-dependent conceptualizations of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, there remains a paucity of research directly examining overt timing performance in the disorder. Accordingly, the present study investigated timing in schizophrenia using a well-established task of time perception. Twenty-three individuals with schizophrenia and 22 non-psychiatric control participants completed a temporal bisection task, which required participants to make temporal judgments about auditory and visually presented durations ranging from 300 to 600 ms. Both schizophrenia and control groups displayed greater visual compared to auditory timing variability, with no difference between groups in the visual modality. However, individuals with schizophrenia exhibited less temporal precision than controls in the perception of auditory durations. These findings correlated with parameter estimates obtained from a quantitative model of time estimation, and provide evidence of a fundamental deficit in temporal auditory precision in schizophrenia.

Evidence for auditory-visual processing specific to biological motion.

PubMed

Wuerger, Sophie M; Crocker-Buque, Alexander; Meyer, Georg F

2012-01-01

Biological motion is usually associated with highly correlated sensory signals from more than one modality: an approaching human walker will not only have a visual representation, namely an increase in the retinal size of the walker's image, but also a synchronous auditory signal since the walker's footsteps will grow louder. We investigated whether the multisensorial processing of biological motion is subject to different constraints than ecologically invalid motion. Observers were presented with a visual point-light walker and/or synchronised auditory footsteps; the walker was either approaching the observer (looming motion) or walking away (receding motion). A scrambled point-light walker served as a control. Observers were asked to detect the walker's motion as quickly and as accurately as possible. In Experiment 1 we tested whether the reaction time advantage due to redundant information in the auditory and visual modality is specific for biological motion. We found no evidence for such an effect: the reaction time reduction was accounted for by statistical facilitation for both biological and scrambled motion. In Experiment 2, we dissociated the auditory and visual information and tested whether inconsistent motion directions across the auditory and visual modality yield longer reaction times in comparison to consistent motion directions. Here we find an effect specific to biological motion: motion incongruency leads to longer reaction times only when the visual walker is intact and recognisable as a human figure. If the figure of the walker is abolished by scrambling, motion incongruency has no effect on the speed of the observers' judgments. In conjunction with Experiment 1 this suggests that conflicting auditory-visual motion information of an intact human walker leads to interference and thereby delaying the response.

Effects of auditory stimuli in the horizontal plane on audiovisual integration: an event-related potential study.

PubMed

Yang, Weiping; Li, Qi; Ochi, Tatsuya; Yang, Jingjing; Gao, Yulin; Tang, Xiaoyu; Takahashi, Satoshi; Wu, Jinglong

2013-01-01

This article aims to investigate whether auditory stimuli in the horizontal plane, particularly originating from behind the participant, affect audiovisual integration by using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measurements. In this study, visual stimuli were presented directly in front of the participants, auditory stimuli were presented at one location in an equidistant horizontal plane at the front (0°, the fixation point), right (90°), back (180°), or left (270°) of the participants, and audiovisual stimuli that include both visual stimuli and auditory stimuli originating from one of the four locations were simultaneously presented. These stimuli were presented randomly with equal probability; during this time, participants were asked to attend to the visual stimulus and respond promptly only to visual target stimuli (a unimodal visual target stimulus and the visual target of the audiovisual stimulus). A significant facilitation of reaction times and hit rates was obtained following audiovisual stimulation, irrespective of whether the auditory stimuli were presented in the front or back of the participant. However, no significant interactions were found between visual stimuli and auditory stimuli from the right or left. Two main ERP components related to audiovisual integration were found: first, auditory stimuli from the front location produced an ERP reaction over the right temporal area and right occipital area at approximately 160-200 milliseconds; second, auditory stimuli from the back produced a reaction over the parietal and occipital areas at approximately 360-400 milliseconds. Our results confirmed that audiovisual integration was also elicited, even though auditory stimuli were presented behind the participant, but no integration occurred when auditory stimuli were presented in the right or left spaces, suggesting that the human brain might be particularly sensitive to information received from behind than both sides.

Effects of Auditory Stimuli in the Horizontal Plane on Audiovisual Integration: An Event-Related Potential Study

PubMed Central

Yang, Weiping; Li, Qi; Ochi, Tatsuya; Yang, Jingjing; Gao, Yulin; Tang, Xiaoyu; Takahashi, Satoshi; Wu, Jinglong

2013-01-01

This article aims to investigate whether auditory stimuli in the horizontal plane, particularly originating from behind the participant, affect audiovisual integration by using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measurements. In this study, visual stimuli were presented directly in front of the participants, auditory stimuli were presented at one location in an equidistant horizontal plane at the front (0°, the fixation point), right (90°), back (180°), or left (270°) of the participants, and audiovisual stimuli that include both visual stimuli and auditory stimuli originating from one of the four locations were simultaneously presented. These stimuli were presented randomly with equal probability; during this time, participants were asked to attend to the visual stimulus and respond promptly only to visual target stimuli (a unimodal visual target stimulus and the visual target of the audiovisual stimulus). A significant facilitation of reaction times and hit rates was obtained following audiovisual stimulation, irrespective of whether the auditory stimuli were presented in the front or back of the participant. However, no significant interactions were found between visual stimuli and auditory stimuli from the right or left. Two main ERP components related to audiovisual integration were found: first, auditory stimuli from the front location produced an ERP reaction over the right temporal area and right occipital area at approximately 160–200 milliseconds; second, auditory stimuli from the back produced a reaction over the parietal and occipital areas at approximately 360–400 milliseconds. Our results confirmed that audiovisual integration was also elicited, even though auditory stimuli were presented behind the participant, but no integration occurred when auditory stimuli were presented in the right or left spaces, suggesting that the human brain might be particularly sensitive to information received from behind than both sides. PMID:23799097

Study of Auditory, Visual Reaction Time and Glycemic Control (HBA1C) in Chronic Type II Diabetes Mellitus.

PubMed

M, Muhil; Sembian, Umapathy; Babitha; N, Ethiya; K, Muthuselvi

2014-09-01

Diabetes mellitus is a disease of insulin deficiencyleads to micro and macro vascular disorder. Neuropathy is one of the major complication of chronic uncontrolled Diabetes affecting the Reaction time. To study the correlation between the glycosylated HbA1C and Auditory, visual Reaction time in chronic Type II diabetes (40-60y) of on oral hypoglycemic drugs of>10 y duration in two groups (n-100 in each group , both Males & females) and compared within the study groups and also with the age matched control group (100). HbA1C-Glycosylated HbA1C was measured by Particle enhanced immunoturbidimetric test method. Auditory and visual reaction time (ART, VRT) were measured by PC 1000 Reaction timer for control & study groups i.e. Group-I - Chronic Type II DM for >10 y with HbA1c < 7.0, and Group II - chronic Type-IIDM for >10 y with HbA1c > 7.0 ie impaired glycemic control. Exclusion Criteria- Subjects with Auditory and visual disturbances, alcoholism and smoking. Statistical Analysis - One-way ANOVA. Using SPSS 21 software. Both the groups had prolonged ART and VRT than controls. Among the study group, G-II (DM with HbA1C >7) had increased Auditory & Visual Reaction time than Group I which is statistically significant p-value <0.05. Impairment of sensory motor function of peripheral nervous system is more in chronic diabetic with less glycemic control ie., HbA1C>7 who have shown increased Auditory and Visual Reaction time than chronic DM with HbA1C<7.Severity of Peripheral neuropathy in Type II Diabetics could be due to elevated HbA1C.

Shared and distinct factors driving attention and temporal processing across modalities

PubMed Central

Berry, Anne S.; Li, Xu; Lin, Ziyong; Lustig, Cindy

2013-01-01

In addition to the classic finding that “sounds are judged longer than lights,” the timing of auditory stimuli is often more precise and accurate than is the timing of visual stimuli. In cognitive models of temporal processing, these modality differences are explained by positing that auditory stimuli more automatically capture and hold attention, more efficiently closing an attentional switch that allows the accumulation of pulses marking the passage of time (Block & Zakay, 1997; Meck, 1991; Penney, 2003). However, attention is a multifaceted construct, and there has been little attempt to determine which aspects of attention may be related to modality effects. We used visual and auditory versions of the Continuous Temporal Expectancy Task (CTET; O'Connell et al., 2009) a timing task previously linked to behavioral and electrophysiological measures of mind-wandering and attention lapses, and tested participants with or without the presence of a video distractor. Performance in the auditory condition was generally superior to that in the visual condition, replicating standard results in the timing literature. The auditory modality was also less affected by declines in sustained attention indexed by declines in performance over time. In contrast, distraction had an equivalent impact on performance in the two modalities. Analysis of individual differences in performance revealed further differences between the two modalities: Poor performance in the auditory condition was primarily related to boredom whereas poor performance in the visual condition was primarily related to distractibility. These results suggest that: 1) challenges to different aspects of attention reveal both modality-specific and nonspecific effects on temporal processing, and 2) different factors drive individual differences when testing across modalities. PMID:23978664

Odors Bias Time Perception in Visual and Auditory Modalities

PubMed Central

Yue, Zhenzhu; Gao, Tianyu; Chen, Lihan; Wu, Jiashuang

2016-01-01

Previous studies have shown that emotional states alter our perception of time. However, attention, which is modulated by a number of factors, such as emotional events, also influences time perception. To exclude potential attentional effects associated with emotional events, various types of odors (inducing different levels of emotional arousal) were used to explore whether olfactory events modulated time perception differently in visual and auditory modalities. Participants were shown either a visual dot or heard a continuous tone for 1000 or 4000 ms while they were exposed to odors of jasmine, lavender, or garlic. Participants then reproduced the temporal durations of the preceding visual or auditory stimuli by pressing the spacebar twice. Their reproduced durations were compared to those in the control condition (without odor). The results showed that participants produced significantly longer time intervals in the lavender condition than in the jasmine or garlic conditions. The overall influence of odor on time perception was equivalent for both visual and auditory modalities. The analysis of the interaction effect showed that participants produced longer durations than the actual duration in the short interval condition, but they produced shorter durations in the long interval condition. The effect sizes were larger for the auditory modality than those for the visual modality. Moreover, by comparing performance across the initial and the final blocks of the experiment, we found odor adaptation effects were mainly manifested as longer reproductions for the short time interval later in the adaptation phase, and there was a larger effect size in the auditory modality. In summary, the present results indicate that odors imposed differential impacts on reproduced time durations, and they were constrained by different sensory modalities, valence of the emotional events, and target durations. Biases in time perception could be accounted for by a framework of attentional deployment between the inducers (odors) and emotionally neutral stimuli (visual dots and sound beeps). PMID:27148143

Functional Mapping of the Human Auditory Cortex: fMRI Investigation of a Patient with Auditory Agnosia from Trauma to the Inferior Colliculus.

PubMed

Poliva, Oren; Bestelmeyer, Patricia E G; Hall, Michelle; Bultitude, Janet H; Koller, Kristin; Rafal, Robert D

2015-09-01

To use functional magnetic resonance imaging to map the auditory cortical fields that are activated, or nonreactive, to sounds in patient M.L., who has auditory agnosia caused by trauma to the inferior colliculi. The patient cannot recognize speech or environmental sounds. Her discrimination is greatly facilitated by context and visibility of the speaker's facial movements, and under forced-choice testing. Her auditory temporal resolution is severely compromised. Her discrimination is more impaired for words differing in voice onset time than place of articulation. Words presented to her right ear are extinguished with dichotic presentation; auditory stimuli in the right hemifield are mislocalized to the left. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine cortical activations to different categories of meaningful sounds embedded in a block design. Sounds activated the caudal sub-area of M.L.'s primary auditory cortex (hA1) bilaterally and her right posterior superior temporal gyrus (auditory dorsal stream), but not the rostral sub-area (hR) of her primary auditory cortex or the anterior superior temporal gyrus in either hemisphere (auditory ventral stream). Auditory agnosia reflects dysfunction of the auditory ventral stream. The ventral and dorsal auditory streams are already segregated as early as the primary auditory cortex, with the ventral stream projecting from hR and the dorsal stream from hA1. M.L.'s leftward localization bias, preserved audiovisual integration, and phoneme perception are explained by preserved processing in her right auditory dorsal stream.

Intertrial auditory neural stability supports beat synchronization in preschoolers

PubMed Central

Carr, Kali Woodruff; Tierney, Adam; White-Schwoch, Travis; Kraus, Nina

2016-01-01

The ability to synchronize motor movements along with an auditory beat places stringent demands on the temporal processing and sensorimotor integration capabilities of the nervous system. Links between millisecond-level precision of auditory processing and the consistency of sensorimotor beat synchronization implicate fine auditory neural timing as a mechanism for forming stable internal representations of, and behavioral reactions to, sound. Here, for the first time, we demonstrate a systematic relationship between consistency of beat synchronization and trial-by-trial stability of subcortical speech processing in preschoolers (ages 3 and 4 years old). We conclude that beat synchronization might provide a useful window into millisecond-level neural precision for encoding sound in early childhood, when speech processing is especially important for language acquisition and development. PMID:26760457

Evaluation of an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory kappa effect.

PubMed

Henry, Molly J; McAuley, J Devin

2009-04-01

Three experiments evaluated an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory kappa effect. Listeners heard 3-tone sequences and judged the timing of the middle (target) tone relative to the timing of the 1st and 3rd (bounding) tones. Experiment 1 held pitch constant but varied the time (T) interval between bounding tones (T = 728, 1,000, or 1,600 ms) in order to establish baseline performance levels for the 3 values of T. Experiments 2 and 3 combined the values of T tested in Experiment 1 with a pitch manipulation in order to create fast (8 semitones/728 ms), medium (8 semitones/1,000 ms), and slow (8 semitones/1,600 ms) velocity conditions. Consistent with an auditory motion hypothesis, distortions in perceived timing were larger for fast than for slow velocity conditions for both ascending sequences (Experiment 2) and descending sequences (Experiment 3). Overall, results supported the proposed imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory kappa effect. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Temporal Integration of Auditory Information Is Invariant to Temporal Grouping Cues

PubMed

Liu, Andrew S K; Tsunada, Joji; Gold, Joshua I; Cohen, Yale E

2015-01-01

Auditory perception depends on the temporal structure of incoming acoustic stimuli. Here, we examined whether a temporal manipulation that affects the perceptual grouping also affects the time dependence of decisions regarding those stimuli. We designed a novel discrimination task that required human listeners to decide whether a sequence of tone bursts was increasing or decreasing in frequency. We manipulated temporal perceptual-grouping cues by changing the time interval between the tone bursts, which led to listeners hearing the sequences as a single sound for short intervals or discrete sounds for longer intervals. Despite these strong perceptual differences, this manipulation did not affect the efficiency of how auditory information was integrated over time to form a decision. Instead, the grouping manipulation affected subjects' speed-accuracy trade-offs. These results indicate that the temporal dynamics of evidence accumulation for auditory perceptual decisions can be invariant to manipulations that affect the perceptual grouping of the evidence.

Acute auditory agnosia as the presenting hearing disorder in MELAS.

PubMed

Miceli, Gabriele; Conti, Guido; Cianfoni, Alessandro; Di Giacopo, Raffaella; Zampetti, Patrizia; Servidei, Serenella

2008-12-01

MELAS is commonly associated with peripheral hearing loss. Auditory agnosia is a rare cortical auditory impairment, usually due to bilateral temporal damage. We document, for the first time, auditory agnosia as the presenting hearing disorder in MELAS. A young woman with MELAS (A3243G mtDNA mutation) suffered from acute cortical hearing damage following a single stroke-like episode, in the absence of previous hearing deficits. Audiometric testing showed marked central hearing impairment and very mild sensorineural hearing loss. MRI documented bilateral, acute lesions to superior temporal regions. Neuropsychological tests demonstrated auditory agnosia without aphasia. Our data and a review of published reports show that cortical auditory disorders are relatively frequent in MELAS, probably due to the strikingly high incidence of bilateral and symmetric damage following stroke-like episodes. Acute auditory agnosia can be the presenting hearing deficit in MELAS and, conversely, MELAS should be suspected in young adults with sudden hearing loss.

Listening to music primes space: pianists, but not novices, simulate heard actions.

PubMed

Taylor, J Eric T; Witt, Jessica K

2015-03-01

Musicians sometimes report twitching in their fingers or hands while listening to music. This anecdote could be indicative of a tendency for auditory-motor co-representation in musicians. Here, we describe two studies showing that pianists (Experiment 1), but not novices (Experiment 2) automatically generate spatial representations that correspond to learned musical actions while listening to music. Participants made one-handed movements to the left or right from a central location in response to visual stimuli while listening to task-irrelevant auditory stimuli, which were scales played on a piano. These task-irrelevant scales were either ascending (compatible with rightward movements) or descending (compatible with leftward movements). Pianists were faster to respond when the scale direction was compatible with the direction of response movement, whereas novices' movements were unaffected by the scale. These results are in agreement with existing research on action-effect coupling in musicians, which draw heavily on common coding theory. In addition, these results show how intricate auditory stimuli (ascending or descending scales) evoke coarse, domain-general spatial representations.

A high-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI dataset from complex natural stimulation with an audio movie

PubMed Central

Hanke, Michael; Baumgartner, Florian J.; Ibe, Pierre; Kaule, Falko R.; Pollmann, Stefan; Speck, Oliver; Zinke, Wolf; Stadler, Jörg

2014-01-01

Here we present a high-resolution functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) dataset – 20 participants recorded at high field strength (7 Tesla) during prolonged stimulation with an auditory feature film (“Forrest Gump”). In addition, a comprehensive set of auxiliary data (T1w, T2w, DTI, susceptibility-weighted image, angiography) as well as measurements to assess technical and physiological noise components have been acquired. An initial analysis confirms that these data can be used to study common and idiosyncratic brain response patterns to complex auditory stimulation. Among the potential uses of this dataset are the study of auditory attention and cognition, language and music perception, and social perception. The auxiliary measurements enable a large variety of additional analysis strategies that relate functional response patterns to structural properties of the brain. Alongside the acquired data, we provide source code and detailed information on all employed procedures – from stimulus creation to data analysis. In order to facilitate replicative and derived works, only free and open-source software was utilized. PMID:25977761

Auditory brainstem response (ABR) profiling tests as diagnostic support for schizophrenia and adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

PubMed

Juselius Baghdassarian, Eva; Nilsson Markhed, Maria; Lindström, Eva; Nilsson, Björn M; Lewander, Tommy

2018-06-01

To evaluate the performances of two auditory brainstem response (ABR) profiling tests as potential biomarkers and diagnostic support for schizophrenia and adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), respectively, in an investigator-initiated blinded study design. Male and female patients with schizophrenia (n=26) and adult ADHD (n=24) meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition (DSM IV) diagnostic criteria and healthy controls (n=58) comprised the analysis set (n=108) of the total number of study participants (n=119). Coded sets of randomized ABR recordings were analysed by an independent party blinded to clinical diagnoses before a joint code-breaking session. The ABR profiling test for schizophrenia identified schizophrenia patients versus controls with a sensitivity of 84.6% and a specificity of 93.1%. The ADHD test identified patients with adult ADHD versus controls with a sensitivity of 87.5% and a specificity of 91.4%. The ABR profiling tests discriminated schizophrenia and ADHD versus healthy controls with high sensitivity and specificity. The methods deserve to be further explored in larger clinical studies including a broad range of psychiatric disorders to determine their utility as potential diagnostic biomarkers.

Predictive Coding or Evidence Accumulation? False Inference and Neuronal Fluctuations

PubMed Central

Friston, Karl J.; Kleinschmidt, Andreas

2010-01-01

Perceptual decisions can be made when sensory input affords an inference about what generated that input. Here, we report findings from two independent perceptual experiments conducted during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a sparse event-related design. The first experiment, in the visual modality, involved forced-choice discrimination of coherence in random dot kinematograms that contained either subliminal or periliminal motion coherence. The second experiment, in the auditory domain, involved free response detection of (non-semantic) near-threshold acoustic stimuli. We analysed fluctuations in ongoing neural activity, as indexed by fMRI, and found that neuronal activity in sensory areas (extrastriate visual and early auditory cortex) biases perceptual decisions towards correct inference and not towards a specific percept. Hits (detection of near-threshold stimuli) were preceded by significantly higher activity than both misses of identical stimuli or false alarms, in which percepts arise in the absence of appropriate sensory input. In accord with predictive coding models and the free-energy principle, this observation suggests that cortical activity in sensory brain areas reflects the precision of prediction errors and not just the sensory evidence or prediction errors per se. PMID:20369004

Functional organization for musical consonance and tonal pitch hierarchy in human auditory cortex.

PubMed

Bidelman, Gavin M; Grall, Jeremy

2014-11-01

Pitch relationships in music are characterized by their degree of consonance, a hierarchical perceptual quality that distinguishes how pleasant musical chords/intervals sound to the ear. The origins of consonance have been debated since the ancient Greeks. To elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these musical fundamentals, we recorded neuroelectric brain activity while participants listened passively to various chromatic musical intervals (simultaneously sounding pitches) varying in their perceptual pleasantness (i.e., consonance/dissonance). Dichotic presentation eliminated acoustic and peripheral contributions that often confound explanations of consonance. We found that neural representations for pitch in early human auditory cortex code perceptual features of musical consonance and follow a hierarchical organization according to music-theoretic principles. These neural correlates emerge pre-attentively within ~ 150 ms after the onset of pitch, are segregated topographically in superior temporal gyrus with a rightward hemispheric bias, and closely mirror listeners' behavioral valence preferences for the chromatic tone combinations inherent to music. A perceptual-based organization implies that parallel to the phonetic code for speech, elements of music are mapped within early cerebral structures according to higher-order, perceptual principles and the rules of Western harmony rather than simple acoustic attributes. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Hair cell ribbon synapses

PubMed Central

Brandt, Andreas; Lysakowski, Anna

2010-01-01

Hearing and balance rely on the faithful synaptic coding of mechanical input by the auditory and vestibular hair cells of the inner ear. Mechanical deflection of their stereocilia causes the opening of mechanosensitive channels, resulting in hair cell depolarization, which controls the release of glutamate at ribbon-type synapses. Hair cells have a compact shape with strong polarity. Mechanoelectrical transduction and active membrane turnover associated with stereociliar renewal dominate the apical compartment. Transmitter release occurs at several active zones along the basolateral membrane. The astonishing capability of the hair cell ribbon synapse for temporally precise and reliable sensory coding has been the subject of intense investigation over the past few years. This research has been facilitated by the excellent experimental accessibility of the hair cell. For the same reason, the hair cell serves as an important model for studying presynaptic Ca2+ signaling and stimulus-secretion coupling. In addition to common principles, hair cell synapses differ in their anatomical and functional properties among species, among the auditory and vestibular organs, and among hair cell positions within the organ. Here, we briefly review synaptic morphology and connectivity and then focus on stimulus-secretion coupling at hair cell synapses. PMID:16944206

Auditory Processing, Linguistic Prosody Awareness, and Word Reading in Mandarin-Speaking Children Learning English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chung, Wei-Lun; Jarmulowicz, Linda; Bidelman, Gavin M.

2017-01-01

This study examined language-specific links among auditory processing, linguistic prosody awareness, and Mandarin (L1) and English (L2) word reading in 61 Mandarin-speaking, English-learning children. Three auditory discrimination abilities were measured: pitch contour, pitch interval, and rise time (rate of intensity change at tone onset).…

Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate

PubMed Central

Jerjos, Michael; Hohman, Baily; Lauterbur, M. Elise; Kistler, Logan

2017-01-01

Abstract Several taxonomically distinct mammalian groups—certain microbats and cetaceans (e.g., dolphins)—share both morphological adaptations related to echolocation behavior and strong signatures of convergent evolution at the amino acid level across seven genes related to auditory processing. Aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) are nocturnal lemurs with a specialized auditory processing system. Aye-ayes tap rapidly along the surfaces of trees, listening to reverberations to identify the mines of wood-boring insect larvae; this behavior has been hypothesized to functionally mimic echolocation. Here we investigated whether there are signals of convergence in auditory processing genes between aye-ayes and known mammalian echolocators. We developed a computational pipeline (Basic Exon Assembly Tool) that produces consensus sequences for regions of interest from shotgun genomic sequencing data for nonmodel organisms without requiring de novo genome assembly. We reconstructed complete coding region sequences for the seven convergent echolocating bat–dolphin genes for aye-ayes and another lemur. We compared sequences from these two lemurs in a phylogenetic framework with those of bat and dolphin echolocators and appropriate nonecholocating outgroups. Our analysis reaffirms the existence of amino acid convergence at these loci among echolocating bats and dolphins; some methods also detected signals of convergence between echolocating bats and both mice and elephants. However, we observed no significant signal of amino acid convergence between aye-ayes and echolocating bats and dolphins, suggesting that aye-aye tap-foraging auditory adaptations represent distinct evolutionary innovations. These results are also consistent with a developing consensus that convergent behavioral ecology does not reliably predict convergent molecular evolution. PMID:28810710

Influence of sleep deprivation and auditory intensity on reaction time and response force.

PubMed

Włodarczyk, Dariusz; Jaśkowski, Piotr; Nowik, Agnieszka

2002-06-01

Arousal and activation are two variables supposed to underlie change in response force. This study was undertaken to explain these roles, specifically, for strong auditory stimuli and sleep deficit. Loud auditory stimuli can evoke phasic overarousal whereas sleep deficit leads to general underarousal. Moreover, Van der Molen and Keuss (1979, 1981) showed that paradoxically long reaction times occurred with extremely strong auditory stimuli when the task was difficult, e.g., choice reaction or Simon paradigm. It was argued that this paradoxical behavior related to reaction time is due to active disconnecting of the coupling between arousal and activation to prevent false responses. If so, we predicted that for extremely loud stimuli and for difficult tasks, the lengthening of reaction time should be associated with reduction of response force. The effects of loudness and sleep deficit on response time and force were investigated in three different tasks: simple response, choice response, and Simon paradigm. According to our expectation, we found a detrimental effect of sleep deficit on reaction time and on response force. In contrast to Van der Molen and Keuss, we found no increase in reaction time for loud stimuli (up to 110 dB) even on the Simon task.

Hearing in Insects.

PubMed

Göpfert, Martin C; Hennig, R Matthias

2016-01-01

Insect hearing has independently evolved multiple times in the context of intraspecific communication and predator detection by transforming proprioceptive organs into ears. Research over the past decade, ranging from the biophysics of sound reception to molecular aspects of auditory transduction to the neuronal mechanisms of auditory signal processing, has greatly advanced our understanding of how insects hear. Apart from evolutionary innovations that seem unique to insect hearing, parallels between insect and vertebrate auditory systems have been uncovered, and the auditory sensory cells of insects and vertebrates turned out to be evolutionarily related. This review summarizes our current understanding of insect hearing. It also discusses recent advances in insect auditory research, which have put forward insect auditory systems for studying biological aspects that extend beyond hearing, such as cilium function, neuronal signal computation, and sensory system evolution.

Reaction time and accuracy in individuals with aphasia during auditory vigilance tasks.

PubMed

Laures, Jacqueline S

2005-11-01

Research indicates that attentional deficits exist in aphasic individuals. However, relatively little is known about auditory vigilance performance in individuals with aphasia. The current study explores reaction time (RT) and accuracy in 10 aphasic participants and 10 nonbrain-damaged controls during linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory vigilance tasks. Findings indicate that the aphasic group was less accurate during both tasks than the control group, but was not slower in their accurate responses. Further examination of the data revealed variability in the aphasic participants' RT contributing to the lower accuracy scores.

'The effect of different genres of music on the stress levels of kennelled dogs'.

PubMed

Bowman, A; Dowell, F J; Evans, N P

2017-03-15

Classical music has been shown to reduce stress in kennelled dogs; however, rapid habituation of dogs to this form of auditory enrichment has also been demonstrated. The current study investigated the physiological and behavioural response of kennelled dogs (n=38) to medium-term (5days) auditory enrichment with five different genres of music including Soft Rock, Motown, Pop, Reggae and Classical, to determine whether increasing the variety of auditory stimulation reduces the level of habituation to auditory enrichment. Dogs were found to spend significantly more time lying and significantly less time standing when music was played, regardless of genre. There was no observable effect of music on barking, however, dogs were significantly (z=2.2, P<0.05) more likely to bark following cessation of auditory enrichment. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) was significantly higher, indicative of decreased stress, when dogs were played Soft Rock and Reggae, with a lesser effect observed when Motown, Pop and Classical genres were played. Relative to the silent period prior to auditory enrichment, urinary cortisol:creatanine (UCCR) values were significantly higher during Soft Rock (t=2.781, P<0.01) and the second silent control period following auditory enrichment (t=2.46, P<0.05). Despite the mixed response to different genres, the physiological and behavioural changes observed remained constant over the 5d of enrichment suggesting that the effect of habituation may be reduced by increasing the variety of auditory enrichment provided. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Achilles' ear? Inferior human short-term and recognition memory in the auditory modality.

PubMed

Bigelow, James; Poremba, Amy

2014-01-01

Studies of the memory capabilities of nonhuman primates have consistently revealed a relative weakness for auditory compared to visual or tactile stimuli: extensive training is required to learn auditory memory tasks, and subjects are only capable of retaining acoustic information for a brief period of time. Whether a parallel deficit exists in human auditory memory remains an outstanding question. In the current study, a short-term memory paradigm was used to test human subjects' retention of simple auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli that were carefully equated in terms of discriminability, stimulus exposure time, and temporal dynamics. Mean accuracy did not differ significantly among sensory modalities at very short retention intervals (1-4 s). However, at longer retention intervals (8-32 s), accuracy for auditory stimuli fell substantially below that observed for visual and tactile stimuli. In the interest of extending the ecological validity of these findings, a second experiment tested recognition memory for complex, naturalistic stimuli that would likely be encountered in everyday life. Subjects were able to identify all stimuli when retention was not required, however, recognition accuracy following a delay period was again inferior for auditory compared to visual and tactile stimuli. Thus, the outcomes of both experiments provide a human parallel to the pattern of results observed in nonhuman primates. The results are interpreted in light of neuropsychological data from nonhuman primates, which suggest a difference in the degree to which auditory, visual, and tactile memory are mediated by the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices.

Feature assignment in perception of auditory figure.

PubMed

Gregg, Melissa K; Samuel, Arthur G

2012-08-01

Because the environment often includes multiple sounds that overlap in time, listeners must segregate a sound of interest (the auditory figure) from other co-occurring sounds (the unattended auditory ground). We conducted a series of experiments to clarify the principles governing the extraction of auditory figures. We distinguish between auditory "objects" (relatively punctate events, such as a dog's bark) and auditory "streams" (sounds involving a pattern over time, such as a galloping rhythm). In Experiments 1 and 2, on each trial 2 sounds-an object (a vowel) and a stream (a series of tones)-were presented with 1 target feature that could be perceptually grouped with either source. In each block of these experiments, listeners were required to attend to 1 of the 2 sounds, and report its perceived category. Across several experimental manipulations, listeners were more likely to allocate the feature to an impoverished object if the result of the grouping was a good, identifiable object. Perception of objects was quite sensitive to feature variation (noise masking), whereas perception of streams was more robust to feature variation. In Experiment 3, the number of sound sources competing for the feature was increased to 3. This produced a shift toward relying more on spatial cues than on the potential contribution of the feature to an object's perceptual quality. The results support a distinction between auditory objects and streams, and provide new information about the way that the auditory world is parsed. (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Auditory, visual, and bimodal data link displays and how they support pilot performance.

PubMed

Steelman, Kelly S; Talleur, Donald; Carbonari, Ronald; Yamani, Yusuke; Nunes, Ashley; McCarley, Jason S

2013-06-01

The design of data link messaging systems to ensure optimal pilot performance requires empirical guidance. The current study examined the effects of display format (auditory, visual, or bimodal) and visual display position (adjacent to instrument panel or mounted on console) on pilot performance. Subjects performed five 20-min simulated single-pilot flights. During each flight, subjects received messages from a simulated air traffic controller. Messages were delivered visually, auditorily, or bimodally. Subjects were asked to read back each message aloud and then perform the instructed maneuver. Visual and bimodal displays engendered lower subjective workload and better altitude tracking than auditory displays. Readback times were shorter with the two unimodal visual formats than with any of the other three formats. Advantages for the unimodal visual format ranged in size from 2.8 s to 3.8 s relative to the bimodal upper left and auditory formats, respectively. Auditory displays allowed slightly more head-up time (3 to 3.5 seconds per minute) than either visual or bimodal displays. Position of the visual display had only modest effects on any measure. Combined with the results from previous studies by Helleberg and Wickens and Lancaster and Casali the current data favor visual and bimodal displays over auditory displays; unimodal auditory displays were favored by only one measure, head-up time, and only very modestly. Data evinced no statistically significant effects of visual display position on performance, suggesting that, contrary to expectations, the placement of a visual data link display may be of relatively little consequence to performance.

Predicting Future Reading Problems Based on Pre-reading Auditory Measures: A Longitudinal Study of Children with a Familial Risk of Dyslexia

PubMed Central

Law, Jeremy M.; Vandermosten, Maaike; Ghesquière, Pol; Wouters, Jan

2017-01-01

Purpose: This longitudinal study examines measures of temporal auditory processing in pre-reading children with a family risk of dyslexia. Specifically, it attempts to ascertain whether pre-reading auditory processing, speech perception, and phonological awareness (PA) reliably predict later literacy achievement. Additionally, this study retrospectively examines the presence of pre-reading auditory processing, speech perception, and PA impairments in children later found to be literacy impaired. Method: Forty-four pre-reading children with and without a family risk of dyslexia were assessed at three time points (kindergarten, first, and second grade). Auditory processing measures of rise time (RT) discrimination and frequency modulation (FM) along with speech perception, PA, and various literacy tasks were assessed. Results: Kindergarten RT uniquely contributed to growth in literacy in grades one and two, even after controlling for letter knowledge and PA. Highly significant concurrent and predictive correlations were observed with kindergarten RT significantly predicting first grade PA. Retrospective analysis demonstrated atypical performance in RT and PA at all three time points in children who later developed literacy impairments. Conclusions: Although significant, kindergarten auditory processing contributions to later literacy growth lack the power to be considered as a single-cause predictor; thus results support temporal processing deficits' contribution within a multiple deficit model of dyslexia. PMID:28223953

Investigating brain response to music: a comparison of different fMRI acquisition schemes.

PubMed

Mueller, Karsten; Mildner, Toralf; Fritz, Thomas; Lepsien, Jöran; Schwarzbauer, Christian; Schroeter, Matthias L; Möller, Harald E

2011-01-01

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in auditory experiments is a challenge, because the scanning procedure produces considerable noise that can interfere with the auditory paradigm. The noise might either mask the auditory material presented, or interfere with stimuli designed to evoke emotions because it sounds loud and rather unpleasant. Therefore, scanning paradigms that allow interleaved auditory stimulation and image acquisition appear to be advantageous. The sparse temporal sampling (STS) technique uses a very long repetition time in order to achieve a stimulus presentation in the absence of scanner noise. Although only relatively few volumes are acquired for the resulting data sets, there have been recent studies where this method has furthered remarkable results. A new development is the interleaved silent steady state (ISSS) technique. Compared with STS, this method is capable of acquiring several volumes in the time frame between the auditory trials (while the magnetization is kept in a steady state during stimulus presentation). In order to draw conclusions about the optimum fMRI procedure with auditory stimulation, different echo-planar imaging (EPI) acquisition schemes were compared: Continuous scanning, STS, and ISSS. The total acquisition time of each sequence was adjusted to about 12.5 min. The results indicate that the ISSS approach exhibits the highest sensitivity in detecting subtle activity in sub-cortical brain regions. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

High levels of sound pressure: acoustic reflex thresholds and auditory complaints of workers with noise exposure.

PubMed

Duarte, Alexandre Scalli Mathias; Ng, Ronny Tah Yen; de Carvalho, Guilherme Machado; Guimarães, Alexandre Caixeta; Pinheiro, Laiza Araujo Mohana; Costa, Everardo Andrade da; Gusmão, Reinaldo Jordão

2015-01-01

The clinical evaluation of subjects with occupational noise exposure has been difficult due to the discrepancy between auditory complaints and auditory test results. This study aimed to evaluate the contralateral acoustic reflex thresholds of workers exposed to high levels of noise, and to compare these results to the subjects' auditory complaints. This clinical retrospective study evaluated 364 workers between 1998 and 2005; their contralateral acoustic reflexes were compared to auditory complaints, age, and noise exposure time by chi-squared, Fisher's, and Spearman's tests. The workers' age ranged from 18 to 50 years (mean=39.6), and noise exposure time from one to 38 years (mean=17.3). We found that 15.1% (55) of the workers had bilateral hearing loss, 38.5% (140) had bilateral tinnitus, 52.8% (192) had abnormal sensitivity to loud sounds, and 47.2% (172) had speech recognition impairment. The variables hearing loss, speech recognition impairment, tinnitus, age group, and noise exposure time did not show relationship with acoustic reflex thresholds; however, all complaints demonstrated a statistically significant relationship with Metz recruitment at 3000 and 4000Hz bilaterally. There was no significance relationship between auditory complaints and acoustic reflexes. Copyright © 2015 Associação Brasileira de Otorrinolaringologia e Cirurgia Cérvico-Facial. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

Estimating human cochlear tuning behaviorally via forward masking

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oxenham, Andrew J.; Kreft, Heather A.

2018-05-01

The cochlea is where sound vibrations are transduced into the initial neural code for hearing. Despite the intervening stages of auditory processing, a surprising number of auditory perceptual phenomena can be explained in terms of the cochlea's biomechanical transformations. The quest to relate perception to these transformations has a long and distinguished history. Given its long history, it is perhaps surprising that something as fundamental as the link between frequency tuning in the cochlea and perception remains a controversial and active topic of investigation. Here we review some recent developments in our understanding of the relationship between cochlear frequency tuning and behavioral measures of frequency selectivity in humans. We show that forward masking using the notched-noise technique can produce reliable estimates of tuning that are in line with predictions from stimulus frequency otoacoustic emissions.

A neurally inspired musical instrument classification system based upon the sound onset.

PubMed

Newton, Michael J; Smith, Leslie S

2012-06-01

Physiological evidence suggests that sound onset detection in the auditory system may be performed by specialized neurons as early as the cochlear nucleus. Psychoacoustic evidence shows that the sound onset can be important for the recognition of musical sounds. Here the sound onset is used in isolation to form tone descriptors for a musical instrument classification task. The task involves 2085 isolated musical tones from the McGill dataset across five instrument categories. A neurally inspired tone descriptor is created using a model of the auditory system's response to sound onset. A gammatone filterbank and spiking onset detectors, built from dynamic synapses and leaky integrate-and-fire neurons, create parallel spike trains that emphasize the sound onset. These are coded as a descriptor called the onset fingerprint. Classification uses a time-domain neural network, the echo state network. Reference strategies, based upon mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, evaluated either over the whole tone or only during the sound onset, provide context to the method. Classification success rates for the neurally-inspired method are around 75%. The cepstral methods perform between 73% and 76%. Further testing with tones from the Iowa MIS collection shows that the neurally inspired method is considerably more robust when tested with data from an unrelated dataset.

Auditory Speech Perception Development in Relation to Patient's Age with Cochlear Implant

PubMed Central

Ciscare, Grace Kelly Seixas; Mantello, Erika Barioni; Fortunato-Queiroz, Carla Aparecida Urzedo; Hyppolito, Miguel Angelo; Reis, Ana Cláudia Mirândola Barbosa dos

2017-01-01

Introduction  A cochlear implant in adolescent patients with pre-lingual deafness is still a debatable issue. Objective  The objective of this study is to analyze and compare the development of auditory speech perception in children with pre-lingual auditory impairment submitted to cochlear implant, in different age groups in the first year after implantation. Method  This is a retrospective study, documentary research, in which we analyzed 78 reports of children with severe bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, unilateral cochlear implant users of both sexes. They were divided into three groups: G1, 22 infants aged less than 42 months; G2, 28 infants aged between 43 to 83 months; and G3, 28 older than 84 months. We collected medical record data to characterize the patients, auditory thresholds with cochlear implants, assessment of speech perception, and auditory skills. Results  There was no statistical difference in the association of the results among groups G1, G2, and G3 with sex, caregiver education level, city of residence, and speech perception level. There was a moderate correlation between age and hearing aid use time, age and cochlear implants use time. There was a strong correlation between age and the age cochlear implants was performed, hearing aid use time and age CI was performed. Conclusion  There was no statistical difference in the speech perception in relation to the patient's age when cochlear implant was performed. There were statistically significant differences for the variables of auditory deprivation time between G3 - G1 and G2 - G1 and hearing aid use time between G3 - G2 and G3 - G1. PMID:28680487

The influence of bat echolocation call duration and timing on auditory encoding of predator distance in noctuoid moths.

PubMed

Gordon, Shira D; Ter Hofstede, Hannah M

2018-03-22

Animals co-occur with multiple predators, making sensory systems that can encode information about diverse predators advantageous. Moths in the families Noctuidae and Erebidae have ears with two auditory receptor cells (A1 and A2) used to detect the echolocation calls of predatory bats. Bat communities contain species that vary in echolocation call duration, and the dynamic range of A1 is limited by the duration of sound, suggesting that A1 provides less information about bats with shorter echolocation calls. To test this hypothesis, we obtained intensity-response functions for both receptor cells across many moth species for sound pulse durations representing the range of echolocation call durations produced by bat species in northeastern North America. We found that the threshold and dynamic range of both cells varied with sound pulse duration. The number of A1 action potentials per sound pulse increases linearly with increasing amplitude for long-duration pulses, saturating near the A2 threshold. For short sound pulses, however, A1 saturates with only a few action potentials per pulse at amplitudes far lower than the A2 threshold for both single sound pulses and pulse sequences typical of searching or approaching bats. Neural adaptation was only evident in response to approaching bat sequences at high amplitudes, not search-phase sequences. These results show that, for short echolocation calls, a large range of sound levels cannot be coded by moth auditory receptor activity, resulting in no information about the distance of a bat, although differences in activity between ears might provide information about direction. © 2018. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

Audio-visual integration during speech perception in prelingually deafened Japanese children revealed by the McGurk effect.

PubMed

Tona, Risa; Naito, Yasushi; Moroto, Saburo; Yamamoto, Rinko; Fujiwara, Keizo; Yamazaki, Hiroshi; Shinohara, Shogo; Kikuchi, Masahiro

2015-12-01

To investigate the McGurk effect in profoundly deafened Japanese children with cochlear implants (CI) and in normal-hearing children. This was done to identify how children with profound deafness using CI established audiovisual integration during the speech acquisition period. Twenty-four prelingually deafened children with CI and 12 age-matched normal-hearing children participated in this study. Responses to audiovisual stimuli were compared between deafened and normal-hearing controls. Additionally, responses of the children with CI younger than 6 years of age were compared with those of the children with CI at least 6 years of age at the time of the test. Responses to stimuli combining auditory labials and visual non-labials were significantly different between deafened children with CI and normal-hearing controls (p<0.05). Additionally, the McGurk effect tended to be more induced in deafened children older than 6 years of age than in their younger counterparts. The McGurk effect was more significantly induced in prelingually deafened Japanese children with CI than in normal-hearing, age-matched Japanese children. Despite having good speech-perception skills and auditory input through their CI, from early childhood, deafened children may use more visual information in speech perception than normal-hearing children. As children using CI need to communicate based on insufficient speech signals coded by CI, additional activities of higher-order brain function may be necessary to compensate for the incomplete auditory input. This study provided information on the influence of deafness on the development of audiovisual integration related to speech, which could contribute to our further understanding of the strategies used in spoken language communication by prelingually deafened children. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Co-regulated Approach to Feeding Preterm Infants with Lung Disease: Effects During Feeding

PubMed Central

Thoyre, Suzanne M.; Holditch-Davis, Diane; Schwartz, Todd A.; Melendez Roman, Carlos R.; Nix, William

2015-01-01

Background Very preterm infants are at risk for poor oral feeding endurance, early cessation of eating, poor fluid management with aspiration risk, behavioral distress, and unstable heart rate and oxygenation during feeding. Objective To determine the preliminary effectiveness of a Co-Regulated Approach (CoReg) to oral feeding for very preterm infants at risk for lung disease. Method A randomized, within-subjects, cross-over design was used with 20 very preterm infants requiring oxygen at the start of oral feeding. Infants were bottle fed by the Usual Care approach and by the CoReg approach on 2 consecutive days for an average of four feedings each. Intervention components included co-regulation of suck, swallow, and breathe rhythms using enhanced auditory assessment, infant-guided feeding onsets, and infant positioning in a semielevated, side-lying position. Infant physiology metrics (heart rate, SaO2) were collected continuously prior to and during the feeding. Behavioral and auditory indicators of regulation were coded continuously from videotape during the feeding. Results Seventy feedings were analyzed (38 Usual Care, 32 CoReg) using repeated measures modeling. CoReg feedings were characterized by more frequent preparation of the infant for the feeding, were more commonly initiated in response to infant readiness cues, had more rest periods and breath regulation events, and had fewer sucking stimulation events. CoReg feedings had less SaO2 variability, decline, and time spent in a desaturated state; less heart rate fluctuation and decline; less behavioral disorganization; better fluid management; and less observed effort to breathe. Discussion Support is provided for a co-regulated approach to feeding vulnerable infants. Enhanced auditory assessment of infant feeding rhythms increases the responsiveness of the feeder and improves infant behavioral and physiologic responses. PMID:22565102

Is GABA neurotransmission enhanced in auditory thalamus relative to inferior colliculus?

PubMed Central

Cai, Rui; Kalappa, Bopanna I.; Brozoski, Thomas J.; Ling, Lynne L.

2013-01-01

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central auditory system. Sensory thalamic structures show high levels of non-desensitizing extrasynaptic GABAA receptors (GABAARs) and a reduction in the redundancy of coded information. The present study compared the inhibitory potency of GABA acting at GABAARs between the inferior colliculus (IC) and the medial geniculate body (MGB) using quantitative in vivo, in vitro, and ex vivo experimental approaches. In vivo single unit studies compared the ability of half maximal inhibitory concentrations of GABA to inhibit sound-evoked temporal responses, and found that GABA was two to three times (P < 0.01) more potent at suppressing MGB single unit responses than IC unit responses. In vitro whole cell patch-clamp slice recordings were used to demonstrate that gaboxadol, a δ-subunit selective GABAAR agonist, was significantly more potent at evoking tonic inhibitory currents from MGB neurons than IC neurons (P < 0.01). These electrophysiological findings were supported by an in vitro receptor binding assay which used the picrotoxin analog [3H]TBOB to assess binding in the GABAAR chloride channel. MGB GABAARs had significantly greater total open chloride channel capacity relative to GABAARs in IC (P < 0.05) as shown by increased total [3H]TBOB binding. Finally, a comparative ex vivo measurement compared endogenous GABA levels and suggested a trend towards higher GABA concentrations in MGB than in IC. Collectively, these studies suggest that, per unit GABA, high affinity extrasynaptic and synaptic GABAARs confer a significant inhibitory GABAAR advantage to MGB neurons relative to IC neurons. This increased GABA sensitivity likely underpins the vital filtering role of auditory thalamus. PMID:24155003

Incorporation of feedback during beat synchronization is an index of neural maturation and reading skills.

PubMed

Woodruff Carr, Kali; Fitzroy, Ahren B; Tierney, Adam; White-Schwoch, Travis; Kraus, Nina

2017-01-01

Speech communication involves integration and coordination of sensory perception and motor production, requiring precise temporal coupling. Beat synchronization, the coordination of movement with a pacing sound, can be used as an index of this sensorimotor timing. We assessed adolescents' synchronization and capacity to correct asynchronies when given online visual feedback. Variability of synchronization while receiving feedback predicted phonological memory and reading sub-skills, as well as maturation of cortical auditory processing; less variable synchronization during the presence of feedback tracked with maturation of cortical processing of sound onsets and resting gamma activity. We suggest the ability to incorporate feedback during synchronization is an index of intentional, multimodal timing-based integration in the maturing adolescent brain. Precision of temporal coding across modalities is important for speech processing and literacy skills that rely on dynamic interactions with sound. Synchronization employing feedback may prove useful as a remedial strategy for individuals who struggle with timing-based language learning impairments. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

No, There Is No 150 ms Lead of Visual Speech on Auditory Speech, but a Range of Audiovisual Asynchronies Varying from Small Audio Lead to Large Audio Lag

PubMed Central

Schwartz, Jean-Luc; Savariaux, Christophe

2014-01-01

An increasing number of neuroscience papers capitalize on the assumption published in this journal that visual speech would be typically 150 ms ahead of auditory speech. It happens that the estimation of audiovisual asynchrony in the reference paper is valid only in very specific cases, for isolated consonant-vowel syllables or at the beginning of a speech utterance, in what we call “preparatory gestures”. However, when syllables are chained in sequences, as they are typically in most parts of a natural speech utterance, asynchrony should be defined in a different way. This is what we call “comodulatory gestures” providing auditory and visual events more or less in synchrony. We provide audiovisual data on sequences of plosive-vowel syllables (pa, ta, ka, ba, da, ga, ma, na) showing that audiovisual synchrony is actually rather precise, varying between 20 ms audio lead and 70 ms audio lag. We show how more complex speech material should result in a range typically varying between 40 ms audio lead and 200 ms audio lag, and we discuss how this natural coordination is reflected in the so-called temporal integration window for audiovisual speech perception. Finally we present a toy model of auditory and audiovisual predictive coding, showing that visual lead is actually not necessary for visual prediction. PMID:25079216

Sensory adaptation for timing perception.

PubMed

Roseboom, Warrick; Linares, Daniel; Nishida, Shin'ya

2015-04-22

Recent sensory experience modifies subjective timing perception. For example, when visual events repeatedly lead auditory events, such as when the sound and video tracks of a movie are out of sync, subsequent vision-leads-audio presentations are reported as more simultaneous. This phenomenon could provide insights into the fundamental problem of how timing is represented in the brain, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we show that the effect of recent experience on timing perception is not just subjective; recent sensory experience also modifies relative timing discrimination. This result indicates that recent sensory history alters the encoding of relative timing in sensory areas, excluding explanations of the subjective phenomenon based only on decision-level changes. The pattern of changes in timing discrimination suggests the existence of two sensory components, similar to those previously reported for visual spatial attributes: a lateral shift in the nonlinear transducer that maps relative timing into perceptual relative timing and an increase in transducer slope around the exposed timing. The existence of these components would suggest that previous explanations of how recent experience may change the sensory encoding of timing, such as changes in sensory latencies or simple implementations of neural population codes, cannot account for the effect of sensory adaptation on timing perception.

Is Auditory Discrimination Mature by Middle Childhood? A Study Using Time-Frequency Analysis of Mismatch Responses from 7 Years to Adulthood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bishop, Dorothy V. M.; Hardiman, Mervyn J.; Barry, Johanna G.

2011-01-01

Behavioural and electrophysiological studies give differing impressions of when auditory discrimination is mature. Ability to discriminate frequency and speech contrasts reaches adult levels only around 12 years of age, yet an electrophysiological index of auditory discrimination, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is reported to be as large in…

How Hearing Loss Impacts Communication. Tipsheet: Serving Students Who Are Hard of Hearing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atcherson, Samuel R.; Johnson, Marni I.

2009-01-01

Hearing, or auditory processing, involves the use of many hearing skills in a single or combined fashion. The sounds that humans hear can be characterized by their intensity (loudness), frequency (pitch), and timing. Impairment of any of the auditory structures from the visible ear to the central auditory nervous system within the brain can have a…

The impact of visual gaze direction on auditory object tracking.

PubMed

Pomper, Ulrich; Chait, Maria

2017-07-05

Subjective experience suggests that we are able to direct our auditory attention independent of our visual gaze, e.g when shadowing a nearby conversation at a cocktail party. But what are the consequences at the behavioural and neural level? While numerous studies have investigated both auditory attention and visual gaze independently, little is known about their interaction during selective listening. In the present EEG study, we manipulated visual gaze independently of auditory attention while participants detected targets presented from one of three loudspeakers. We observed increased response times when gaze was directed away from the locus of auditory attention. Further, we found an increase in occipital alpha-band power contralateral to the direction of gaze, indicative of a suppression of distracting input. Finally, this condition also led to stronger central theta-band power, which correlated with the observed effect in response times, indicative of differences in top-down processing. Our data suggest that a misalignment between gaze and auditory attention both reduce behavioural performance and modulate underlying neural processes. The involvement of central theta-band and occipital alpha-band effects are in line with compensatory neural mechanisms such as increased cognitive control and the suppression of task irrelevant inputs.

Generic HRTFs May be Good Enough in Virtual Reality. Improving Source Localization through Cross-Modal Plasticity.

PubMed

Berger, Christopher C; Gonzalez-Franco, Mar; Tajadura-Jiménez, Ana; Florencio, Dinei; Zhang, Zhengyou

2018-01-01

Auditory spatial localization in humans is performed using a combination of interaural time differences, interaural level differences, as well as spectral cues provided by the geometry of the ear. To render spatialized sounds within a virtual reality (VR) headset, either individualized or generic Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) are usually employed. The former require arduous calibrations, but enable accurate auditory source localization, which may lead to a heightened sense of presence within VR. The latter obviate the need for individualized calibrations, but result in less accurate auditory source localization. Previous research on auditory source localization in the real world suggests that our representation of acoustic space is highly plastic. In light of these findings, we investigated whether auditory source localization could be improved for users of generic HRTFs via cross-modal learning. The results show that pairing a dynamic auditory stimulus, with a spatio-temporally aligned visual counterpart, enabled users of generic HRTFs to improve subsequent auditory source localization. Exposure to the auditory stimulus alone or to asynchronous audiovisual stimuli did not improve auditory source localization. These findings have important implications for human perception as well as the development of VR systems as they indicate that generic HRTFs may be enough to enable good auditory source localization in VR.

The importance of individual frequencies of endogenous brain oscillations for auditory cognition - A short review.

PubMed

Baltus, Alina; Herrmann, Christoph Siegfried

2016-06-01

Oscillatory EEG activity in the human brain with frequencies in the gamma range (approx. 30-80Hz) is known to be relevant for a large number of cognitive processes. Interestingly, each subject reveals an individual frequency of the auditory gamma-band response (GBR) that coincides with the peak in the auditory steady state response (ASSR). A common resonance frequency of auditory cortex seems to underlie both the individual frequency of the GBR and the peak of the ASSR. This review sheds light on the functional role of oscillatory gamma activity for auditory processing. For successful processing, the auditory system has to track changes in auditory input over time and store information about past events in memory which allows the construction of auditory objects. Recent findings support the idea of gamma oscillations being involved in the partitioning of auditory input into discrete samples to facilitate higher order processing. We review experiments that seem to suggest that inter-individual differences in the resonance frequency are behaviorally relevant for gap detection and speech processing. A possible application of these resonance frequencies for brain computer interfaces is illustrated with regard to optimized individual presentation rates for auditory input to correspond with endogenous oscillatory activity. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Auditory working memory. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Strategy Choice Mediates the Link between Auditory Processing and Spelling

PubMed Central

Kwong, Tru E.; Brachman, Kyle J.

2014-01-01

Relations among linguistic auditory processing, nonlinguistic auditory processing, spelling ability, and spelling strategy choice were examined. Sixty-three undergraduate students completed measures of auditory processing (one involving distinguishing similar tones, one involving distinguishing similar phonemes, and one involving selecting appropriate spellings for individual phonemes). Participants also completed a modified version of a standardized spelling test, and a secondary spelling test with retrospective strategy reports. Once testing was completed, participants were divided into phonological versus nonphonological spellers on the basis of the number of words they spelled using phonological strategies only. Results indicated a) moderate to strong positive correlations among the different auditory processing tasks in terms of reaction time, but not accuracy levels, and b) weak to moderate positive correlations between measures of linguistic auditory processing (phoneme distinction and phoneme spelling choice in the presence of foils) and spelling ability for phonological spellers, but not for nonphonological spellers. These results suggest a possible explanation for past contradictory research on auditory processing and spelling, which has been divided in terms of whether or not disabled spellers seemed to have poorer auditory processing than did typically developing spellers, and suggest implications for teaching spelling to children with good versus poor auditory processing abilities. PMID:25198787

Strategy choice mediates the link between auditory processing and spelling.

PubMed

Kwong, Tru E; Brachman, Kyle J

2014-01-01

Relations among linguistic auditory processing, nonlinguistic auditory processing, spelling ability, and spelling strategy choice were examined. Sixty-three undergraduate students completed measures of auditory processing (one involving distinguishing similar tones, one involving distinguishing similar phonemes, and one involving selecting appropriate spellings for individual phonemes). Participants also completed a modified version of a standardized spelling test, and a secondary spelling test with retrospective strategy reports. Once testing was completed, participants were divided into phonological versus nonphonological spellers on the basis of the number of words they spelled using phonological strategies only. Results indicated a) moderate to strong positive correlations among the different auditory processing tasks in terms of reaction time, but not accuracy levels, and b) weak to moderate positive correlations between measures of linguistic auditory processing (phoneme distinction and phoneme spelling choice in the presence of foils) and spelling ability for phonological spellers, but not for nonphonological spellers. These results suggest a possible explanation for past contradictory research on auditory processing and spelling, which has been divided in terms of whether or not disabled spellers seemed to have poorer auditory processing than did typically developing spellers, and suggest implications for teaching spelling to children with good versus poor auditory processing abilities.

Uncovering beat deafness: detecting rhythm disorders with synchronized finger tapping and perceptual timing tasks.

PubMed

Dalla Bella, Simone; Sowiński, Jakub

2015-03-16

A set of behavioral tasks for assessing perceptual and sensorimotor timing abilities in the general population (i.e., non-musicians) is presented here with the goal of uncovering rhythm disorders, such as beat deafness. Beat deafness is characterized by poor performance in perceiving durations in auditory rhythmic patterns or poor synchronization of movement with auditory rhythms (e.g., with musical beats). These tasks include the synchronization of finger tapping to the beat of simple and complex auditory stimuli and the detection of rhythmic irregularities (anisochrony detection task) embedded in the same stimuli. These tests, which are easy to administer, include an assessment of both perceptual and sensorimotor timing abilities under different conditions (e.g., beat rates and types of auditory material) and are based on the same auditory stimuli, ranging from a simple metronome to a complex musical excerpt. The analysis of synchronized tapping data is performed with circular statistics, which provide reliable measures of synchronization accuracy (e.g., the difference between the timing of the taps and the timing of the pacing stimuli) and consistency. Circular statistics on tapping data are particularly well-suited for detecting individual differences in the general population. Synchronized tapping and anisochrony detection are sensitive measures for identifying profiles of rhythm disorders and have been used with success to uncover cases of poor synchronization with spared perceptual timing. This systematic assessment of perceptual and sensorimotor timing can be extended to populations of patients with brain damage, neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Parkinson's disease), and developmental disorders (e.g., Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).

Altered auditory function in rats exposed to hypergravic fields

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jones, T. A.; Hoffman, L.; Horowitz, J. M.

1982-01-01

The effect of an orthodynamic hypergravic field of 6 G on the brainstem auditory projections was studied in rats. The brain temperature and EEG activity were recorded in the rats during 6 G orthodynamic acceleration and auditory brainstem responses were used to monitor auditory function. Results show that all animals exhibited auditory brainstem responses which indicated impaired conduction and transmission of brainstem auditory signals during the exposure to the 6 G acceleration field. Significant increases in central conduction time were observed for peaks 3N, 4P, 4N, and 5P (N = negative, P = positive), while the absolute latency values for these same peaks were also significantly increased. It is concluded that these results, along with those for fields below 4 G (Jones and Horowitz, 1981), indicate that impaired function proceeds in a rostro-caudal progression as field strength is increased.

Cortical mechanisms for the segregation and representation of acoustic textures.

PubMed

Overath, Tobias; Kumar, Sukhbinder; Stewart, Lauren; von Kriegstein, Katharina; Cusack, Rhodri; Rees, Adrian; Griffiths, Timothy D

2010-02-10

Auditory object analysis requires two fundamental perceptual processes: the definition of the boundaries between objects, and the abstraction and maintenance of an object's characteristic features. Although it is intuitive to assume that the detection of the discontinuities at an object's boundaries precedes the subsequent precise representation of the object, the specific underlying cortical mechanisms for segregating and representing auditory objects within the auditory scene are unknown. We investigated the cortical bases of these two processes for one type of auditory object, an "acoustic texture," composed of multiple frequency-modulated ramps. In these stimuli, we independently manipulated the statistical rules governing (1) the frequency-time space within individual textures (comprising ramps with a given spectrotemporal coherence) and (2) the boundaries between textures (adjacent textures with different spectrotemporal coherences). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show mechanisms defining boundaries between textures with different coherences in primary and association auditory cortices, whereas texture coherence is represented only in association cortex. Furthermore, participants' superior detection of boundaries across which texture coherence increased (as opposed to decreased) was reflected in a greater neural response in auditory association cortex at these boundaries. The results suggest a hierarchical mechanism for processing acoustic textures that is relevant to auditory object analysis: boundaries between objects are first detected as a change in statistical rules over frequency-time space, before a representation that corresponds to the characteristics of the perceived object is formed.

Pitch-Responsive Cortical Regions in Congenital Amusia.

PubMed

Norman-Haignere, Sam V; Albouy, Philippe; Caclin, Anne; McDermott, Josh H; Kanwisher, Nancy G; Tillmann, Barbara

2016-03-09

Congenital amusia is a lifelong deficit in music perception thought to reflect an underlying impairment in the perception and memory of pitch. The neural basis of amusic impairments is actively debated. Some prior studies have suggested that amusia stems from impaired connectivity between auditory and frontal cortex. However, it remains possible that impairments in pitch coding within auditory cortex also contribute to the disorder, in part because prior studies have not measured responses from the cortical regions most implicated in pitch perception in normal individuals. We addressed this question by measuring fMRI responses in 11 subjects with amusia and 11 age- and education-matched controls to a stimulus contrast that reliably identifies pitch-responsive regions in normal individuals: harmonic tones versus frequency-matched noise. Our findings demonstrate that amusic individuals with a substantial pitch perception deficit exhibit clusters of pitch-responsive voxels that are comparable in extent, selectivity, and anatomical location to those of control participants. We discuss possible explanations for why amusics might be impaired at perceiving pitch relations despite exhibiting normal fMRI responses to pitch in their auditory cortex: (1) individual neurons within the pitch-responsive region might exhibit abnormal tuning or temporal coding not detectable with fMRI, (2) anatomical tracts that link pitch-responsive regions to other brain areas (e.g., frontal cortex) might be altered, and (3) cortical regions outside of pitch-responsive cortex might be abnormal. The ability to identify pitch-responsive regions in individual amusic subjects will make it possible to ask more precise questions about their role in amusia in future work. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/362986-09$15.00/0.

Neuronal activity in primate auditory cortex during the performance of audiovisual tasks.

PubMed

Brosch, Michael; Selezneva, Elena; Scheich, Henning

2015-03-01

This study aimed at a deeper understanding of which cognitive and motivational aspects of tasks affect auditory cortical activity. To this end we trained two macaque monkeys to perform two different tasks on the same audiovisual stimulus and to do this with two different sizes of water rewards. The monkeys had to touch a bar after a tone had been turned on together with an LED, and to hold the bar until either the tone (auditory task) or the LED (visual task) was turned off. In 399 multiunits recorded from core fields of auditory cortex we confirmed that during task engagement neurons responded to auditory and non-auditory stimuli that were task-relevant, such as light and water. We also confirmed that firing rates slowly increased or decreased for several seconds during various phases of the tasks. Responses to non-auditory stimuli and slow firing changes were observed during both the auditory and the visual task, with some differences between them. There was also a weak task-dependent modulation of the responses to auditory stimuli. In contrast to these cognitive aspects, motivational aspects of the tasks were not reflected in the firing, except during delivery of the water reward. In conclusion, the present study supports our previous proposal that there are two response types in the auditory cortex that represent the timing and the type of auditory and non-auditory elements of a auditory tasks as well the association between elements. © 2015 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

A Circuit for Motor Cortical Modulation of Auditory Cortical Activity

PubMed Central

Nelson, Anders; Schneider, David M.; Takatoh, Jun; Sakurai, Katsuyasu; Wang, Fan

2013-01-01

Normal hearing depends on the ability to distinguish self-generated sounds from other sounds, and this ability is thought to involve neural circuits that convey copies of motor command signals to various levels of the auditory system. Although such interactions at the cortical level are believed to facilitate auditory comprehension during movements and drive auditory hallucinations in pathological states, the synaptic organization and function of circuitry linking the motor and auditory cortices remain unclear. Here we describe experiments in the mouse that characterize circuitry well suited to transmit motor-related signals to the auditory cortex. Using retrograde viral tracing, we established that neurons in superficial and deep layers of the medial agranular motor cortex (M2) project directly to the auditory cortex and that the axons of some of these deep-layer cells also target brainstem motor regions. Using in vitro whole-cell physiology, optogenetics, and pharmacology, we determined that M2 axons make excitatory synapses in the auditory cortex but exert a primarily suppressive effect on auditory cortical neuron activity mediated in part by feedforward inhibition involving parvalbumin-positive interneurons. Using in vivo intracellular physiology, optogenetics, and sound playback, we also found that directly activating M2 axon terminals in the auditory cortex suppresses spontaneous and stimulus-evoked synaptic activity in auditory cortical neurons and that this effect depends on the relative timing of motor cortical activity and auditory stimulation. These experiments delineate the structural and functional properties of a corticocortical circuit that could enable movement-related suppression of auditory cortical activity. PMID:24005287

Virtual acoustics displays

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wenzel, Elizabeth M.; Fisher, Scott S.; Stone, Philip K.; Foster, Scott H.

1991-01-01

The real time acoustic display capabilities are described which were developed for the Virtual Environment Workstation (VIEW) Project at NASA-Ames. The acoustic display is capable of generating localized acoustic cues in real time over headphones. An auditory symbology, a related collection of representational auditory 'objects' or 'icons', can be designed using ACE (Auditory Cue Editor), which links both discrete and continuously varying acoustic parameters with information or events in the display. During a given display scenario, the symbology can be dynamically coordinated in real time with 3-D visual objects, speech, and gestural displays. The types of displays feasible with the system range from simple warnings and alarms to the acoustic representation of multidimensional data or events.

Virtual acoustics displays

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wenzel, Elizabeth M.; Fisher, Scott S.; Stone, Philip K.; Foster, Scott H.

1991-03-01

The real time acoustic display capabilities are described which were developed for the Virtual Environment Workstation (VIEW) Project at NASA-Ames. The acoustic display is capable of generating localized acoustic cues in real time over headphones. An auditory symbology, a related collection of representational auditory 'objects' or 'icons', can be designed using ACE (Auditory Cue Editor), which links both discrete and continuously varying acoustic parameters with information or events in the display. During a given display scenario, the symbology can be dynamically coordinated in real time with 3-D visual objects, speech, and gestural displays. The types of displays feasible with the system range from simple warnings and alarms to the acoustic representation of multidimensional data or events.

Weak Responses to Auditory Feedback Perturbation during Articulation in Persons Who Stutter: Evidence for Abnormal Auditory-Motor Transformation

PubMed Central

Cai, Shanqing; Beal, Deryk S.; Ghosh, Satrajit S.; Tiede, Mark K.; Guenther, Frank H.; Perkell, Joseph S.

2012-01-01

Previous empirical observations have led researchers to propose that auditory feedback (the auditory perception of self-produced sounds when speaking) functions abnormally in the speech motor systems of persons who stutter (PWS). Researchers have theorized that an important neural basis of stuttering is the aberrant integration of auditory information into incipient speech motor commands. Because of the circumstantial support for these hypotheses and the differences and contradictions between them, there is a need for carefully designed experiments that directly examine auditory-motor integration during speech production in PWS. In the current study, we used real-time manipulation of auditory feedback to directly investigate whether the speech motor system of PWS utilizes auditory feedback abnormally during articulation and to characterize potential deficits of this auditory-motor integration. Twenty-one PWS and 18 fluent control participants were recruited. Using a short-latency formant-perturbation system, we examined participants’ compensatory responses to unanticipated perturbation of auditory feedback of the first formant frequency during the production of the monophthong [ε]. The PWS showed compensatory responses that were qualitatively similar to the controls’ and had close-to-normal latencies (∼150 ms), but the magnitudes of their responses were substantially and significantly smaller than those of the control participants (by 47% on average, p<0.05). Measurements of auditory acuity indicate that the weaker-than-normal compensatory responses in PWS were not attributable to a deficit in low-level auditory processing. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that stuttering is associated with functional defects in the inverse models responsible for the transformation from the domain of auditory targets and auditory error information into the domain of speech motor commands. PMID:22911857

Affect in Human-Robot Interaction

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-01-01

is capable of learning and producing a large number of facial expressions based on Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System, FACS (Ekman and Friesen 1978... tactile (pushed, stroked, etc.), auditory (loud sound), temperature and olfactory (alcohol, smoke, etc.). The personality of the robot consists of...robot’s behavior through decision-making, learning , or action selection, a number of researchers used the fuzzy logic approach to emotion generation

Musical Experience, Sensorineural Auditory Processing, and Reading Subskills in Adults.

PubMed

Tichko, Parker; Skoe, Erika

2018-04-27

Developmental research suggests that sensorineural auditory processing, reading subskills (e.g., phonological awareness and rapid naming), and musical experience are related during early periods of reading development. Interestingly, recent work suggests that these relations may extend into adulthood, with indices of sensorineural auditory processing relating to global reading ability. However, it is largely unknown whether sensorineural auditory processing relates to specific reading subskills, such as phonological awareness and rapid naming, as well as musical experience in mature readers. To address this question, we recorded electrophysiological responses to a repeating click (auditory stimulus) in a sample of adult readers. We then investigated relations between electrophysiological responses to sound, reading subskills, and musical experience in this same set of adult readers. Analyses suggest that sensorineural auditory processing, reading subskills, and musical experience are related in adulthood, with faster neural conduction times and greater musical experience associated with stronger rapid-naming skills. These results are similar to the developmental findings that suggest reading subskills are related to sensorineural auditory processing and musical experience in children.

Auditory temporal processing skills in musicians with dyslexia.

PubMed

Bishop-Liebler, Paula; Welch, Graham; Huss, Martina; Thomson, Jennifer M; Goswami, Usha

2014-08-01

The core cognitive difficulty in developmental dyslexia involves phonological processing, but adults and children with dyslexia also have sensory impairments. Impairments in basic auditory processing show particular links with phonological impairments, and recent studies with dyslexic children across languages reveal a relationship between auditory temporal processing and sensitivity to rhythmic timing and speech rhythm. As rhythm is explicit in music, musical training might have a beneficial effect on the auditory perception of acoustic cues to rhythm in dyslexia. Here we took advantage of the presence of musicians with and without dyslexia in musical conservatoires, comparing their auditory temporal processing abilities with those of dyslexic non-musicians matched for cognitive ability. Musicians with dyslexia showed equivalent auditory sensitivity to musicians without dyslexia and also showed equivalent rhythm perception. The data support the view that extensive rhythmic experience initiated during childhood (here in the form of music training) can affect basic auditory processing skills which are found to be deficient in individuals with dyslexia. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

What You See Isn’t Always What You Get: Auditory Word Signals Trump Consciously Perceived Words in Lexical Access

PubMed Central

Ostrand, Rachel; Blumstein, Sheila E.; Ferreira, Victor S.; Morgan, James L.

2016-01-01

Human speech perception often includes both an auditory and visual component. A conflict in these signals can result in the McGurk illusion, in which the listener perceives a fusion of the two streams, implying that information from both has been integrated. We report two experiments investigating whether auditory-visual integration of speech occurs before or after lexical access, and whether the visual signal influences lexical access at all. Subjects were presented with McGurk or Congruent primes and performed a lexical decision task on related or unrelated targets. Although subjects perceived the McGurk illusion, McGurk and Congruent primes with matching real-word auditory signals equivalently primed targets that were semantically related to the auditory signal, but not targets related to the McGurk percept. We conclude that the time course of auditory-visual integration is dependent on the lexicality of the auditory and visual input signals, and that listeners can lexically access one word and yet consciously perceive another. PMID:27011021

Application of auditory signals to the operation of an agricultural vehicle: results of pilot testing.

PubMed

Karimi, D; Mondor, T A; Mann, D D

2008-01-01

The operation of agricultural vehicles is a multitask activity that requires proper distribution of attentional resources. Human factors theories suggest that proper utilization of the operator's sensory capacities under such conditions can improve the operator's performance and reduce the operator's workload. Using a tractor driving simulator, this study investigated whether auditory cues can be used to improve performance of the operator of an agricultural vehicle. Steering of a vehicle was simulated in visual mode (where driving error was shown to the subject using a lightbar) and in auditory mode (where a pair of speakers were used to convey the driving error direction and/or magnitude). A secondary task was also introduced in order to simulate the monitoring of an attached machine. This task included monitoring of two identical displays, which were placed behind the simulator, and responding to them, when needed, using a joystick. This task was also implemented in auditory mode (in which a beep signaled the subject to push the proper button when a response was needed) and in visual mode (in which there was no beep and visual, monitoring of the displays was necessary). Two levels of difficulty of the monitoring task were used. Deviation of the simulated vehicle from a desired straight line was used as the measure of performance in the steering task, and reaction time to the displays was used as the measure of performance in the monitoring task. Results of the experiments showed that steering performance was significantly better when steering was a visual task (driving errors were 40% to 60% of the driving errors in auditory mode), although subjective evaluations showed that auditory steering could be easier, depending on the implementation. Performance in the monitoring task was significantly better for auditory implementation (reaction time was approximately 6 times shorter), and this result was strongly supported by subjective ratings. The majority of the subjects preferred the combination of visual mode for the steering task and auditory mode for the monitoring task.

Speech Compensation for Time-Scale-Modified Auditory Feedback

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ogane, Rintaro; Honda, Masaaki

2014-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine speech compensation in response to time-scale-modified auditory feedback during the transition of the semivowel for a target utterance of /ija/. Method: Each utterance session consisted of 10 control trials in the normal feedback condition followed by 20 perturbed trials in the modified auditory…

Auditory Attention to Frequency and Time: An Analogy to Visual Local-Global Stimuli

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Justus, Timothy; List, Alexandra

2005-01-01

Two priming experiments demonstrated exogenous attentional persistence to the fundamental auditory dimensions of frequency (Experiment 1) and time (Experiment 2). In a divided-attention task, participants responded to an independent dimension, the identification of three-tone sequence patterns, for both prime and probe stimuli. The stimuli were…

Oscillatory support for rapid frequency change processing in infants.

PubMed

Musacchia, Gabriella; Choudhury, Naseem A; Ortiz-Mantilla, Silvia; Realpe-Bonilla, Teresa; Roesler, Cynthia P; Benasich, April A

2013-11-01

Rapid auditory processing and auditory change detection abilities are crucial aspects of speech and language development, particularly in the first year of life. Animal models and adult studies suggest that oscillatory synchrony, and in particular low-frequency oscillations play key roles in this process. We hypothesize that infant perception of rapid pitch and timing changes is mediated, at least in part, by oscillatory mechanisms. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), source localization and time-frequency analysis of event-related oscillations (EROs), we examined the neural substrates of rapid auditory processing in 4-month-olds. During a standard oddball paradigm, infants listened to tone pairs with invariant standard (STD, 800-800 Hz) and variant deviant (DEV, 800-1200 Hz) pitch. STD and DEV tone pairs were first presented in a block with a short inter-stimulus interval (ISI) (Rapid Rate: 70 ms ISI), followed by a block of stimuli with a longer ISI (Control Rate: 300 ms ISI). Results showed greater ERP peak amplitude in response to the DEV tone in both conditions and later and larger peaks during Rapid Rate presentation, compared to the Control condition. Sources of neural activity, localized to right and left auditory regions, showed larger and faster activation in the right hemisphere for both rate conditions. Time-frequency analysis of the source activity revealed clusters of theta band enhancement to the DEV tone in right auditory cortex for both conditions. Left auditory activity was enhanced only during Rapid Rate presentation. These data suggest that local low-frequency oscillatory synchrony underlies rapid processing and can robustly index auditory perception in young infants. Furthermore, left hemisphere recruitment during rapid frequency change discrimination suggests a difference in the spectral and temporal resolution of right and left hemispheres at a very young age. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Experiments on Auditory-Visual Perception of Sentences by Users of Unilateral, Bimodal, and Bilateral Cochlear Implants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dorman, Michael F.; Liss, Julie; Wang, Shuai; Berisha, Visar; Ludwig, Cimarron; Natale, Sarah Cook

2016-01-01

Purpose: Five experiments probed auditory-visual (AV) understanding of sentences by users of cochlear implants (CIs). Method: Sentence material was presented in auditory (A), visual (V), and AV test conditions to listeners with normal hearing and CI users. Results: (a) Most CI users report that most of the time, they have access to both A and V…

Plasticity in neuromagnetic cortical responses suggests enhanced auditory object representation

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Auditory perceptual learning persistently modifies neural networks in the central nervous system. Central auditory processing comprises a hierarchy of sound analysis and integration, which transforms an acoustical signal into a meaningful object for perception. Based on latencies and source locations of auditory evoked responses, we investigated which stage of central processing undergoes neuroplastic changes when gaining auditory experience during passive listening and active perceptual training. Young healthy volunteers participated in a five-day training program to identify two pre-voiced versions of the stop-consonant syllable ‘ba’, which is an unusual speech sound to English listeners. Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) brain responses were recorded during two pre-training and one post-training sessions. Underlying cortical sources were localized, and the temporal dynamics of auditory evoked responses were analyzed. Results After both passive listening and active training, the amplitude of the P2m wave with latency of 200 ms increased considerably. By this latency, the integration of stimulus features into an auditory object for further conscious perception is considered to be complete. Therefore the P2m changes were discussed in the light of auditory object representation. Moreover, P2m sources were localized in anterior auditory association cortex, which is part of the antero-ventral pathway for object identification. The amplitude of the earlier N1m wave, which is related to processing of sensory information, did not change over the time course of the study. Conclusion The P2m amplitude increase and its persistence over time constitute a neuroplastic change. The P2m gain likely reflects enhanced object representation after stimulus experience and training, which enables listeners to improve their ability for scrutinizing fine differences in pre-voicing time. Different trajectories of brain and behaviour changes suggest that the preceding effect of a P2m increase relates to brain processes, which are necessary precursors of perceptual learning. Cautious discussion is required when interpreting the finding of a P2 amplitude increase between recordings before and after training and learning. PMID:24314010

Different patterns of modality dominance across development.

PubMed

Barnhart, Wesley R; Rivera, Samuel; Robinson, Christopher W

2018-01-01

The present study sought to better understand how children, young adults, and older adults attend and respond to multisensory information. In Experiment 1, young adults were presented with two spoken words, two pictures, or two word-picture pairings and they had to determine if the two stimuli/pairings were exactly the same or different. Pairing the words and pictures together slowed down visual but not auditory response times and delayed the latency of first fixations, both of which are consistent with a proposed mechanism underlying auditory dominance. Experiment 2 examined the development of modality dominance in children, young adults, and older adults. Cross-modal presentation attenuated visual accuracy and slowed down visual response times in children, whereas older adults showed the opposite pattern, with cross-modal presentation attenuating auditory accuracy and slowing down auditory response times. Cross-modal presentation also delayed first fixations in children and young adults. Mechanisms underlying modality dominance and multisensory processing are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Temporal Integration of Auditory Information Is Invariant to Temporal Grouping Cues1,2,3

PubMed Central

Tsunada, Joji

2015-01-01

Abstract Auditory perception depends on the temporal structure of incoming acoustic stimuli. Here, we examined whether a temporal manipulation that affects the perceptual grouping also affects the time dependence of decisions regarding those stimuli. We designed a novel discrimination task that required human listeners to decide whether a sequence of tone bursts was increasing or decreasing in frequency. We manipulated temporal perceptual-grouping cues by changing the time interval between the tone bursts, which led to listeners hearing the sequences as a single sound for short intervals or discrete sounds for longer intervals. Despite these strong perceptual differences, this manipulation did not affect the efficiency of how auditory information was integrated over time to form a decision. Instead, the grouping manipulation affected subjects’ speed−accuracy trade-offs. These results indicate that the temporal dynamics of evidence accumulation for auditory perceptual decisions can be invariant to manipulations that affect the perceptual grouping of the evidence. PMID:26464975

The processing of auditory and visual recognition of self-stimuli.

PubMed

Hughes, Susan M; Nicholson, Shevon E

2010-12-01

This study examined self-recognition processing in both the auditory and visual modalities by determining how comparable hearing a recording of one's own voice was to seeing photograph of one's own face. We also investigated whether the simultaneous presentation of auditory and visual self-stimuli would either facilitate or inhibit self-identification. Ninety-one participants completed reaction-time tasks of self-recognition when presented with their own faces, own voices, and combinations of the two. Reaction time and errors made when responding with both the right and left hand were recorded to determine if there were lateralization effects on these tasks. Our findings showed that visual self-recognition for facial photographs appears to be superior to auditory self-recognition for voice recordings. Furthermore, a combined presentation of one's own face and voice appeared to inhibit rather than facilitate self-recognition and there was a left-hand advantage for reaction time on the combined-presentation tasks. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Idealized Computational Models for Auditory Receptive Fields

PubMed Central

Lindeberg, Tony; Friberg, Anders

2015-01-01

We present a theory by which idealized models of auditory receptive fields can be derived in a principled axiomatic manner, from a set of structural properties to (i) enable invariance of receptive field responses under natural sound transformations and (ii) ensure internal consistency between spectro-temporal receptive fields at different temporal and spectral scales. For defining a time-frequency transformation of a purely temporal sound signal, it is shown that the framework allows for a new way of deriving the Gabor and Gammatone filters as well as a novel family of generalized Gammatone filters, with additional degrees of freedom to obtain different trade-offs between the spectral selectivity and the temporal delay of time-causal temporal window functions. When applied to the definition of a second-layer of receptive fields from a spectrogram, it is shown that the framework leads to two canonical families of spectro-temporal receptive fields, in terms of spectro-temporal derivatives of either spectro-temporal Gaussian kernels for non-causal time or a cascade of time-causal first-order integrators over the temporal domain and a Gaussian filter over the logspectral domain. For each filter family, the spectro-temporal receptive fields can be either separable over the time-frequency domain or be adapted to local glissando transformations that represent variations in logarithmic frequencies over time. Within each domain of either non-causal or time-causal time, these receptive field families are derived by uniqueness from the assumptions. It is demonstrated how the presented framework allows for computation of basic auditory features for audio processing and that it leads to predictions about auditory receptive fields with good qualitative similarity to biological receptive fields measured in the inferior colliculus (ICC) and primary auditory cortex (A1) of mammals. PMID:25822973

Evaluation of an Imputed Pitch Velocity Model of the Auditory Kappa Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henry, Molly J.; McAuley, J. Devin

2009-01-01

Three experiments evaluated an imputed pitch velocity model of the auditory kappa effect. Listeners heard 3-tone sequences and judged the timing of the middle (target) tone relative to the timing of the 1st and 3rd (bounding) tones. Experiment 1 held pitch constant but varied the time (T) interval between bounding tones (T = 728, 1,000, or 1,600…

Enhanced Excitatory Connectivity and Disturbed Sound Processing in the Auditory Brainstem of Fragile X Mice.

PubMed

Garcia-Pino, Elisabet; Gessele, Nikodemus; Koch, Ursula

2017-08-02

Hypersensitivity to sounds is one of the prevalent symptoms in individuals with Fragile X syndrome (FXS). It manifests behaviorally early during development and is often used as a landmark for treatment efficacy. However, the physiological mechanisms and circuit-level alterations underlying this aberrant behavior remain poorly understood. Using the mouse model of FXS ( Fmr1 KO ), we demonstrate that functional maturation of auditory brainstem synapses is impaired in FXS. Fmr1 KO mice showed a greatly enhanced excitatory synaptic input strength in neurons of the lateral superior olive (LSO), a prominent auditory brainstem nucleus, which integrates ipsilateral excitation and contralateral inhibition to compute interaural level differences. Conversely, the glycinergic, inhibitory input properties remained unaffected. The enhanced excitation was the result of an increased number of cochlear nucleus fibers converging onto one LSO neuron, without changing individual synapse properties. Concomitantly, immunolabeling of excitatory ending markers revealed an increase in the immunolabeled area, supporting abnormally elevated excitatory input numbers. Intrinsic firing properties were only slightly enhanced. In line with the disturbed development of LSO circuitry, auditory processing was also affected in adult Fmr1 KO mice as shown with single-unit recordings of LSO neurons. These processing deficits manifested as an increase in firing rate, a broadening of the frequency response area, and a shift in the interaural level difference function of LSO neurons. Our results suggest that this aberrant synaptic development of auditory brainstem circuits might be a major underlying cause of the auditory processing deficits in FXS. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is the most common inheritable form of intellectual impairment, including autism. A core symptom of FXS is extreme sensitivity to loud sounds. This is one reason why individuals with FXS tend to avoid social interactions, contributing to their isolation. Here, a mouse model of FXS was used to investigate the auditory brainstem where basic sound information is first processed. Loss of the Fragile X mental retardation protein leads to excessive excitatory compared with inhibitory inputs in neurons extracting information about sound levels. Functionally, this elevated excitation results in increased firing rates, and abnormal coding of frequency and binaural sound localization cues. Imbalanced early-stage sound level processing could partially explain the auditory processing deficits in FXS. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/377403-17$15.00/0.

Perceptual learning in temporal discrimination: asymmetric cross-modal transfer from audition to vision.

PubMed

Bratzke, Daniel; Seifried, Tanja; Ulrich, Rolf

2012-08-01

This study assessed possible cross-modal transfer effects of training in a temporal discrimination task from vision to audition as well as from audition to vision. We employed a pretest-training-post-test design including a control group that performed only the pretest and the post-test. Trained participants showed better discrimination performance with their trained interval than the control group. This training effect transferred to the other modality only for those participants who had been trained with auditory stimuli. The present study thus demonstrates for the first time that training on temporal discrimination within the auditory modality can transfer to the visual modality but not vice versa. This finding represents a novel illustration of auditory dominance in temporal processing and is consistent with the notion that time is primarily encoded in the auditory system.

Behavioural benefits of multisensory processing in ferrets.

PubMed

Hammond-Kenny, Amy; Bajo, Victoria M; King, Andrew J; Nodal, Fernando R

2017-01-01

Enhanced detection and discrimination, along with faster reaction times, are the most typical behavioural manifestations of the brain's capacity to integrate multisensory signals arising from the same object. In this study, we examined whether multisensory behavioural gains are observable across different components of the localization response that are potentially under the command of distinct brain regions. We measured the ability of ferrets to localize unisensory (auditory or visual) and spatiotemporally coincident auditory-visual stimuli of different durations that were presented from one of seven locations spanning the frontal hemifield. During the localization task, we recorded the head movements made following stimulus presentation, as a metric for assessing the initial orienting response of the ferrets, as well as the subsequent choice of which target location to approach to receive a reward. Head-orienting responses to auditory-visual stimuli were more accurate and faster than those made to visual but not auditory targets, suggesting that these movements were guided principally by sound alone. In contrast, approach-to-target localization responses were more accurate and faster to spatially congruent auditory-visual stimuli throughout the frontal hemifield than to either visual or auditory stimuli alone. Race model inequality analysis of head-orienting reaction times and approach-to-target response times indicates that different processes, probability summation and neural integration, respectively, are likely to be responsible for the effects of multisensory stimulation on these two measures of localization behaviour. © 2016 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Local and Global Auditory Processing: Behavioral and ERP Evidence

PubMed Central

Sanders, Lisa D.; Poeppel, David

2007-01-01

Differential processing of local and global visual features is well established. Global precedence effects, differences in event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited when attention is focused on local versus global levels, and hemispheric specialization for local and global features all indicate that relative scale of detail is an important distinction in visual processing. Observing analogous differential processing of local and global auditory information would suggest that scale of detail is a general organizational principle of the brain. However, to date the research on auditory local and global processing has primarily focused on music perception or on the perceptual analysis of relatively higher and lower frequencies. The study described here suggests that temporal aspects of auditory stimuli better capture the local-global distinction. By combining short (40 ms) frequency modulated tones in series to create global auditory patterns (500 ms), we independently varied whether pitch increased or decreased over short time spans (local) and longer time spans (global). Accuracy and reaction time measures revealed better performance for global judgments and asymmetric interference that were modulated by amount of pitch change. ERPs recorded while participants listened to identical sounds and indicated the direction of pitch change at the local or global levels provided evidence for differential processing similar to that found in ERP studies employing hierarchical visual stimuli. ERP measures failed to provide evidence for lateralization of local and global auditory perception, but differences in distributions suggest preferential processing in more ventral and dorsal areas respectively. PMID:17113115

Effect of dual task activity on reaction time in males and females.

PubMed

Kaur, Manjinder; Nagpal, Sangeeta; Singh, Harpreet; Suhalka, M L

2014-01-01

The present study was designed to compare the auditory and visual reaction time on an Audiovisual Reaction Time Machine with the concomitant use of mobile phones in 52 women and 30 men in the age group of 18-40 years. Males showed significantly (p < 0.05) shorter reaction times, both auditory and visual, than females both during single task and multi task performance. But the percentage increase from their respective baseline auditory reaction times, was more in men than women during multitasking, in hand held (24.38% & 18.70% respectively) and hands free modes (36.40% & 18.40% respectively) of the use of cell phone. VRT increased non significantly during multitasking in both the groups. However, the multitasking per se has detrimental effect on the reaction times in both the groups studied. Hence, it should best be avoided in crucial and high attention demanding tasks like driving.

Testing Convergent Evolution in Auditory Processing Genes between Echolocating Mammals and the Aye-Aye, a Percussive-Foraging Primate.

PubMed

Bankoff, Richard J; Jerjos, Michael; Hohman, Baily; Lauterbur, M Elise; Kistler, Logan; Perry, George H

2017-07-01

Several taxonomically distinct mammalian groups-certain microbats and cetaceans (e.g., dolphins)-share both morphological adaptations related to echolocation behavior and strong signatures of convergent evolution at the amino acid level across seven genes related to auditory processing. Aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) are nocturnal lemurs with a specialized auditory processing system. Aye-ayes tap rapidly along the surfaces of trees, listening to reverberations to identify the mines of wood-boring insect larvae; this behavior has been hypothesized to functionally mimic echolocation. Here we investigated whether there are signals of convergence in auditory processing genes between aye-ayes and known mammalian echolocators. We developed a computational pipeline (Basic Exon Assembly Tool) that produces consensus sequences for regions of interest from shotgun genomic sequencing data for nonmodel organisms without requiring de novo genome assembly. We reconstructed complete coding region sequences for the seven convergent echolocating bat-dolphin genes for aye-ayes and another lemur. We compared sequences from these two lemurs in a phylogenetic framework with those of bat and dolphin echolocators and appropriate nonecholocating outgroups. Our analysis reaffirms the existence of amino acid convergence at these loci among echolocating bats and dolphins; some methods also detected signals of convergence between echolocating bats and both mice and elephants. However, we observed no significant signal of amino acid convergence between aye-ayes and echolocating bats and dolphins, suggesting that aye-aye tap-foraging auditory adaptations represent distinct evolutionary innovations. These results are also consistent with a developing consensus that convergent behavioral ecology does not reliably predict convergent molecular evolution. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Development of a test for recording both visual and auditory reaction times, potentially useful for future studies in patients on opioids therapy

PubMed Central

Miceli, Luca; Bednarova, Rym; Rizzardo, Alessandro; Samogin, Valentina; Della Rocca, Giorgio

2015-01-01

Objective Italian Road Law limits driving while undergoing treatment with certain kinds of medication. Here, we report the results of a test, run as a smartphone application (app), assessing auditory and visual reflexes in a sample of 300 drivers. The scope of the test is to provide both the police force and medication-taking drivers with a tool that can evaluate the individual’s capacity to drive safely. Methods The test is run as an app for Apple iOS and Android mobile operating systems and facilitates four different reaction times to be assessed: simple visual and auditory reaction times and complex visual and auditory reaction times. Reference deciles were created for the test results obtained from a sample of 300 Italian subjects. Results lying within the first three deciles were considered as incompatible with safe driving capabilities. Results Performance is both age-related (r>0.5) and sex-related (female reaction times were significantly slower than those recorded for male subjects, P<0.05). Only 21% of the subjects were able to perform all four tests correctly. Conclusion We developed and fine-tuned a test called Safedrive that measures visual and auditory reaction times through a smartphone mobile device; the scope of the test is two-fold: to provide a clinical tool for the assessment of the driving capacity of individuals taking pain relief medication; to promote the sense of social responsibility in drivers who are on medication and provide these individuals with a means of testing their own capacity to drive safely. PMID:25709406

Development of a test for recording both visual and auditory reaction times, potentially useful for future studies in patients on opioids therapy.

PubMed

Miceli, Luca; Bednarova, Rym; Rizzardo, Alessandro; Samogin, Valentina; Della Rocca, Giorgio

2015-01-01

Italian Road Law limits driving while undergoing treatment with certain kinds of medication. Here, we report the results of a test, run as a smartphone application (app), assessing auditory and visual reflexes in a sample of 300 drivers. The scope of the test is to provide both the police force and medication-taking drivers with a tool that can evaluate the individual's capacity to drive safely. The test is run as an app for Apple iOS and Android mobile operating systems and facilitates four different reaction times to be assessed: simple visual and auditory reaction times and complex visual and auditory reaction times. Reference deciles were created for the test results obtained from a sample of 300 Italian subjects. Results lying within the first three deciles were considered as incompatible with safe driving capabilities. Performance is both age-related (r>0.5) and sex-related (female reaction times were significantly slower than those recorded for male subjects, P<0.05). Only 21% of the subjects were able to perform all four tests correctly. We developed and fine-tuned a test called Safedrive that measures visual and auditory reaction times through a smartphone mobile device; the scope of the test is two-fold: to provide a clinical tool for the assessment of the driving capacity of individuals taking pain relief medication; to promote the sense of social responsibility in drivers who are on medication and provide these individuals with a means of testing their own capacity to drive safely.

Human engineer's guide to auditory displays. Volume 2: Elements of signal reception and resolution affecting auditory displays

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mulligan, B. E.; Goodman, L. S.; McBride, D. K.; Mitchell, T. M.; Crosby, T. N.

1984-08-01

This work reviews the areas of monaural and binaural signal detection, auditory discrimination and localization, and reaction times to acoustic signals. The review was written from the perspective of human engineering and focuses primarily on auditory processing of information contained in acoustic signals. The impetus for this effort was to establish a data base to be utilized in the design and evaluation of acoustic displays. Appendix 1 also contains citations of the scientific literature on which was based the answers to each question. There are nineteen questions and answers, and more than two hundred citations contained in the list of references given in Appendix 2. This is one of two related works, the other of which reviewed the literature in the areas of auditory attention, recognition memory, and auditory perception of patterns, pitch, and loudness.

The Perception of Auditory Motion

PubMed Central

Leung, Johahn

2016-01-01

The growing availability of efficient and relatively inexpensive virtual auditory display technology has provided new research platforms to explore the perception of auditory motion. At the same time, deployment of these technologies in command and control as well as in entertainment roles is generating an increasing need to better understand the complex processes underlying auditory motion perception. This is a particularly challenging processing feat because it involves the rapid deconvolution of the relative change in the locations of sound sources produced by rotational and translations of the head in space (self-motion) to enable the perception of actual source motion. The fact that we perceive our auditory world to be stable despite almost continual movement of the head demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of this process. This review examines the acoustical basis of auditory motion perception and a wide range of psychophysical, electrophysiological, and cortical imaging studies that have probed the limits and possible mechanisms underlying this perception. PMID:27094029

A Brain System for Auditory Working Memory.

PubMed

Kumar, Sukhbinder; Joseph, Sabine; Gander, Phillip E; Barascud, Nicolas; Halpern, Andrea R; Griffiths, Timothy D

2016-04-20

The brain basis for auditory working memory, the process of actively maintaining sounds in memory over short periods of time, is controversial. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in human participants, we demonstrate that the maintenance of single tones in memory is associated with activation in auditory cortex. In addition, sustained activation was observed in hippocampus and inferior frontal gyrus. Multivoxel pattern analysis showed that patterns of activity in auditory cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus distinguished the tone that was maintained in memory. Functional connectivity during maintenance was demonstrated between auditory cortex and both the hippocampus and inferior frontal cortex. The data support a system for auditory working memory based on the maintenance of sound-specific representations in auditory cortex by projections from higher-order areas, including the hippocampus and frontal cortex. In this work, we demonstrate a system for maintaining sound in working memory based on activity in auditory cortex, hippocampus, and frontal cortex, and functional connectivity among them. Specifically, our work makes three advances from the previous work. First, we robustly demonstrate hippocampal involvement in all phases of auditory working memory (encoding, maintenance, and retrieval): the role of hippocampus in working memory is controversial. Second, using a pattern classification technique, we show that activity in the auditory cortex and inferior frontal gyrus is specific to the maintained tones in working memory. Third, we show long-range connectivity of auditory cortex to hippocampus and frontal cortex, which may be responsible for keeping such representations active during working memory maintenance. Copyright © 2016 Kumar et al.

Involvement of the human midbrain and thalamus in auditory deviance detection.

PubMed

Cacciaglia, Raffaele; Escera, Carles; Slabu, Lavinia; Grimm, Sabine; Sanjuán, Ana; Ventura-Campos, Noelia; Ávila, César

2015-02-01

Prompt detection of unexpected changes in the sensory environment is critical for survival. In the auditory domain, the occurrence of a rare stimulus triggers a cascade of neurophysiological events spanning over multiple time-scales. Besides the role of the mismatch negativity (MMN), whose cortical generators are located in supratemporal areas, cumulative evidence suggests that violations of auditory regularities can be detected earlier and lower in the auditory hierarchy. Recent human scalp recordings have shown signatures of auditory mismatch responses at shorter latencies than those of the MMN. Moreover, animal single-unit recordings have demonstrated that rare stimulus changes cause a release from stimulus-specific adaptation in neurons of the primary auditory cortex, the medial geniculate body (MGB), and the inferior colliculus (IC). Although these data suggest that change detection is a pervasive property of the auditory system which may reside upstream cortical sites, direct evidence for the involvement of subcortical stages in the human auditory novelty system is lacking. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging during a frequency oddball paradigm, we here report that auditory deviance detection occurs in the MGB and the IC of healthy human participants. By implementing a random condition controlling for neural refractoriness effects, we show that auditory change detection in these subcortical stations involves the encoding of statistical regularities from the acoustic input. These results provide the first direct evidence of the existence of multiple mismatch detectors nested at different levels along the human ascending auditory pathway. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Development of Auditory Perception in Children Following Auditory Brainstem Implantation

PubMed Central

Colletti, Liliana; Shannon, Robert V.; Colletti, Vittorio

2014-01-01

Auditory brainstem implants (ABI) can provide useful auditory perception and language development in deaf children who are not able to use a cochlear implant (CI). We prospectively followed-up a consecutive group of 64 deaf children up to 12 years following ABI implantation. The etiology of deafness in these children was: cochlear nerve aplasia in 49, auditory neuropathy in 1, cochlear malformations in 8, bilateral cochlear post-meningitic ossification in 3, NF2 in 2, and bilateral cochlear fractures due to a head injury in 1. Thirty five children had other congenital non-auditory disabilities. Twenty two children had previous CIs with no benefit. Fifty eight children were fitted with the Cochlear 24 ABI device and six with the MedEl ABI device and all children followed the same rehabilitation program. Auditory perceptual abilities were evaluated on the Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) scale. No child was lost to follow-up and there were no exclusions from the study. All children showed significant improvement in auditory perception with implant experience. Seven children (11%) were able to achieve the highest score on the CAP test; they were able to converse on the telephone within 3 years of implantation. Twenty children (31.3%) achieved open set speech recognition (CAP score of 5 or greater) and 30 (46.9%) achieved a CAP level of 4 or greater. Of the 29 children without non-auditory disabilities, 18 (62%) achieved a CAP score of 5 or greater with the ABI. All children showed continued improvements in auditory skills over time. The long-term results of ABI implantation reveal significant auditory benefit in most children, and open set auditory recognition in many. PMID:25377987

Brainstem processing following unilateral and bilateral hearing-aid amplification.

PubMed

Dawes, Piers; Munro, Kevin J; Kalluri, Sridhar; Edwards, Brent

2013-04-17

Following previous research suggesting hearing-aid experience may induce functional plasticity at the peripheral level of the auditory system, click-evoked auditory brainstem response was recorded at first fitting and 12 weeks after hearing-aid use by unilateral and bilateral hearing-aid users. A control group of experienced hearing-aid users was tested over a similar time scale. No significant alterations in auditory brainstem response latency or amplitude were identified in any group. This does not support the hypothesis of plastic changes in the peripheral auditory system induced by hearing-aid use for 12 weeks.

Linking prenatal experience to the emerging musical mind.

PubMed

Ullal-Gupta, Sangeeta; Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden, Christina M; Tichko, Parker; Lahav, Amir; Hannon, Erin E

2013-09-03

The musical brain is built over time through experience with a multitude of sounds in the auditory environment. However, learning the melodies, timbres, and rhythms unique to the music and language of one's culture begins already within the mother's womb during the third trimester of human development. We review evidence that the intrauterine auditory environment plays a key role in shaping later auditory development and musical preferences. We describe evidence that externally and internally generated sounds influence the developing fetus, and argue that such prenatal auditory experience may set the trajectory for the development of the musical mind.

The auditory comprehension changes over time after sport-related concussion can indicate multisensory processing dysfunctions.

PubMed

Białuńska, Anita; Salvatore, Anthony P

2017-12-01

Although science findings and treatment approaches of a concussion have changed in recent years, there continue to be challenges in understanding the nature of the post-concussion behavior. There is growing a body of evidence that some deficits can be related to an impaired auditory processing. To assess auditory comprehension changes over time following sport-related concussion (SRC) in young athletes. A prospective, repeated measures mixed-design was used. A sample of concussed athletes ( n  = 137) and the control group consisted of age-matched, non-concussed athletes ( n  = 143) were administered Subtest VIII of the Computerized-Revised Token Test (C-RTT). The 88 concussed athletes selected for final analysis (neither previous history of brain injury, neurological, psychiatric problems, nor auditory deficits) were evaluated after injury during three sessions (PC1, PC2, and PC3); controls were tested once. Between- and within-group comparisons using RMANOVA were performed on the C-RTT Efficiency Score (ES). ES of the SRC athletes group improved over consecutive testing sessions ( F  =   14.7, p  <   .001), while post-hoc analysis showed that PC1 results differed from PC2 and PC3 ( ts  ≥ 4.0, ps  < .001), but PC2 and PC3 C-RTT ES did not change statistically ( t  =   0.6, p =  .557). The SRC athletes demonstrated lower ES for all test session when compared to the control group ( ts  > 2.0, Ps <.01). Dysfunctional auditory comprehension performance following a concussion improved over time, but after the second testing session improved performance slowed, especially in terms of its timing. Yet, not only auditory processing but also sensorimotor integration and/or motor execution can be compromised after a concussion.

Auditory and Visual Differences in Time Perception? An Investigation from a Developmental Perspective with Neuropsychological Tests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zelanti, Pierre S.; Droit-Volet, Sylvie

2012-01-01

Adults and children (5- and 8-year-olds) performed a temporal bisection task with either auditory or visual signals and either a short (0.5-1.0s) or long (4.0-8.0s) duration range. Their working memory and attentional capacities were assessed by a series of neuropsychological tests administered in both the auditory and visual modalities. Results…

Elevated audiovisual temporal interaction in patients with migraine without aura

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Photophobia and phonophobia are the most prominent symptoms in patients with migraine without aura. Hypersensitivity to visual stimuli can lead to greater hypersensitivity to auditory stimuli, which suggests that the interaction between visual and auditory stimuli may play an important role in the pathogenesis of migraine. However, audiovisual temporal interactions in migraine have not been well studied. Therefore, our aim was to examine auditory and visual interactions in migraine. Methods In this study, visual, auditory, and audiovisual stimuli with different temporal intervals between the visual and auditory stimuli were randomly presented to the left or right hemispace. During this time, the participants were asked to respond promptly to target stimuli. We used cumulative distribution functions to analyze the response times as a measure of audiovisual integration. Results Our results showed that audiovisual integration was significantly elevated in the migraineurs compared with the normal controls (p < 0.05); however, audiovisual suppression was weaker in the migraineurs compared with the normal controls (p < 0.05). Conclusions Our findings further objectively support the notion that migraineurs without aura are hypersensitive to external visual and auditory stimuli. Our study offers a new quantitative and objective method to evaluate hypersensitivity to audio-visual stimuli in patients with migraine. PMID:24961903

Is sensorimotor BCI performance influenced differently by mono, stereo, or 3-D auditory feedback?

PubMed

McCreadie, Karl A; Coyle, Damien H; Prasad, Girijesh

2014-05-01

Imagination of movement can be used as a control method for a brain-computer interface (BCI) allowing communication for the physically impaired. Visual feedback within such a closed loop system excludes those with visual problems and hence there is a need for alternative sensory feedback pathways. In the context of substituting the visual channel for the auditory channel, this study aims to add to the limited evidence that it is possible to substitute visual feedback for its auditory equivalent and assess the impact this has on BCI performance. Secondly, the study aims to determine for the first time if the type of auditory feedback method influences motor imagery performance significantly. Auditory feedback is presented using a stepped approach of single (mono), double (stereo), and multiple (vector base amplitude panning as an audio game) loudspeaker arrangements. Visual feedback involves a ball-basket paradigm and a spaceship game. Each session consists of either auditory or visual feedback only with runs of each type of feedback presentation method applied in each session. Results from seven subjects across five sessions of each feedback type (visual, auditory) (10 sessions in total) show that auditory feedback is a suitable substitute for the visual equivalent and that there are no statistical differences in the type of auditory feedback presented across five sessions.

Prestimulus Network Integration of Auditory Cortex Predisposes Near-Threshold Perception Independently of Local Excitability

PubMed Central

Leske, Sabine; Ruhnau, Philipp; Frey, Julia; Lithari, Chrysa; Müller, Nadia; Hartmann, Thomas; Weisz, Nathan

2015-01-01

An ever-increasing number of studies are pointing to the importance of network properties of the brain for understanding behavior such as conscious perception. However, with regards to the influence of prestimulus brain states on perception, this network perspective has rarely been taken. Our recent framework predicts that brain regions crucial for a conscious percept are coupled prior to stimulus arrival, forming pre-established pathways of information flow and influencing perceptual awareness. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and graph theoretical measures, we investigated auditory conscious perception in a near-threshold (NT) task and found strong support for this framework. Relevant auditory regions showed an increased prestimulus interhemispheric connectivity. The left auditory cortex was characterized by a hub-like behavior and an enhanced integration into the brain functional network prior to perceptual awareness. Right auditory regions were decoupled from non-auditory regions, presumably forming an integrated information processing unit with the left auditory cortex. In addition, we show for the first time for the auditory modality that local excitability, measured by decreased alpha power in the auditory cortex, increases prior to conscious percepts. Importantly, we were able to show that connectivity states seem to be largely independent from local excitability states in the context of a NT paradigm. PMID:26408799

Timescale- and Sensory Modality-Dependency of the Central Tendency of Time Perception.

PubMed

Murai, Yuki; Yotsumoto, Yuko

2016-01-01

When individuals are asked to reproduce intervals of stimuli that are intermixedly presented at various times, longer intervals are often underestimated and shorter intervals overestimated. This phenomenon may be attributed to the central tendency of time perception, and suggests that our brain optimally encodes a stimulus interval based on current stimulus input and prior knowledge of the distribution of stimulus intervals. Two distinct systems are thought to be recruited in the perception of sub- and supra-second intervals. Sub-second timing is subject to local sensory processing, whereas supra-second timing depends on more centralized mechanisms. To clarify the factors that influence time perception, the present study investigated how both sensory modality and timescale affect the central tendency. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to reproduce sub- or supra-second intervals, defined by visual or auditory stimuli. In the sub-second range, the magnitude of the central tendency was significantly larger for visual intervals compared to auditory intervals, while visual and auditory intervals exhibited a correlated and comparable central tendency in the supra-second range. In Experiment 2, the ability to discriminate sub-second intervals in the reproduction task was controlled across modalities by using an interval discrimination task. Even when the ability to discriminate intervals was controlled, visual intervals exhibited a larger central tendency than auditory intervals in the sub-second range. In addition, the magnitude of the central tendency for visual and auditory sub-second intervals was significantly correlated. These results suggest that a common modality-independent mechanism is responsible for the supra-second central tendency, and that both the modality-dependent and modality-independent components of the timing system contribute to the central tendency in the sub-second range.

Temporal Information Processing as a Basis for Auditory Comprehension: Clinical Evidence from Aphasic Patients

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oron, Anna; Szymaszek, Aneta; Szelag, Elzbieta

2015-01-01

Background: Temporal information processing (TIP) underlies many aspects of cognitive functions like language, motor control, learning, memory, attention, etc. Millisecond timing may be assessed by sequencing abilities, e.g. the perception of event order. It may be measured with auditory temporal-order-threshold (TOT), i.e. a minimum time gap…

Auditory Imagery Shapes Movement Timing and Kinematics: Evidence from a Musical Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Keller, Peter E.; Dalla Bella, Simone; Koch, Iring

2010-01-01

The role of anticipatory auditory imagery in music-like sequential action was investigated by examining timing accuracy and kinematics using a motion capture system. Musicians responded to metronomic pacing signals by producing three unpaced taps on three vertically aligned keys at the given tempo. Taps triggered tones in two out of three blocked…

Induction of plasticity in the human motor cortex by pairing an auditory stimulus with TMS.

PubMed

Sowman, Paul F; Dueholm, Søren S; Rasmussen, Jesper H; Mrachacz-Kersting, Natalie

2014-01-01

Acoustic stimuli can cause a transient increase in the excitability of the motor cortex. The current study leverages this phenomenon to develop a method for testing the integrity of auditorimotor integration and the capacity for auditorimotor plasticity. We demonstrate that appropriately timed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the hand area, paired with auditorily mediated excitation of the motor cortex, induces an enhancement of motor cortex excitability that lasts beyond the time of stimulation. This result demonstrates for the first time that paired associative stimulation (PAS)-induced plasticity within the motor cortex is applicable with auditory stimuli. We propose that the method developed here might provide a useful tool for future studies that measure auditory-motor connectivity in communication disorders.

TMTC2 variant associated with sensorineural hearing loss and auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder in a family dyad.

PubMed

Guillen-Ahlers, Hector; Erbe, Christy B; Chevalier, Frédéric D; Montoya, Maria J; Zimmerman, Kip D; Langefeld, Carl D; Olivier, Michael; Runge, Christina L

2018-04-19

Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is a common form of hearing loss that can be inherited or triggered by environmental insults; auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) is a SNHL subtype with unique diagnostic criteria. The genetic factors associated with these impairments are vast and diverse, but causal genetic factors are rarely characterized. A family dyad, both cochlear implant recipients, presented with a hearing history of bilateral, progressive SNHL, and ANSD. Whole-exome sequencing was performed to identify coding sequence variants shared by both family members, and screened against genes relevant to hearing loss and variants known to be associated with SNHL and ANSD. Both family members are successful cochlear implant users, demonstrating effective auditory nerve stimulation with their devices. Genetic analyses revealed a mutation (rs35725509) in the TMTC2 gene, which has been reported previously as a likely genetic cause of SNHL in another family of Northern European descent. This study represents the first confirmation of the rs35725509 variant in an independent family as a likely cause for the complex hearing loss phenotype (SNHL and ANSD) observed in this family dyad. © 2018 The Authors. Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Estimating the relative weights of visual and auditory tau versus heuristic-based cues for time-to-contact judgments in realistic, familiar scenes by older and younger adults.

PubMed

Keshavarz, Behrang; Campos, Jennifer L; DeLucia, Patricia R; Oberfeld, Daniel

2017-04-01

Estimating time to contact (TTC) involves multiple sensory systems, including vision and audition. Previous findings suggested that the ratio of an object's instantaneous optical size/sound intensity to its instantaneous rate of change in optical size/sound intensity (τ) drives TTC judgments. Other evidence has shown that heuristic-based cues are used, including final optical size or final sound pressure level. Most previous studies have used decontextualized and unfamiliar stimuli (e.g., geometric shapes on a blank background). Here we evaluated TTC estimates by using a traffic scene with an approaching vehicle to evaluate the weights of visual and auditory TTC cues under more realistic conditions. Younger (18-39 years) and older (65+ years) participants made TTC estimates in three sensory conditions: visual-only, auditory-only, and audio-visual. Stimuli were presented within an immersive virtual-reality environment, and cue weights were calculated for both visual cues (e.g., visual τ, final optical size) and auditory cues (e.g., auditory τ, final sound pressure level). The results demonstrated the use of visual τ as well as heuristic cues in the visual-only condition. TTC estimates in the auditory-only condition, however, were primarily based on an auditory heuristic cue (final sound pressure level), rather than on auditory τ. In the audio-visual condition, the visual cues dominated overall, with the highest weight being assigned to visual τ by younger adults, and a more equal weighting of visual τ and heuristic cues in older adults. Overall, better characterizing the effects of combined sensory inputs, stimulus characteristics, and age on the cues used to estimate TTC will provide important insights into how these factors may affect everyday behavior.

Ability of primary auditory cortical neurons to detect amplitude modulation with rate and temporal codes: neurometric analysis

PubMed Central

Johnson, Jeffrey S.; Yin, Pingbo; O'Connor, Kevin N.

2012-01-01

Amplitude modulation (AM) is a common feature of natural sounds, and its detection is biologically important. Even though most sounds are not fully modulated, the majority of physiological studies have focused on fully modulated (100% modulation depth) sounds. We presented AM noise at a range of modulation depths to awake macaque monkeys while recording from neurons in primary auditory cortex (A1). The ability of neurons to detect partial AM with rate and temporal codes was assessed with signal detection methods. On average, single-cell synchrony was as or more sensitive than spike count in modulation detection. Cells are less sensitive to modulation depth if tested away from their best modulation frequency, particularly for temporal measures. Mean neural modulation detection thresholds in A1 are not as sensitive as behavioral thresholds, but with phase locking the most sensitive neurons are more sensitive, suggesting that for temporal measures the lower-envelope principle cannot account for thresholds. Three methods of preanalysis pooling of spike trains (multiunit, similar to convergence from a cortical column; within cell, similar to convergence of cells with matched response properties; across cell, similar to indiscriminate convergence of cells) all result in an increase in neural sensitivity to modulation depth for both temporal and rate codes. For the across-cell method, pooling of a few dozen cells can result in detection thresholds that approximate those of the behaving animal. With synchrony measures, indiscriminate pooling results in sensitive detection of modulation frequencies between 20 and 60 Hz, suggesting that differences in AM response phase are minor in A1. PMID:22422997

Effective Connectivity Reveals Right-Hemisphere Dominance in Audiospatial Perception: Implications for Models of Spatial Neglect

PubMed Central

Friston, Karl J.; Mattingley, Jason B.; Roepstorff, Andreas; Garrido, Marta I.

2014-01-01

Detecting the location of salient sounds in the environment rests on the brain's ability to use differences in sounds arriving at both ears. Functional neuroimaging studies in humans indicate that the left and right auditory hemispaces are coded asymmetrically, with a rightward attentional bias that reflects spatial attention in vision. Neuropsychological observations in patients with spatial neglect have led to the formulation of two competing models: the orientation bias and right-hemisphere dominance models. The orientation bias model posits a symmetrical mapping between one side of the sensorium and the contralateral hemisphere, with mutual inhibition of the ipsilateral hemisphere. The right-hemisphere dominance model introduces a functional asymmetry in the brain's coding of space: the left hemisphere represents the right side, whereas the right hemisphere represents both sides of the sensorium. We used Dynamic Causal Modeling of effective connectivity and Bayesian model comparison to adjudicate between these alternative network architectures, based on human electroencephalographic data acquired during an auditory location oddball paradigm. Our results support a hemispheric asymmetry in a frontoparietal network that conforms to the right-hemisphere dominance model. We show that, within this frontoparietal network, forward connectivity increases selectively in the hemisphere contralateral to the side of sensory stimulation. We interpret this finding in light of hierarchical predictive coding as a selective increase in attentional gain, which is mediated by feedforward connections that carry precision-weighted prediction errors during perceptual inference. This finding supports the disconnection hypothesis of unilateral neglect and has implications for theories of its etiology. PMID:24695717

Human auditory steady state responses to binaural and monaural beats.

PubMed

Schwarz, D W F; Taylor, P

2005-03-01

Binaural beat sensations depend upon a central combination of two different temporally encoded tones, separately presented to the two ears. We tested the feasibility to record an auditory steady state evoked response (ASSR) at the binaural beat frequency in order to find a measure for temporal coding of sound in the human EEG. We stimulated each ear with a distinct tone, both differing in frequency by 40Hz, to record a binaural beat ASSR. As control, we evoked a beat ASSR in response to both tones in the same ear. We band-pass filtered the EEG at 40Hz, averaged with respect to stimulus onset and compared ASSR amplitudes and phases, extracted from a sinusoidal non-linear regression fit to a 40Hz period average. A 40Hz binaural beat ASSR was evoked at a low mean stimulus frequency (400Hz) but became undetectable beyond 3kHz. Its amplitude was smaller than that of the acoustic beat ASSR, which was evoked at low and high frequencies. Both ASSR types had maxima at fronto-central leads and displayed a fronto-occipital phase delay of several ms. The dependence of the 40Hz binaural beat ASSR on stimuli at low, temporally coded tone frequencies suggests that it may objectively assess temporal sound coding ability. The phase shift across the electrode array is evidence for more than one origin of the 40Hz oscillations. The binaural beat ASSR is an evoked response, with novel diagnostic potential, to a signal that is not present in the stimulus, but generated within the brain.

L-type calcium channels refine the neural population code of sound level

PubMed Central

Grimsley, Calum Alex; Green, David Brian

2016-01-01

The coding of sound level by ensembles of neurons improves the accuracy with which listeners identify how loud a sound is. In the auditory system, the rate at which neurons fire in response to changes in sound level is shaped by local networks. Voltage-gated conductances alter local output by regulating neuronal firing, but their role in modulating responses to sound level is unclear. We tested the effects of L-type calcium channels (CaL: CaV1.1–1.4) on sound-level coding in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICC) in the auditory midbrain. We characterized the contribution of CaL to the total calcium current in brain slices and then examined its effects on rate-level functions (RLFs) in vivo using single-unit recordings in awake mice. CaL is a high-threshold current and comprises ∼50% of the total calcium current in ICC neurons. In vivo, CaL activates at sound levels that evoke high firing rates. In RLFs that increase monotonically with sound level, CaL boosts spike rates at high sound levels and increases the maximum firing rate achieved. In different populations of RLFs that change nonmonotonically with sound level, CaL either suppresses or enhances firing at sound levels that evoke maximum firing. CaL multiplies the gain of monotonic RLFs with dynamic range and divides the gain of nonmonotonic RLFs with the width of the RLF. These results suggest that a single broad class of calcium channels activates enhancing and suppressing local circuits to regulate the sensitivity of neuronal populations to sound level. PMID:27605536

State-dependent changes in cortical gain control as measured by auditory evoked responses to varying intensity stimuli.

PubMed

Phillips, Derrick J; Schei, Jennifer L; Meighan, Peter C; Rector, David M

2011-11-01

Auditory evoked potential (AEP) components correspond to sequential activation of brain structures within the auditory pathway and reveal neural activity during sensory processing. To investigate state-dependent modulation of stimulus intensity response profiles within different brain structures, we assessed AEP components across both stimulus intensity and state. We implanted adult female Sprague-Dawley rats (N = 6) with electrodes to measure EEG, EKG, and EMG. Intermittent auditory stimuli (6-12 s) varying from 50 to 75 dBa were delivered over a 24-h period. Data were parsed into 2-s epochs and scored for wake/sleep state. All AEP components increased in amplitude with increased stimulus intensity during wake. During quiet sleep, however, only the early latency response (ELR) showed this relationship, while the middle latency response (MLR) increased at the highest 75 dBa intensity, and the late latency response (LLR) showed no significant change across the stimulus intensities tested. During rapid eye movement sleep (REM), both ELR and LLR increased, similar to wake, but MLR was severely attenuated. Stimulation intensity and the corresponding AEP response profile were dependent on both brain structure and sleep state. Lower brain structures maintained stimulus intensity and neural response relationships during sleep. This relationship was not observed in the cortex, implying state-dependent modification of stimulus intensity coding. Since AEP amplitude is not modulated by stimulus intensity during sleep, differences between paired 75/50 dBa stimuli could be used to determine state better than individual intensities.

Auditory Distance Coding in Rabbit Midbrain Neurons and Human Perception: Monaural Amplitude Modulation Depth as a Cue

PubMed Central

Zahorik, Pavel; Carney, Laurel H.; Bishop, Brian B.; Kuwada, Shigeyuki

2015-01-01

Mechanisms underlying sound source distance localization are not well understood. Here we tested the hypothesis that a novel mechanism can create monaural distance sensitivity: a combination of auditory midbrain neurons' sensitivity to amplitude modulation (AM) depth and distance-dependent loss of AM in reverberation. We used virtual auditory space (VAS) methods for sounds at various distances in anechoic and reverberant environments. Stimulus level was constant across distance. With increasing modulation depth, some rabbit inferior colliculus neurons increased firing rates whereas others decreased. These neurons exhibited monotonic relationships between firing rates and distance for monaurally presented noise when two conditions were met: (1) the sound had AM, and (2) the environment was reverberant. The firing rates as a function of distance remained approximately constant without AM in either environment and, in an anechoic condition, even with AM. We corroborated this finding by reproducing the distance sensitivity using a neural model. We also conducted a human psychophysical study using similar methods. Normal-hearing listeners reported perceived distance in response to monaural 1 octave 4 kHz noise source sounds presented at distances of 35–200 cm. We found parallels between the rabbit neural and human responses. In both, sound distance could be discriminated only if the monaural sound in reverberation had AM. These observations support the hypothesis. When other cues are available (e.g., in binaural hearing), how much the auditory system actually uses the AM as a distance cue remains to be determined. PMID:25834060

The effects of context and musical training on auditory temporal-interval discrimination.

PubMed

Banai, Karen; Fisher, Shirley; Ganot, Ron

2012-02-01

Non sensory factors such as stimulus context and musical experience are known to influence auditory frequency discrimination, but whether the context effect extends to auditory temporal processing remains unknown. Whether individual experiences such as musical training alter the context effect is also unknown. The goal of the present study was therefore to investigate the effects of stimulus context and musical experience on auditory temporal-interval discrimination. In experiment 1, temporal-interval discrimination was compared between fixed context conditions in which a single base temporal interval was presented repeatedly across all trials and variable context conditions in which one of two base intervals was randomly presented on each trial. Discrimination was significantly better in the fixed than in the variable context conditions. In experiment 2 temporal discrimination thresholds of musicians and non-musicians were compared across 3 conditions: a fixed context condition in which the target interval was presented repeatedly across trials, and two variable context conditions differing in the frequencies used for the tones marking the temporal intervals. Musicians outperformed non-musicians on all 3 conditions, but the effects of context were similar for the two groups. Overall, it appears that, like frequency discrimination, temporal-interval discrimination benefits from having a fixed reference. Musical experience, while improving performance, did not alter the context effect, suggesting that improved discrimination skills among musicians are probably not an outcome of more sensitive contextual facilitation or predictive coding mechanisms. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Entrainment to an auditory signal: Is attention involved?

PubMed

Kunert, Richard; Jongman, Suzanne R

2017-01-01

Many natural auditory signals, including music and language, change periodically. The effect of such auditory rhythms on the brain is unclear however. One widely held view, dynamic attending theory, proposes that the attentional system entrains to the rhythm and increases attention at moments of rhythmic salience. In support, 2 experiments reported here show reduced response times to visual letter strings shown at auditory rhythm peaks, compared with rhythm troughs. However, we argue that an account invoking the entrainment of general attention should further predict rhythm entrainment to also influence memory for visual stimuli. In 2 pseudoword memory experiments we find evidence against this prediction. Whether a pseudoword is shown during an auditory rhythm peak or not is irrelevant for its later recognition memory in silence. Other attention manipulations, dividing attention and focusing attention, did result in a memory effect. This raises doubts about the suggested attentional nature of rhythm entrainment. We interpret our findings as support for auditory rhythm perception being based on auditory-motor entrainment, not general attention entrainment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Musical Experience, Sensorineural Auditory Processing, and Reading Subskills in Adults

PubMed Central

Tichko, Parker; Skoe, Erika

2018-01-01

Developmental research suggests that sensorineural auditory processing, reading subskills (e.g., phonological awareness and rapid naming), and musical experience are related during early periods of reading development. Interestingly, recent work suggests that these relations may extend into adulthood, with indices of sensorineural auditory processing relating to global reading ability. However, it is largely unknown whether sensorineural auditory processing relates to specific reading subskills, such as phonological awareness and rapid naming, as well as musical experience in mature readers. To address this question, we recorded electrophysiological responses to a repeating click (auditory stimulus) in a sample of adult readers. We then investigated relations between electrophysiological responses to sound, reading subskills, and musical experience in this same set of adult readers. Analyses suggest that sensorineural auditory processing, reading subskills, and musical experience are related in adulthood, with faster neural conduction times and greater musical experience associated with stronger rapid-naming skills. These results are similar to the developmental findings that suggest reading subskills are related to sensorineural auditory processing and musical experience in children. PMID:29702572

Multisensory perceptual learning of temporal order: audiovisual learning transfers to vision but not audition.

PubMed

Alais, David; Cass, John

2010-06-23

An outstanding question in sensory neuroscience is whether the perceived timing of events is mediated by a central supra-modal timing mechanism, or multiple modality-specific systems. We use a perceptual learning paradigm to address this question. Three groups were trained daily for 10 sessions on an auditory, a visual or a combined audiovisual temporal order judgment (TOJ). Groups were pre-tested on a range TOJ tasks within and between their group modality prior to learning so that transfer of any learning from the trained task could be measured by post-testing other tasks. Robust TOJ learning (reduced temporal order discrimination thresholds) occurred for all groups, although auditory learning (dichotic 500/2000 Hz tones) was slightly weaker than visual learning (lateralised grating patches). Crossmodal TOJs also displayed robust learning. Post-testing revealed that improvements in temporal resolution acquired during visual learning transferred within modality to other retinotopic locations and orientations, but not to auditory or crossmodal tasks. Auditory learning did not transfer to visual or crossmodal tasks, and neither did it transfer within audition to another frequency pair. In an interesting asymmetry, crossmodal learning transferred to all visual tasks but not to auditory tasks. Finally, in all conditions, learning to make TOJs for stimulus onsets did not transfer at all to discriminating temporal offsets. These data present a complex picture of timing processes. The lack of transfer between unimodal groups indicates no central supramodal timing process for this task; however, the audiovisual-to-visual transfer cannot be explained without some form of sensory interaction. We propose that auditory learning occurred in frequency-tuned processes in the periphery, precluding interactions with more central visual and audiovisual timing processes. Functionally the patterns of featural transfer suggest that perceptual learning of temporal order may be optimised to object-centered rather than viewer-centered constraints.

Bimodal stimulus timing-dependent plasticity in primary auditory cortex is altered after noise exposure with and without tinnitus

PubMed Central

Koehler, Seth D.; Shore, Susan E.

2015-01-01

Central auditory circuits are influenced by the somatosensory system, a relationship that may underlie tinnitus generation. In the guinea pig dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN), pairing spinal trigeminal nucleus (Sp5) stimulation with tones at specific intervals and orders facilitated or suppressed subsequent tone-evoked neural responses, reflecting spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). Furthermore, after noise-induced tinnitus, bimodal responses in DCN were shifted from Hebbian to anti-Hebbian timing rules with less discrete temporal windows, suggesting a role for bimodal plasticity in tinnitus. Here, we aimed to determine if multisensory STDP principles like those in DCN also exist in primary auditory cortex (A1), and whether they change following noise-induced tinnitus. Tone-evoked and spontaneous neural responses were recorded before and 15 min after bimodal stimulation in which the intervals and orders of auditory-somatosensory stimuli were randomized. Tone-evoked and spontaneous firing rates were influenced by the interval and order of the bimodal stimuli, and in sham-controls Hebbian-like timing rules predominated as was seen in DCN. In noise-exposed animals with and without tinnitus, timing rules shifted away from those found in sham-controls to more anti-Hebbian rules. Only those animals with evidence of tinnitus showed increased spontaneous firing rates, a purported neurophysiological correlate of tinnitus in A1. Together, these findings suggest that bimodal plasticity is also evident in A1 following noise damage and may have implications for tinnitus generation and therapeutic intervention across the central auditory circuit. PMID:26289461

Demonstrating the Potential for Dynamic Auditory Stimulation to Contribute to Motion Sickness

PubMed Central

Keshavarz, Behrang; Hettinger, Lawrence J.; Kennedy, Robert S.; Campos, Jennifer L.

2014-01-01

Auditory cues can create the illusion of self-motion (vection) in the absence of visual or physical stimulation. The present study aimed to determine whether auditory cues alone can also elicit motion sickness and how auditory cues contribute to motion sickness when added to visual motion stimuli. Twenty participants were seated in front of a curved projection display and were exposed to a virtual scene that constantly rotated around the participant's vertical axis. The virtual scene contained either visual-only, auditory-only, or a combination of corresponding visual and auditory cues. All participants performed all three conditions in a counterbalanced order. Participants tilted their heads alternately towards the right or left shoulder in all conditions during stimulus exposure in order to create pseudo-Coriolis effects and to maximize the likelihood for motion sickness. Measurements of motion sickness (onset, severity), vection (latency, strength, duration), and postural steadiness (center of pressure) were recorded. Results showed that adding auditory cues to the visual stimuli did not, on average, affect motion sickness and postural steadiness, but it did reduce vection onset times and increased vection strength compared to pure visual or pure auditory stimulation. Eighteen of the 20 participants reported at least slight motion sickness in the two conditions including visual stimuli. More interestingly, six participants also reported slight motion sickness during pure auditory stimulation and two of the six participants stopped the pure auditory test session due to motion sickness. The present study is the first to demonstrate that motion sickness may be caused by pure auditory stimulation, which we refer to as “auditorily induced motion sickness”. PMID:24983752

Computational modeling of the human auditory periphery: Auditory-nerve responses, evoked potentials and hearing loss.

PubMed

Verhulst, Sarah; Altoè, Alessandro; Vasilkov, Viacheslav

2018-03-01

Models of the human auditory periphery range from very basic functional descriptions of auditory filtering to detailed computational models of cochlear mechanics, inner-hair cell (IHC), auditory-nerve (AN) and brainstem signal processing. It is challenging to include detailed physiological descriptions of cellular components into human auditory models because single-cell data stems from invasive animal recordings while human reference data only exists in the form of population responses (e.g., otoacoustic emissions, auditory evoked potentials). To embed physiological models within a comprehensive human auditory periphery framework, it is important to capitalize on the success of basic functional models of hearing and render their descriptions more biophysical where possible. At the same time, comprehensive models should capture a variety of key auditory features, rather than fitting their parameters to a single reference dataset. In this study, we review and improve existing models of the IHC-AN complex by updating their equations and expressing their fitting parameters into biophysical quantities. The quality of the model framework for human auditory processing is evaluated using recorded auditory brainstem response (ABR) and envelope-following response (EFR) reference data from normal and hearing-impaired listeners. We present a model with 12 fitting parameters from the cochlea to the brainstem that can be rendered hearing impaired to simulate how cochlear gain loss and synaptopathy affect human population responses. The model description forms a compromise between capturing well-described single-unit IHC and AN properties and human population response features. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effect of rhythmic auditory stimulation on gait kinematic parameters of patients with multiple sclerosis.

PubMed

Shahraki, M; Sohrabi, M; Taheri Torbati, H R; Nikkhah, K; NaeimiKia, M

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the effect of rhythmic auditory stimulation on gait kinematic parameters of patients with multiple sclerosis. Subjects and Methods: In this study, 18 subjects, comprising 4 males and 14 females with Multiple Sclerosis with expanded disability status scale of 3 to 6 were chosen. Subjects were selected by available and targeted sampling and were randomly divided into two experimental (n = 9) and control (n = 9) groups. Exercises were gait with rhythmic auditory stimulation by a metronome device, in addition to gait without stimulation for the experimental and control groups, respectively. Training was carried out for 3 weeks, with 30 min duration for each session 3 times a week. Stride length, stride time, double support time, cadence and gait speed were measured by motion analysis device. Results: There was a significant difference between stride length, stride time, double support time, cadence and gait speed in the experimental group, before and after the training. Furthermore, there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the enhancement of stride length, stride time, cadence and gait speed in favor of the experimental group. While this difference was not significant for double support time. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that rhythmic auditory stimulation is an effective rehabilitation method to improve gait kinematic parameters in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Auditory Temporal Structure Processing in Dyslexia: Processing of Prosodic Phrase Boundaries Is Not Impaired in Children with Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geiser, Eveline; Kjelgaard, Margaret; Christodoulou, Joanna A.; Cyr, Abigail; Gabrieli, John D. E.

2014-01-01

Reading disability in children with dyslexia has been proposed to reflect impairment in auditory timing perception. We investigated one aspect of timing perception--"temporal grouping"--as present in prosodic phrase boundaries of natural speech, in age-matched groups of children, ages 6-8 years, with and without dyslexia. Prosodic phrase…

Dual routes for verbal repetition: articulation-based and acoustic-phonetic codes for pseudoword and word repetition, respectively.

PubMed

Yoo, Sejin; Chung, Jun-Young; Jeon, Hyeon-Ae; Lee, Kyoung-Min; Kim, Young-Bo; Cho, Zang-Hee

2012-07-01

Speech production is inextricably linked to speech perception, yet they are usually investigated in isolation. In this study, we employed a verbal-repetition task to identify the neural substrates of speech processing with two ends active simultaneously using functional MRI. Subjects verbally repeated auditory stimuli containing an ambiguous vowel sound that could be perceived as either a word or a pseudoword depending on the interpretation of the vowel. We found verbal repetition commonly activated the audition-articulation interface bilaterally at Sylvian fissures and superior temporal sulci. Contrasting word-versus-pseudoword trials revealed neural activities unique to word repetition in the left posterior middle temporal areas and activities unique to pseudoword repetition in the left inferior frontal gyrus. These findings imply that the tasks are carried out using different speech codes: an articulation-based code of pseudowords and an acoustic-phonetic code of words. It also supports the dual-stream model and imitative learning of vocabulary. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Auditory Neuroscience: Temporal Anticipation Enhances Cortical Processing

PubMed Central

Walker, Kerry M. M.; King, Andrew J.

2015-01-01

Summary A recent study shows that expectation about the timing of behaviorally-relevant sounds enhances the responses of neurons in the primary auditory cortex and improves the accuracy and speed with which animals respond to those sounds. PMID:21481759

FMRI investigation of cross-modal interactions in beat perception: Audition primes vision, but not vice versa

PubMed Central

Grahn, Jessica A.; Henry, Molly J.; McAuley, J. Devin

2011-01-01

How we measure time and integrate temporal cues from different sensory modalities are fundamental questions in neuroscience. Sensitivity to a “beat” (such as that routinely perceived in music) differs substantially between auditory and visual modalities. Here we examined beat sensitivity in each modality, and examined cross-modal influences, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to characterize brain activity during perception of auditory and visual rhythms. In separate fMRI sessions, participants listened to auditory sequences or watched visual sequences. The order of auditory and visual sequence presentation was counterbalanced so that cross-modal order effects could be investigated. Participants judged whether sequences were speeding up or slowing down, and the pattern of tempo judgments was used to derive a measure of sensitivity to an implied beat. As expected, participants were less sensitive to an implied beat in visual sequences than in auditory sequences. However, visual sequences produced a stronger sense of beat when preceded by auditory sequences with identical temporal structure. Moreover, increases in brain activity were observed in the bilateral putamen for visual sequences preceded by auditory sequences when compared to visual sequences without prior auditory exposure. No such order-dependent differences (behavioral or neural) were found for the auditory sequences. The results provide further evidence for the role of the basal ganglia in internal generation of the beat and suggest that an internal auditory rhythm representation may be activated during visual rhythm perception. PMID:20858544

Changes in neuromagnetic beta-band oscillation after music-supported stroke rehabilitation.

PubMed

Fujioka, Takako; Ween, Jon Erik; Jamali, Shahab; Stuss, Donald T; Ross, Bernhard

2012-04-01

Precise timing of sound is crucial in music for both performing and listening. Indeed, listening to rhythmic sound sequences activates not only the auditory system but also the sensorimotor system. Previously, we showed the significance of neural beta-band oscillations (15-30 Hz) for the timing processing that involves such auditory-motor coordination. Thus, we hypothesized that motor rehabilitation training incorporating music playing will stimulate and enhance auditory-motor interaction in stroke patients. We examined three chronic patients who received Music-Supported Therapy following the protocols practiced by Schneider. Neuromagnetic beta-band activity was remarkably alike during passive listening to a metronome and during finger tapping, with or without the metronome, for either the paretic or nonparetic hand, suggesting a shared mechanism of the beta modulation. In the listening task, the magnitude of the beta decrease after the tone onset was more pronounced at the posttraining time point and was accompanied by improved arm and hand skills. The present case data give insight into the neural underpinnings of rehabilitation with music making and rhythmic auditory stimulation. © 2012 New York Academy of Sciences.

Impaired movement timing in neurological disorders: rehabilitation and treatment strategies.

PubMed

Hove, Michael J; Keller, Peter E

2015-03-01

Timing abnormalities have been reported in many neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease (PD). In PD, motor-timing impairments are especially debilitating in gait. Despite impaired audiomotor synchronization, PD patients' gait improves when they walk with an auditory metronome or with music. Building on that research, we make recommendations for optimizing sensory cues to improve the efficacy of rhythmic cuing in gait rehabilitation. Adaptive rhythmic metronomes (that synchronize with the patient's walking) might be especially effective. In a recent study we showed that adaptive metronomes synchronized consistently with PD patients' footsteps without requiring attention; this improved stability and reinstated healthy gait dynamics. Other strategies could help optimize sensory cues for gait rehabilitation. Groove music strongly engages the motor system and induces movement; bass-frequency tones are associated with movement and provide strong timing cues. Thus, groove and bass-frequency pulses could deliver potent rhythmic cues. These strategies capitalize on the close neural connections between auditory and motor networks; and auditory cues are typically preferred. However, moving visual cues greatly improve visuomotor synchronization and could warrant examination in gait rehabilitation. Together, a treatment approach that employs groove, auditory, bass-frequency, and adaptive (GABA) cues could help optimize rhythmic sensory cues for treating motor and timing deficits. © 2014 New York Academy of Sciences.

An initial investigation into the validity of a computer-based auditory processing assessment (Feather Squadron).

PubMed

Barker, Matthew D; Purdy, Suzanne C

2016-01-01

This research investigates a novel method for identifying and measuring school-aged children with poor auditory processing through a tablet computer. Feasibility and test-retest reliability are investigated by examining the percentage of Group 1 participants able to complete the tasks and developmental effects on performance. Concurrent validity was investigated against traditional tests of auditory processing using Group 2. There were 847 students aged 5 to 13 years in group 1, and 46 aged 5 to 14 years in group 2. Some tasks could not be completed by the youngest participants. Significant correlations were found between results of most auditory processing areas assessed by the Feather Squadron test and traditional auditory processing tests. Test-retest comparisons indicated good reliability for most of the Feather Squadron assessments and some of the traditional tests. The results indicate the Feather Squadron assessment is a time-efficient, feasible, concurrently valid, and reliable approach for measuring auditory processing in school-aged children. Clinically, this may be a useful option for audiologists when performing auditory processing assessments as it is a relatively fast, engaging, and easy way to assess auditory processing abilities. Research is needed to investigate further the construct validity of this new assessment by examining the association between performance on Feather Squadron and objective evoked potential, lesion studies, and/or functional imaging measures of auditory function.

Similar prevalence and magnitude of auditory-evoked and visually evoked activity in the frontal eye fields: implications for multisensory motor control.

PubMed

Caruso, Valeria C; Pages, Daniel S; Sommer, Marc A; Groh, Jennifer M

2016-06-01

Saccadic eye movements can be elicited by more than one type of sensory stimulus. This implies substantial transformations of signals originating in different sense organs as they reach a common motor output pathway. In this study, we compared the prevalence and magnitude of auditory- and visually evoked activity in a structure implicated in oculomotor processing, the primate frontal eye fields (FEF). We recorded from 324 single neurons while 2 monkeys performed delayed saccades to visual or auditory targets. We found that 64% of FEF neurons were active on presentation of auditory targets and 87% were active during auditory-guided saccades, compared with 75 and 84% for visual targets and saccades. As saccade onset approached, the average level of population activity in the FEF became indistinguishable on visual and auditory trials. FEF activity was better correlated with the movement vector than with the target location for both modalities. In summary, the large proportion of auditory-responsive neurons in the FEF, the similarity between visual and auditory activity levels at the time of the saccade, and the strong correlation between the activity and the saccade vector suggest that auditory signals undergo tailoring to match roughly the strength of visual signals present in the FEF, facilitating accessing of a common motor output pathway. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

Neural dynamics underlying attentional orienting to auditory representations in short-term memory.

PubMed

Backer, Kristina C; Binns, Malcolm A; Alain, Claude

2015-01-21

Sounds are ephemeral. Thus, coherent auditory perception depends on "hearing" back in time: retrospectively attending that which was lost externally but preserved in short-term memory (STM). Current theories of auditory attention assume that sound features are integrated into a perceptual object, that multiple objects can coexist in STM, and that attention can be deployed to an object in STM. Recording electroencephalography from humans, we tested these assumptions, elucidating feature-general and feature-specific neural correlates of auditory attention to STM. Alpha/beta oscillations and frontal and posterior event-related potentials indexed feature-general top-down attentional control to one of several coexisting auditory representations in STM. Particularly, task performance during attentional orienting was correlated with alpha/low-beta desynchronization (i.e., power suppression). However, attention to one feature could occur without simultaneous processing of the second feature of the representation. Therefore, auditory attention to memory relies on both feature-specific and feature-general neural dynamics. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/351307-12$15.00/0.

Reliance on auditory feedback in children with childhood apraxia of speech.

PubMed

Iuzzini-Seigel, Jenya; Hogan, Tiffany P; Guarino, Anthony J; Green, Jordan R

2015-01-01

Children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) have been hypothesized to continuously monitor their speech through auditory feedback to minimize speech errors. We used an auditory masking paradigm to determine the effect of attenuating auditory feedback on speech in 30 children: 9 with CAS, 10 with speech delay, and 11 with typical development. The masking only affected the speech of children with CAS as measured by voice onset time and vowel space area. These findings provide preliminary support for greater reliance on auditory feedback among children with CAS. Readers of this article should be able to (i) describe the motivation for investigating the role of auditory feedback in children with CAS; (ii) report the effects of feedback attenuation on speech production in children with CAS, speech delay, and typical development, and (iii) understand how the current findings may support a feedforward program deficit in children with CAS. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The ability to tap to a beat relates to cognitive, linguistic, and perceptual skills

PubMed Central

Tierney, Adam T.; Kraus, Nina

2013-01-01

Reading-impaired children have difficulty tapping to a beat. Here we tested whether this relationship between reading ability and synchronized tapping holds in typically-developing adolescents. We also hypothesized that tapping relates to two other abilities. First, since auditory-motor synchronization requires monitoring of the relationship between motor output and auditory input, we predicted that subjects better able to tap to the beat would perform better on attention tests. Second, since auditory-motor synchronization requires fine temporal precision within the auditory system for the extraction of a sound’s onset time, we predicted that subjects better able to tap to the beat would be less affected by backward masking, a measure of temporal precision within the auditory system. As predicted, tapping performance related to reading, attention, and backward masking. These results motivate future research investigating whether beat synchronization training can improve not only reading ability, but potentially executive function and basic auditory processing as well. PMID:23400117

Engagement with the auditory processing system during targeted auditory cognitive training mediates changes in cognitive outcomes in individuals with schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Biagianti, Bruno; Fisher, Melissa; Neilands, Torsten B.; Loewy, Rachel; Vinogradov, Sophia

2016-01-01

BACKGROUND Individuals with schizophrenia who engage in targeted cognitive training (TCT) of the auditory system show generalized cognitive improvements. The high degree of variability in cognitive gains maybe due to individual differences in the level of engagement of the underlying neural system target. METHODS 131 individuals with schizophrenia underwent 40 hours of TCT. We identified target engagement of auditory system processing efficiency by modeling subject-specific trajectories of auditory processing speed (APS) over time. Lowess analysis, mixed models repeated measures analysis, and latent growth curve modeling were used to examine whether APS trajectories were moderated by age and illness duration, and mediated improvements in cognitive outcome measures. RESULTS We observed signifcant improvements in APS from baseline to 20 hours of training (initial change), followed by a flat APS trajectory (plateau) at subsequent time-points. Participants showed inter-individual variability in the steepness of the initial APS change and in the APS plateau achieved and sustained between 20–40 hours. We found that participants who achieved the fastest APS plateau, showed the greatest transfer effects to untrained cognitive domains. CONCLUSIONS There is a significant association between an individual's ability to generate and sustain auditory processing efficiency and their degree of cognitive improvement after TCT, independent of baseline neurocognition. APS plateau may therefore represent a behavioral measure of target engagement mediating treatment response. Future studies should examine the optimal plateau of auditory processing efficiency required to induce significant cognitive improvements, in the context of inter-individual differences in neural plasticity and sensory system efficiency that characterize schizophrenia. PMID:27617637

I can see what you are saying: Auditory labels reduce visual search times.

PubMed

Cho, Kit W

2016-10-01

The present study explored the self-directed-speech effect, the finding that relative to silent reading of a label (e.g., DOG), saying it aloud reduces visual search reaction times (RTs) for locating a target picture among distractors. Experiment 1 examined whether this effect is due to a confound in the differences in the number of cues in self-directed speech (two) vs. silent reading (one) and tested whether self-articulation is required for the effect. The results showed that self-articulation is not required and that merely hearing the auditory label reduces visual search RTs relative to silent reading. This finding also rules out the number of cues confound. Experiment 2 examined whether hearing an auditory label activates more prototypical features of the label's referent and whether the auditory-label benefit is moderated by the target's imagery concordance (the degree to which the target picture matches the mental picture that is activated by a written label for the target). When the target imagery concordance was high, RTs following the presentation of a high prototypicality picture or auditory cue were comparable and shorter than RTs following a visual label or low prototypicality picture cue. However, when the target imagery concordance was low, RTs following an auditory cue were shorter than the comparable RTs following the picture cues and visual-label cue. The results suggest that an auditory label activates both prototypical and atypical features of a concept and can facilitate visual search RTs even when compared to picture primes. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Multimodal lexical processing in auditory cortex is literacy skill dependent.

PubMed

McNorgan, Chris; Awati, Neha; Desroches, Amy S; Booth, James R

2014-09-01

Literacy is a uniquely human cross-modal cognitive process wherein visual orthographic representations become associated with auditory phonological representations through experience. Developmental studies provide insight into how experience-dependent changes in brain organization influence phonological processing as a function of literacy. Previous investigations show a synchrony-dependent influence of letter presentation on individual phoneme processing in superior temporal sulcus; others demonstrate recruitment of primary and associative auditory cortex during cross-modal processing. We sought to determine whether brain regions supporting phonological processing of larger lexical units (monosyllabic words) over larger time windows is sensitive to cross-modal information, and whether such effects are literacy dependent. Twenty-two children (age 8-14 years) made rhyming judgments for sequentially presented word and pseudoword pairs presented either unimodally (auditory- or visual-only) or cross-modally (audiovisual). Regression analyses examined the relationship between literacy and congruency effects (overlapping orthography and phonology vs. overlapping phonology-only). We extend previous findings by showing that higher literacy is correlated with greater congruency effects in auditory cortex (i.e., planum temporale) only for cross-modal processing. These skill effects were specific to known words and occurred over a large time window, suggesting that multimodal integration in posterior auditory cortex is critical for fluent reading. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Development of N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Subunits in Avian Auditory Brainstem

PubMed Central

TANG, YE-ZHONG; CARR, CATHERINE E.

2012-01-01

N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor subunit-specific probes were used to characterize developmental changes in the distribution of excitatory amino acid receptors in the chicken’s auditory brainstem nuclei. Although NR1 subunit expression does not change greatly during the development of the cochlear nuclei in the chicken (Tang and Carr [2004] Hear. Res 191:79 – 89), there are significant developmental changes in NR2 subunit expression. We used in situ hybridization against NR1, NR2A, NR2B, NR2C, and NR2D to compare NR1 and NR2 expression during development. All five NMDA subunits were expressed in the auditory brainstem before embryonic day (E) 10, when electrical activity and synaptic responses appear in the nucleus magnocellularis (NM) and the nucleus laminaris (NL). At this time, the dominant form of the receptor appeared to contain NR1 and NR2B. NR2A appeared to replace NR2B by E14, a time that coincides with synaptic refinement and evoked auditory responses. NR2C did not change greatly during auditory development, whereas NR2D increased from E10 and remained at fairly high levels into adulthood. Thus changes in NMDA NR2 receptor subunits may contribute to the development of auditory brainstem responses in the chick. PMID:17366608

Dynamic Correlations between Intrinsic Connectivity and Extrinsic Connectivity of the Auditory Cortex in Humans.

PubMed

Cui, Zhuang; Wang, Qian; Gao, Yayue; Wang, Jing; Wang, Mengyang; Teng, Pengfei; Guan, Yuguang; Zhou, Jian; Li, Tianfu; Luan, Guoming; Li, Liang

2017-01-01

The arrival of sound signals in the auditory cortex (AC) triggers both local and inter-regional signal propagations over time up to hundreds of milliseconds and builds up both intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) and extrinsic functional connectivity (eFC) of the AC. However, interactions between iFC and eFC are largely unknown. Using intracranial stereo-electroencephalographic recordings in people with drug-refractory epilepsy, this study mainly investigated the temporal dynamic of the relationships between iFC and eFC of the AC. The results showed that a Gaussian wideband-noise burst markedly elicited potentials in both the AC and numerous higher-order cortical regions outside the AC (non-auditory cortices). Granger causality analyses revealed that in the earlier time window, iFC of the AC was positively correlated with both eFC from the AC to the inferior temporal gyrus and that to the inferior parietal lobule. While in later periods, the iFC of the AC was positively correlated with eFC from the precentral gyrus to the AC and that from the insula to the AC. In conclusion, dual-directional interactions occur between iFC and eFC of the AC at different time windows following the sound stimulation and may form the foundation underlying various central auditory processes, including auditory sensory memory, object formation, integrations between sensory, perceptional, attentional, motor, emotional, and executive processes.

Babies in traffic: infant vocalizations and listener sex modulate auditory motion perception.

PubMed

Neuhoff, John G; Hamilton, Grace R; Gittleson, Amanda L; Mejia, Adolfo

2014-04-01

Infant vocalizations and "looming sounds" are classes of environmental stimuli that are critically important to survival but can have dramatically different emotional valences. Here, we simultaneously presented listeners with a stationary infant vocalization and a 3D virtual looming tone for which listeners made auditory time-to-arrival judgments. Negatively valenced infant cries produced more cautious (anticipatory) estimates of auditory arrival time of the tone over a no-vocalization control. Positively valenced laughs had the opposite effect, and across all conditions, men showed smaller anticipatory biases than women. In Experiment 2, vocalization-matched vocoded noise stimuli did not influence concurrent auditory time-to-arrival estimates compared with a control condition. In Experiment 3, listeners estimated the egocentric distance of a looming tone that stopped before arriving. For distant stopping points, women estimated the stopping point as closer when the tone was presented with an infant cry than when it was presented with a laugh. For near stopping points, women showed no differential effect of vocalization type. Men did not show differential effects of vocalization type at either distance. Our results support the idea that both the sex of the listener and the emotional valence of infant vocalizations can influence auditory motion perception and can modulate motor responses to other behaviorally relevant environmental sounds. We also find support for previous work that shows sex differences in emotion processing are diminished under conditions of higher stress.

Short-term memory stores organized by information domain.

PubMed

Noyce, Abigail L; Cestero, Nishmar; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G; Somers, David C

2016-04-01

Vision and audition have complementary affinities, with vision excelling in spatial resolution and audition excelling in temporal resolution. Here, we investigated the relationships among the visual and auditory modalities and spatial and temporal short-term memory (STM) using change detection tasks. We created short sequences of visual or auditory items, such that each item within a sequence arose at a unique spatial location at a unique time. On each trial, two successive sequences were presented; subjects attended to either space (the sequence of locations) or time (the sequence of inter item intervals) and reported whether the patterns of locations or intervals were identical. Each subject completed blocks of unimodal trials (both sequences presented in the same modality) and crossmodal trials (Sequence 1 visual, Sequence 2 auditory, or vice versa) for both spatial and temporal tasks. We found a strong interaction between modality and task: Spatial performance was best on unimodal visual trials, whereas temporal performance was best on unimodal auditory trials. The order of modalities on crossmodal trials also mattered, suggesting that perceptual fidelity at encoding is critical to STM. Critically, no cost was attributable to crossmodal comparison: In both tasks, performance on crossmodal trials was as good as or better than on the weaker unimodal trials. STM representations of space and time can guide change detection in either the visual or the auditory modality, suggesting that the temporal or spatial organization of STM may supersede sensory-specific organization.

Auditory Perceptual Abilities Are Associated with Specific Auditory Experience

PubMed Central

Zaltz, Yael; Globerson, Eitan; Amir, Noam

2017-01-01

The extent to which auditory experience can shape general auditory perceptual abilities is still under constant debate. Some studies show that specific auditory expertise may have a general effect on auditory perceptual abilities, while others show a more limited influence, exhibited only in a relatively narrow range associated with the area of expertise. The current study addresses this issue by examining experience-dependent enhancement in perceptual abilities in the auditory domain. Three experiments were performed. In the first experiment, 12 pop and rock musicians and 15 non-musicians were tested in frequency discrimination (DLF), intensity discrimination, spectrum discrimination (DLS), and time discrimination (DLT). Results showed significant superiority of the musician group only for the DLF and DLT tasks, illuminating enhanced perceptual skills in the key features of pop music, in which miniscule changes in amplitude and spectrum are not critical to performance. The next two experiments attempted to differentiate between generalization and specificity in the influence of auditory experience, by comparing subgroups of specialists. First, seven guitar players and eight percussionists were tested in the DLF and DLT tasks that were found superior for musicians. Results showed superior abilities on the DLF task for guitar players, though no difference between the groups in DLT, demonstrating some dependency of auditory learning on the specific area of expertise. Subsequently, a third experiment was conducted, testing a possible influence of vowel density in native language on auditory perceptual abilities. Ten native speakers of German (a language characterized by a dense vowel system of 14 vowels), and 10 native speakers of Hebrew (characterized by a sparse vowel system of five vowels), were tested in a formant discrimination task. This is the linguistic equivalent of a DLS task. Results showed that German speakers had superior formant discrimination, demonstrating highly specific effects for auditory linguistic experience as well. Overall, results suggest that auditory superiority is associated with the specific auditory exposure. PMID:29238318

Absence of both auditory evoked potentials and auditory percepts dependent on timing cues.

PubMed

Starr, A; McPherson, D; Patterson, J; Don, M; Luxford, W; Shannon, R; Sininger, Y; Tonakawa, L; Waring, M

1991-06-01

An 11-yr-old girl had an absence of sensory components of auditory evoked potentials (brainstem, middle and long-latency) to click and tone burst stimuli that she could clearly hear. Psychoacoustic tests revealed a marked impairment of those auditory perceptions dependent on temporal cues, that is, lateralization of binaural clicks, change of binaural masked threshold with changes in signal phase, binaural beats, detection of paired monaural clicks, monaural detection of a silent gap in a sound, and monaural threshold elevation for short duration tones. In contrast, auditory functions reflecting intensity or frequency discriminations (difference limens) were only minimally impaired. Pure tone audiometry showed a moderate (50 dB) bilateral hearing loss with a disproportionate severe loss of word intelligibility. Those auditory evoked potentials that were preserved included (1) cochlear microphonics reflecting hair cell activity; (2) cortical sustained potentials reflecting processing of slowly changing signals; and (3) long-latency cognitive components (P300, processing negativity) reflecting endogenous auditory cognitive processes. Both the evoked potential and perceptual deficits are attributed to changes in temporal encoding of acoustic signals perhaps occurring at the synapse between hair cell and eighth nerve dendrites. The results from this patient are discussed in relation to previously published cases with absent auditory evoked potentials and preserved hearing.

The Role of Musical Experience in Hemispheric Lateralization of Global and Local Auditory Processing.

PubMed

Black, Emily; Stevenson, Jennifer L; Bish, Joel P

2017-08-01

The global precedence effect is a phenomenon in which global aspects of visual and auditory stimuli are processed before local aspects. Individuals with musical experience perform better on all aspects of auditory tasks compared with individuals with less musical experience. The hemispheric lateralization of this auditory processing is less well-defined. The present study aimed to replicate the global precedence effect with auditory stimuli and to explore the lateralization of global and local auditory processing in individuals with differing levels of musical experience. A total of 38 college students completed an auditory-directed attention task while electroencephalography was recorded. Individuals with low musical experience responded significantly faster and more accurately in global trials than in local trials regardless of condition, and significantly faster and more accurately when pitches traveled in the same direction (compatible condition) than when pitches traveled in two different directions (incompatible condition) consistent with a global precedence effect. In contrast, individuals with high musical experience showed less of a global precedence effect with regards to accuracy, but not in terms of reaction time, suggesting an increased ability to overcome global bias. Further, a difference in P300 latency between hemispheres was observed. These findings provide a preliminary neurological framework for auditory processing of individuals with differing degrees of musical experience.

The function and failure of sensory predictions.

PubMed

Bansal, Sonia; Ford, Judith M; Spering, Miriam

2018-04-23

Humans and other primates are equipped with neural mechanisms that allow them to automatically make predictions about future events, facilitating processing of expected sensations and actions. Prediction-driven control and monitoring of perceptual and motor acts are vital to normal cognitive functioning. This review provides an overview of corollary discharge mechanisms involved in predictions across sensory modalities and discusses consequences of predictive coding for cognition and behavior. Converging evidence now links impairments in corollary discharge mechanisms to neuropsychiatric symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions. We review studies supporting a prediction-failure hypothesis of perceptual and cognitive disturbances. We also outline neural correlates underlying prediction function and failure, highlighting similarities across the visual, auditory, and somatosensory systems. In linking basic psychophysical and psychophysiological evidence of visual, auditory, and somatosensory prediction failures to neuropsychiatric symptoms, our review furthers our understanding of disease mechanisms. © 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.

Temporal processing and adaptation in the songbird auditory forebrain.

PubMed

Nagel, Katherine I; Doupe, Allison J

2006-09-21

Songbird auditory neurons must encode the dynamics of natural sounds at many volumes. We investigated how neural coding depends on the distribution of stimulus intensities. Using reverse-correlation, we modeled responses to amplitude-modulated sounds as the output of a linear filter and a nonlinear gain function, then asked how filters and nonlinearities depend on the stimulus mean and variance. Filter shape depended strongly on mean amplitude (volume): at low mean, most neurons integrated sound over many milliseconds, while at high mean, neurons responded more to local changes in amplitude. Increasing the variance (contrast) of amplitude modulations had less effect on filter shape but decreased the gain of firing in most cells. Both filter and gain changes occurred rapidly after a change in statistics, suggesting that they represent nonlinearities in processing. These changes may permit neurons to signal effectively over a wider dynamic range and are reminiscent of findings in other sensory systems.

Hierarchical winner-take-all particle swarm optimization social network for neural model fitting.

PubMed

Coventry, Brandon S; Parthasarathy, Aravindakshan; Sommer, Alexandra L; Bartlett, Edward L

2017-02-01

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has gained widespread use as a general mathematical programming paradigm and seen use in a wide variety of optimization and machine learning problems. In this work, we introduce a new variant on the PSO social network and apply this method to the inverse problem of input parameter selection from recorded auditory neuron tuning curves. The topology of a PSO social network is a major contributor to optimization success. Here we propose a new social network which draws influence from winner-take-all coding found in visual cortical neurons. We show that the winner-take-all network performs exceptionally well on optimization problems with greater than 5 dimensions and runs at a lower iteration count as compared to other PSO topologies. Finally we show that this variant of PSO is able to recreate auditory frequency tuning curves and modulation transfer functions, making it a potentially useful tool for computational neuroscience models.

Enhancing lineup identification accuracy: two codes are better than one.

PubMed

Melara, R D; DeWitt-Rickards, T S; O'Brien, T P

1989-10-01

Ways of improving identification accuracy were explored by comparing the conventional visual lineup with an auditory/visual lineup, one that paired color photographs with voice recordings. This bimodal lineup necessitated sequential presentation of lineup members; Experiment 1 showed that performance in sequential lineups was better than performance in traditional simultaneous lineups. In Experiments 2A and 2B unimodal and bimodal lineups were compared by using a multiple-lineup paradigm: Ss viewed 3 videotaped episodes depicting standard police procedures and were tested in 4 sequential lineups. Bimodal lineups were more diagnostic than either visual or auditory lineups alone. The bimodal lineup led to a 126% improvement in number of correct identifications over the conventional visual lineup, with no concomitant increase in number of false identifications. These results imply strongly that bimodal procedures should be adopted in real-world lineups. The nature of memorial processes underlying this bimodal advantage is discussed.

Coding principles of the canonical cortical microcircuit in the avian brain

PubMed Central

Calabrese, Ana; Woolley, Sarah M. N.

2015-01-01

Mammalian neocortex is characterized by a layered architecture and a common or “canonical” microcircuit governing information flow among layers. This microcircuit is thought to underlie the computations required for complex behavior. Despite the absence of a six-layered cortex, birds are capable of complex cognition and behavior. In addition, the avian auditory pallium is composed of adjacent information-processing regions with genetically identified neuron types and projections among regions comparable with those found in the neocortex. Here, we show that the avian auditory pallium exhibits the same information-processing principles that define the canonical cortical microcircuit, long thought to have evolved only in mammals. These results suggest that the canonical cortical microcircuit evolved in a common ancestor of mammals and birds and provide a physiological explanation for the evolution of neural processes that give rise to complex behavior in the absence of cortical lamination. PMID:25691736

Mosaic evolution of the mammalian auditory periphery.

PubMed

Manley, Geoffrey A

2013-01-01

The classical mammalian auditory periphery, i.e., the type of middle ear and coiled cochlea seen in modern therian mammals, did not arise as one unit and did not arise in all mammals. It is also not the only kind of auditory periphery seen in modern mammals. This short review discusses the fact that the constituents of modern mammalian auditory peripheries arose at different times over an extremely long period of evolution (230 million years; Ma). It also attempts to answer questions as to the selective pressures that led to three-ossicle middle ears and the coiled cochlea. Mammalian middle ears arose de novo, without an intermediate, single-ossicle stage. This event was the result of changes in eating habits of ancestral animals, habits that were unrelated to hearing. The coiled cochlea arose only after 60 Ma of mammalian evolution, driven at least partly by a change in cochlear bone structure that improved impedance matching with the middle ear of that time. This change only occurred in the ancestors of therian mammals and not in other mammalian lineages. There is no single constellation of structural features of the auditory periphery that characterizes all mammals and not even all modern mammals.

Modulation of isochronous movements in a flexible environment: links between motion and auditory experience.

PubMed

Bravi, Riccardo; Del Tongo, Claudia; Cohen, Erez James; Dalle Mura, Gabriele; Tognetti, Alessandro; Minciacchi, Diego

2014-06-01

The ability to perform isochronous movements while listening to a rhythmic auditory stimulus requires a flexible process that integrates timing information with movement. Here, we explored how non-temporal and temporal characteristics of an auditory stimulus (presence, interval occupancy, and tempo) affect motor performance. These characteristics were chosen on the basis of their ability to modulate the precision and accuracy of synchronized movements. Subjects have participated in sessions in which they performed sets of repeated isochronous wrist's flexion-extensions under various conditions. The conditions were chosen on the basis of the defined characteristics. Kinematic parameters were evaluated during each session, and temporal parameters were analyzed. In order to study the effects of the auditory stimulus, we have minimized all other sensory information that could interfere with its perception or affect the performance of repeated isochronous movements. The present study shows that the distinct characteristics of an auditory stimulus significantly influence isochronous movements by altering their duration. Results provide evidence for an adaptable control of timing in the audio-motor coupling for isochronous movements. This flexibility would make plausible the use of different encoding strategies to adapt audio-motor coupling for specific tasks.

Status report on speech research. A report on the status and progress of studies of the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation and practical applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Studdert-Kennedy, M.; Obrien, N.

1983-05-01

This report is one of a regular series on the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. Manuscripts cover the following topics: The influence of subcategorical mismatches on lexical access; The Serbo-Croatian orthography constraints the reader to a phonologically analytic strategy; Grammatical priming effects between pronouns and inflected verb forms; Misreadings by beginning readers of Serrbo-Croatian; Bi-alphabetism and work recognition; Orthographic and phonemic coding for word identification: Evidence for Hebrew; Stress and vowel duration effects on syllable recognition; Phonetic and auditory trading relations between acoustic cues in speech perception: Further results; Linguistic coding by deaf children in relation beginning reading success; Determinants of spelling ability in deaf and hearing adults: Access to linguistic structures; A dynamical basis for action systems; On the space-time structure of human interlimb coordination; Some acoustic and physiological observations on diphthongs; Relationship between pitch control and vowel articulation; Laryngeal vibrations: A comparison between high-speed filming and glottographic techniques; Compensatory articulation in hearing impaired speakers: A cinefluorographic study; and Review (Pierre Delattre: Studies in comparative phonetics.)

Task-set inertia and memory-consolidation bottleneck in dual tasks.

PubMed

Koch, Iring; Rumiati, Raffaella I

2006-11-01

Three dual-task experiments examined the influence of processing a briefly presented visual object for deferred verbal report on performance in an unrelated auditory-manual reaction time (RT) task. RT was increased at short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) relative to long SOAs, showing that memory consolidation processes can produce a functional processing bottleneck in dual-task performance. In addition, the experiments manipulated the spatial compatibility of the orientation of the visual object and the side of the speeded manual response. This cross-task compatibility produced relative RT benefits only when the instruction for the visual task emphasized overlap at the level of response codes across the task sets (Experiment 1). However, once the effective task set was in place, it continued to produce cross-task compatibility effects even in single-task situations ("ignore" trials in Experiment 2) and when instructions for the visual task did not explicitly require spatial coding of object orientation (Experiment 3). Taken together, the data suggest a considerable degree of task-set inertia in dual-task performance, which is also reinforced by finding costs of switching task sequences (e.g., AC --> BC vs. BC --> BC) in Experiment 3.

Mind the gap: Neural coding of species identity in birdsong prosody.

PubMed

Araki, Makoto; Bandi, M M; Yazaki-Sugiyama, Yoko

2016-12-09

Juvenile songbirds learn vocal communication from adult tutors of the same species but not from adults of other species. How species-specific learning emerges from the basic features of song prosody remains unknown. In the zebra finch auditory cortex, we discovered a class of neurons that register the silent temporal gaps between song syllables and are distinct from neurons encoding syllable morphology. Behavioral learning and neuronal coding of temporal gap structure resisted song tutoring from other species: Zebra finches fostered by Bengalese finch parents learned Bengalese finch song morphology transposed onto zebra finch temporal gaps. During the vocal learning period, temporal gap neurons fired selectively to zebra finch song. The innate temporal coding of intersyllable silent gaps suggests a neuronal barcode for conspecific vocal learning and social communication in acoustically diverse environments. Copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Being First Matters: Topographical Representational Similarity Analysis of ERP Signals Reveals Separate Networks for Audiovisual Temporal Binding Depending on the Leading Sense.

PubMed

Cecere, Roberto; Gross, Joachim; Willis, Ashleigh; Thut, Gregor

2017-05-24

In multisensory integration, processing in one sensory modality is enhanced by complementary information from other modalities. Intersensory timing is crucial in this process because only inputs reaching the brain within a restricted temporal window are perceptually bound. Previous research in the audiovisual field has investigated various features of the temporal binding window, revealing asymmetries in its size and plasticity depending on the leading input: auditory-visual (AV) or visual-auditory (VA). Here, we tested whether separate neuronal mechanisms underlie this AV-VA dichotomy in humans. We recorded high-density EEG while participants performed an audiovisual simultaneity judgment task including various AV-VA asynchronies and unisensory control conditions (visual-only, auditory-only) and tested whether AV and VA processing generate different patterns of brain activity. After isolating the multisensory components of AV-VA event-related potentials (ERPs) from the sum of their unisensory constituents, we ran a time-resolved topographical representational similarity analysis (tRSA) comparing the AV and VA ERP maps. Spatial cross-correlation matrices were built from real data to index the similarity between the AV and VA maps at each time point (500 ms window after stimulus) and then correlated with two alternative similarity model matrices: AV maps = VA maps versus AV maps ≠ VA maps The tRSA results favored the AV maps ≠ VA maps model across all time points, suggesting that audiovisual temporal binding (indexed by synchrony perception) engages different neural pathways depending on the leading sense. The existence of such dual route supports recent theoretical accounts proposing that multiple binding mechanisms are implemented in the brain to accommodate different information parsing strategies in auditory and visual sensory systems. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Intersensory timing is a crucial aspect of multisensory integration, determining whether and how inputs in one modality enhance stimulus processing in another modality. Our research demonstrates that evaluating synchrony of auditory-leading (AV) versus visual-leading (VA) audiovisual stimulus pairs is characterized by two distinct patterns of brain activity. This suggests that audiovisual integration is not a unitary process and that different binding mechanisms are recruited in the brain based on the leading sense. These mechanisms may be relevant for supporting different classes of multisensory operations, for example, auditory enhancement of visual attention (AV) and visual enhancement of auditory speech (VA). Copyright © 2017 Cecere et al.

Potentials evoked by chirp-modulated tones: a new technique to evaluate oscillatory activity in the auditory pathway.

PubMed

Artieda, J; Valencia, M; Alegre, M; Olaziregi, O; Urrestarazu, E; Iriarte, J

2004-03-01

Steady-state potentials are oscillatory responses generated by a rhythmic stimulation of a sensory pathway. The frequency of the response, which follows the frequency of stimulation, is maximal at a stimulus rate of 40 Hz for auditory stimuli. The exact cause of these maximal responses is not known, although some authors have suggested that they might be related to the 'working frequency' of the auditory cortex. Testing of the responses to different frequencies of stimulation may be lengthy if a single frequency is studied at a time. Our aim was to develop a fast technique to explore the oscillatory response to auditory stimuli, using a tone modulated in amplitude by a sinusoid whose frequency increases linearly in frequency ('chirp') from 1 to 120 Hz. Time-frequency transforms were used for the analysis of the evoked responses in 10 subjects. Also, we analyzed whether the peaks in these responses were due to increases of amplitude or to phase-locking phenomena, using single-sweep time-frequency transforms and inter-trial phase analysis. The pattern observed in the time-frequency transform of the chirp-evoked potential was very similar in all subjects: a diagonal band of energy was observed, corresponding to the frequency of modulation at each time instant. Two components were present in the band, one around 45 Hz (30-60 Hz) and a smaller one between 80 and 120 Hz. Inter-trial phase analysis showed that these components were mainly due to phase locking phenomena. A simultaneous testing of the amplitude-modulation-following oscillatory responses to auditory stimulation is feasible using a tone modulated in amplitude at increasing frequencies. The maximal energies found at stimulation frequencies around 40 Hz are probably due to increased phase-locking of the individual responses.

Perceptual Distortions in Pitch and Time Reveal Active Prediction and Support for an Auditory Pitch-Motion Hypothesis

PubMed Central

Henry, Molly J.; McAuley, J. Devin

2013-01-01

A number of accounts of human auditory perception assume that listeners use prior stimulus context to generate predictions about future stimulation. Here, we tested an auditory pitch-motion hypothesis that was developed from this perspective. Listeners judged either the time change (i.e., duration) or pitch change of a comparison frequency glide relative to a standard (referent) glide. Under a constant-velocity assumption, listeners were hypothesized to use the pitch velocity (Δf/Δt) of the standard glide to generate predictions about the pitch velocity of the comparison glide, leading to perceptual distortions along the to-be-judged dimension when the velocities of the two glides differed. These predictions were borne out in the pattern of relative points of subjective equality by a significant three-way interaction between the velocities of the two glides and task. In general, listeners’ judgments along the task-relevant dimension (pitch or time) were affected by expectations generated by the constant-velocity standard, but in an opposite manner for the two stimulus dimensions. When the comparison glide velocity was faster than the standard, listeners overestimated time change, but underestimated pitch change, whereas when the comparison glide velocity was slower than the standard, listeners underestimated time change, but overestimated pitch change. Perceptual distortions were least evident when the velocities of the standard and comparison glides were matched. Fits of an imputed velocity model further revealed increasingly larger distortions at faster velocities. The present findings provide support for the auditory pitch-motion hypothesis and add to a larger body of work revealing a role for active prediction in human auditory perception. PMID:23936462

Perceptual distortions in pitch and time reveal active prediction and support for an auditory pitch-motion hypothesis.

PubMed

Henry, Molly J; McAuley, J Devin

2013-01-01

A number of accounts of human auditory perception assume that listeners use prior stimulus context to generate predictions about future stimulation. Here, we tested an auditory pitch-motion hypothesis that was developed from this perspective. Listeners judged either the time change (i.e., duration) or pitch change of a comparison frequency glide relative to a standard (referent) glide. Under a constant-velocity assumption, listeners were hypothesized to use the pitch velocity (Δf/Δt) of the standard glide to generate predictions about the pitch velocity of the comparison glide, leading to perceptual distortions along the to-be-judged dimension when the velocities of the two glides differed. These predictions were borne out in the pattern of relative points of subjective equality by a significant three-way interaction between the velocities of the two glides and task. In general, listeners' judgments along the task-relevant dimension (pitch or time) were affected by expectations generated by the constant-velocity standard, but in an opposite manner for the two stimulus dimensions. When the comparison glide velocity was faster than the standard, listeners overestimated time change, but underestimated pitch change, whereas when the comparison glide velocity was slower than the standard, listeners underestimated time change, but overestimated pitch change. Perceptual distortions were least evident when the velocities of the standard and comparison glides were matched. Fits of an imputed velocity model further revealed increasingly larger distortions at faster velocities. The present findings provide support for the auditory pitch-motion hypothesis and add to a larger body of work revealing a role for active prediction in human auditory perception.

Basic auditory processing and sensitivity to prosodic structure in children with specific language impairments: a new look at a perceptual hypothesis

PubMed Central

Cumming, Ruth; Wilson, Angela; Goswami, Usha

2015-01-01

Children with specific language impairments (SLIs) show impaired perception and production of spoken language, and can also present with motor, auditory, and phonological difficulties. Recent auditory studies have shown impaired sensitivity to amplitude rise time (ART) in children with SLIs, along with non-speech rhythmic timing difficulties. Linguistically, these perceptual impairments should affect sensitivity to speech prosody and syllable stress. Here we used two tasks requiring sensitivity to prosodic structure, the DeeDee task and a stress misperception task, to investigate this hypothesis. We also measured auditory processing of ART, rising pitch and sound duration, in both speech (“ba”) and non-speech (tone) stimuli. Participants were 45 children with SLI aged on average 9 years and 50 age-matched controls. We report data for all the SLI children (N = 45, IQ varying), as well as for two independent SLI subgroupings with intact IQ. One subgroup, “Pure SLI,” had intact phonology and reading (N = 16), the other, “SLI PPR” (N = 15), had impaired phonology and reading. Problems with syllable stress and prosodic structure were found for all the group comparisons. Both sub-groups with intact IQ showed reduced sensitivity to ART in speech stimuli, but the PPR subgroup also showed reduced sensitivity to sound duration in speech stimuli. Individual differences in processing syllable stress were associated with auditory processing. These data support a new hypothesis, the “prosodic phrasing” hypothesis, which proposes that grammatical difficulties in SLI may reflect perceptual difficulties with global prosodic structure related to auditory impairments in processing amplitude rise time and duration. PMID:26217286

Cochlear implantation in children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder: A multicenter study on auditory performance and speech production outcomes.

PubMed

Daneshi, Ahmad; Mirsalehi, Marjan; Hashemi, Seyed Basir; Ajalloueyan, Mohammad; Rajati, Mohsen; Ghasemi, Mohammad Mahdi; Emamdjomeh, Hesamaldin; Asghari, Alimohamad; Mohammadi, Shabahang; Mohseni, Mohammad; Mohebbi, Saleh; Farhadi, Mohammad

2018-05-01

To evaluate the auditory performance and speech production outcome in children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD). The effect of age on the outcomes of the surgery at the time of implantation was also evaluated. Cochlear implantation was performed in 136 children with bilateral severe-to- profound hearing loss due to ANSD, at four tertiary academic centers. The patients were divided into two groups based on the age at the time of implantation; Group I: Children ≤24 months, and Group II: subjects >24 months. The categories of auditory performance (CAP) and speech intelligibility rating (SIR) scores were evaluated after the first and second years of implantation. The differences between the CAP and SIR scores in the two groups were assessed. The median CAP scores improved significantly after the cochlear implantation in all the patients (p value < 0.001). The improvement in the CAP scores during the first year in Group II was greater than Group I (p value: 0.007), but the improvement in CAP scores tended to be significantly higher in patients who were implanted at ≤24 months (p value < 0.001). There was no significant difference between two groups in SIR scores at first-year and second-year follow-ups. The evaluation of the SIR improvement revealed significantly higher values for Group I during the second-year follow-up (p value: 0.003). The auditory performance and speech production skills of the children with ANSD improved significantly after cochlear implantation, and this improvement was affected by age at the time of implantation. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Auditory-visual object recognition time suggests specific processing for animal sounds.

PubMed

Suied, Clara; Viaud-Delmon, Isabelle

2009-01-01

Recognizing an object requires binding together several cues, which may be distributed across different sensory modalities, and ignoring competing information originating from other objects. In addition, knowledge of the semantic category of an object is fundamental to determine how we should react to it. Here we investigate the role of semantic categories in the processing of auditory-visual objects. We used an auditory-visual object-recognition task (go/no-go paradigm). We compared recognition times for two categories: a biologically relevant one (animals) and a non-biologically relevant one (means of transport). Participants were asked to react as fast as possible to target objects, presented in the visual and/or the auditory modality, and to withhold their response for distractor objects. A first main finding was that, when participants were presented with unimodal or bimodal congruent stimuli (an image and a sound from the same object), similar reaction times were observed for all object categories. Thus, there was no advantage in the speed of recognition for biologically relevant compared to non-biologically relevant objects. A second finding was that, in the presence of a biologically relevant auditory distractor, the processing of a target object was slowed down, whether or not it was itself biologically relevant. It seems impossible to effectively ignore an animal sound, even when it is irrelevant to the task. These results suggest a specific and mandatory processing of animal sounds, possibly due to phylogenetic memory and consistent with the idea that hearing is particularly efficient as an alerting sense. They also highlight the importance of taking into account the auditory modality when investigating the way object concepts of biologically relevant categories are stored and retrieved.

Auditory development after placement of bone-anchored hearing aids Softband among Chinese Mandarin-speaking children with bilateral aural atresia.

PubMed

Fan, Yue; Zhang, Ying; Wang, Suju; Chen, Xiaowei

2014-01-01

To evaluate auditory developments of Chinese Mandarin-speaking children with congenital bilateral aural atresia after using Bone-anchored hearing aids (Baha) Softband and to compare them with matched peers with normal hearing. Sixteen patients (age ranging from 3 months to 6 years) with bilateral aural atresia and 29 children with normal hearing (age ranging from 8 months to 6 years) were studied. Auditory development was assessed at three time intervals: baseline, 6 months and 12 months. Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS) was conducted for children under 4 years old; Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (MAIS), Chinese Mandarin lexical neighborhood test (MLNT) and sound field pure tone audiometry (PTA) were used for children of 4-6 years old. Mean IT-MAIS scores were 41 ± 24%, 60 ± 22% and 73 ± 7%, respectively at three time intervals. Mean MAIS scores were 66 ± 7%, 90 ± 5%, and 99 ± 2%. Mean speech discrimination scores at the three time intervals were 74 ± 19%, 86 ± 16%, and 95 ± 4% with the easy disyllabic (D-E) list; 48 ± 18%, 73 ± 15%, and 81 ± 7% with the hard disyllabic (D-H) list; 55 ± 17%, 74 ± 22%, and 83 ± 14% with the easy monosyllabic(M-E) list; and 31 ± 14%, 61 ± 15%, and 71 ± 13% with the hard monosyllabic (M-H) list. Baha Softband is suitable for infants and young children with bilateral atresia. Results from these auditory development testing are encouraging. Baha Softband should be used as a bridge for surgical implantations when the temporal bone is thick enough. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Learning to Encode Timing: Mechanisms of Plasticity in the Auditory Brainstem

PubMed Central

Tzounopoulos, Thanos; Kraus, Nina

2009-01-01

Mechanisms of plasticity have traditionally been ascribed to higher-order sensory processing areas such as the cortex, whereas early sensory processing centers have been considered largely hard-wired. In agreement with this view, the auditory brainstem has been viewed as a nonplastic site, important for preserving temporal information and minimizing transmission delays. However, recent groundbreaking results from animal models and human studies have revealed remarkable evidence for cellular and behavioral mechanisms for learning and memory in the auditory brainstem. PMID:19477149

Comparing perceived auditory width to the visual image of a performing ensemble in contrasting bi-modal environmentsa)

PubMed Central

Valente, Daniel L.; Braasch, Jonas; Myrbeck, Shane A.

2012-01-01

Despite many studies investigating auditory spatial impressions in rooms, few have addressed the impact of simultaneous visual cues on localization and the perception of spaciousness. The current research presents an immersive audiovisual environment in which participants were instructed to make auditory width judgments in dynamic bi-modal settings. The results of these psychophysical tests suggest the importance of congruent audio visual presentation to the ecological interpretation of an auditory scene. Supporting data were accumulated in five rooms of ascending volumes and varying reverberation times. Participants were given an audiovisual matching test in which they were instructed to pan the auditory width of a performing ensemble to a varying set of audio and visual cues in rooms. Results show that both auditory and visual factors affect the collected responses and that the two sensory modalities coincide in distinct interactions. The greatest differences between the panned audio stimuli given a fixed visual width were found in the physical space with the largest volume and the greatest source distance. These results suggest, in this specific instance, a predominance of auditory cues in the spatial analysis of the bi-modal scene. PMID:22280585

Crossmodal attention switching: auditory dominance in temporal discrimination tasks.

PubMed

Lukas, Sarah; Philipp, Andrea M; Koch, Iring

2014-11-01

Visual stimuli are often processed more efficiently than accompanying stimuli in another modality. In line with this "visual dominance", earlier studies on attentional switching showed a clear benefit for visual stimuli in a bimodal visual-auditory modality-switch paradigm that required spatial stimulus localization in the relevant modality. The present study aimed to examine the generality of this visual dominance effect. The modality appropriateness hypothesis proposes that stimuli in different modalities are differentially effectively processed depending on the task dimension, so that processing of visual stimuli is favored in the dimension of space, whereas processing auditory stimuli is favored in the dimension of time. In the present study, we examined this proposition by using a temporal duration judgment in a bimodal visual-auditory switching paradigm. Two experiments demonstrated that crossmodal interference (i.e., temporal stimulus congruence) was larger for visual stimuli than for auditory stimuli, suggesting auditory dominance when performing temporal judgment tasks. However, attention switch costs were larger for the auditory modality than for visual modality, indicating a dissociation of the mechanisms underlying crossmodal competition in stimulus processing and modality-specific biasing of attentional set. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Auditory function in children with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

PubMed

Rance, Gary; Ryan, Monique M; Bayliss, Kristen; Gill, Kathryn; O'Sullivan, Caitlin; Whitechurch, Marny

2012-05-01

The peripheral manifestations of the inherited neuropathies are increasingly well characterized, but their effects upon cranial nerve function are not well understood. Hearing loss is recognized in a minority of children with this condition, but has not previously been systemically studied. A clear understanding of the prevalence and degree of auditory difficulties in this population is important as hearing impairment can impact upon speech/language development, social interaction ability and educational progress. The aim of this study was to investigate auditory pathway function, speech perception ability and everyday listening and communication in a group of school-aged children with inherited neuropathies. Twenty-six children with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease confirmed by genetic testing and physical examination participated. Eighteen had demyelinating neuropathies (Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 1) and eight had the axonal form (Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2). While each subject had normal or near-normal sound detection, individuals in both disease groups showed electrophysiological evidence of auditory neuropathy with delayed or low amplitude auditory brainstem responses. Auditory perception was also affected, with >60% of subjects with Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 1 and >85% of Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2 suffering impaired processing of auditory temporal (timing) cues and/or abnormal speech understanding in everyday listening conditions.

Structural Changes and Lack of HCN1 Channels in the Binaural Auditory Brainstem of the Naked Mole-Rat (Heterocephalus glaber).

PubMed

Gessele, Nikodemus; Garcia-Pino, Elisabet; Omerbašić, Damir; Park, Thomas J; Koch, Ursula

2016-01-01

Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) live in large eu-social, underground colonies in narrow burrows and are exposed to a large repertoire of communication signals but negligible binaural sound localization cues, such as interaural time and intensity differences. We therefore asked whether monaural and binaural auditory brainstem nuclei in the naked mole-rat are differentially adjusted to this acoustic environment. Using antibody stainings against excitatory and inhibitory presynaptic structures, namely the vesicular glutamate transporter VGluT1 and the glycine transporter GlyT2 we identified all major auditory brainstem nuclei except the superior paraolivary nucleus in these animals. Naked mole-rats possess a well structured medial superior olive, with a similar synaptic arrangement to interaural-time-difference encoding animals. The neighboring lateral superior olive, which analyzes interaural intensity differences, is large and elongated, whereas the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body, which provides the contralateral inhibitory input to these binaural nuclei, is reduced in size. In contrast, the cochlear nucleus, the nuclei of the lateral lemniscus and the inferior colliculus are not considerably different when compared to other rodent species. Most interestingly, binaural auditory brainstem nuclei lack the membrane-bound hyperpolarization-activated channel HCN1, a voltage-gated ion channel that greatly contributes to the fast integration times in binaural nuclei of the superior olivary complex in other species. This suggests substantially lengthened membrane time constants and thus prolonged temporal integration of inputs in binaural auditory brainstem neurons and might be linked to the severely degenerated sound localization abilities in these animals.

The effects of auditory and visual cues on timing synchronicity for robotic rehabilitation.

PubMed

English, Brittney A; Howard, Ayanna M

2017-07-01

In this paper, we explore how the integration of auditory and visual cues can help teach the timing of motor skills for the purpose of motor function rehabilitation. We conducted a study using Amazon's Mechanical Turk in which 106 participants played a virtual therapy game requiring wrist movements. To validate that our results would translate to trends that could also be observed during robotic rehabilitation sessions, we recreated this experiment with 11 participants using a robotic wrist rehabilitation system as means to control the therapy game. During interaction with the therapy game, users were asked to learn and reconstruct a tapping sequence as defined by musical notes flashing on the screen. Participants were divided into 2 test groups: (1) control: participants only received visual cues to prompt them on the timing sequence, and (2) experimental: participants received both visual and auditory cues to prompt them on the timing sequence. To evaluate performance, the timing and length of the sequence were measured. Performance was determined by calculating the number of trials needed before the participant was able to master the specific aspect of the timing task. In the virtual experiment, the group that received visual and auditory cues was able to master all aspects of the timing task faster than the visual cue only group with p-values < 0.05. This trend was also verified for participants using the robotic arm exoskeleton in the physical experiment.

You can't stop the music: reduced auditory alpha power and coupling between auditory and memory regions facilitate the illusory perception of music during noise.

PubMed

Müller, Nadia; Keil, Julian; Obleser, Jonas; Schulz, Hannah; Grunwald, Thomas; Bernays, René-Ludwig; Huppertz, Hans-Jürgen; Weisz, Nathan

2013-10-01

Our brain has the capacity of providing an experience of hearing even in the absence of auditory stimulation. This can be seen as illusory conscious perception. While increasing evidence postulates that conscious perception requires specific brain states that systematically relate to specific patterns of oscillatory activity, the relationship between auditory illusions and oscillatory activity remains mostly unexplained. To investigate this we recorded brain activity with magnetoencephalography and collected intracranial data from epilepsy patients while participants listened to familiar as well as unknown music that was partly replaced by sections of pink noise. We hypothesized that participants have a stronger experience of hearing music throughout noise when the noise sections are embedded in familiar compared to unfamiliar music. This was supported by the behavioral results showing that participants rated the perception of music during noise as stronger when noise was presented in a familiar context. Time-frequency data show that the illusory perception of music is associated with a decrease in auditory alpha power pointing to increased auditory cortex excitability. Furthermore, the right auditory cortex is concurrently synchronized with the medial temporal lobe, putatively mediating memory aspects associated with the music illusion. We thus assume that neuronal activity in the highly excitable auditory cortex is shaped through extensive communication between the auditory cortex and the medial temporal lobe, thereby generating the illusion of hearing music during noise. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Spatiotemporal differentiation in auditory and motor regions during auditory phoneme discrimination.

PubMed

Aerts, Annelies; Strobbe, Gregor; van Mierlo, Pieter; Hartsuiker, Robert J; Corthals, Paul; Santens, Patrick; De Letter, Miet

2017-06-01

Auditory phoneme discrimination (APD) is supported by both auditory and motor regions through a sensorimotor interface embedded in a fronto-temporo-parietal cortical network. However, the specific spatiotemporal organization of this network during APD with respect to different types of phonemic contrasts is still unclear. Here, we use source reconstruction, applied to event-related potentials in a group of 47 participants, to uncover a potential spatiotemporal differentiation in these brain regions during a passive and active APD task with respect to place of articulation (PoA), voicing and manner of articulation (MoA). Results demonstrate that in an early stage (50-110 ms), auditory, motor and sensorimotor regions elicit more activation during the passive and active APD task with MoA and active APD task with voicing compared to PoA. In a later stage (130-175 ms), the same auditory and motor regions elicit more activation during the APD task with PoA compared to MoA and voicing, yet only in the active condition, implying important timing differences. Degree of attention influences a frontal network during the APD task with PoA, whereas auditory regions are more affected during the APD task with MoA and voicing. Based on these findings, it can be carefully suggested that APD is supported by the integration of early activation of auditory-acoustic properties in superior temporal regions, more perpetuated for MoA and voicing, and later auditory-to-motor integration in sensorimotor areas, more perpetuated for PoA.

Seeing sounds and hearing colors: an event-related potential study of auditory-visual synesthesia.

PubMed

Goller, Aviva I; Otten, Leun J; Ward, Jamie

2009-10-01

In auditory-visual synesthesia, sounds automatically elicit conscious and reliable visual experiences. It is presently unknown whether this reflects early or late processes in the brain. It is also unknown whether adult audiovisual synesthesia resembles auditory-induced visual illusions that can sometimes occur in the general population or whether it resembles the electrophysiological deflection over occipital sites that has been noted in infancy and has been likened to synesthesia. Electrical brain activity was recorded from adult synesthetes and control participants who were played brief tones and required to monitor for an infrequent auditory target. The synesthetes were instructed to attend either to the auditory or to the visual (i.e., synesthetic) dimension of the tone, whereas the controls attended to the auditory dimension alone. There were clear differences between synesthetes and controls that emerged early (100 msec after tone onset). These differences tended to lie in deflections of the auditory-evoked potential (e.g., the auditory N1, P2, and N2) rather than the presence of an additional posterior deflection. The differences occurred irrespective of what the synesthetes attended to (although attention had a late effect). The results suggest that differences between synesthetes and others occur early in time, and that synesthesia is qualitatively different from similar effects found in infants and certain auditory-induced visual illusions in adults. In addition, we report two novel cases of synesthesia in which colors elicit sounds, and vice versa.

Demodulation processes in auditory perception

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feth, Lawrence L.

1994-08-01

The long range goal of this project is the understanding of human auditory processing of information conveyed by complex, time-varying signals such as speech, music or important environmental sounds. Our work is guided by the assumption that human auditory communication is a 'modulation - demodulation' process. That is, we assume that sound sources produce a complex stream of sound pressure waves with information encoded as variations ( modulations) of the signal amplitude and frequency. The listeners task then is one of demodulation. Much of past. psychoacoustics work has been based in what we characterize as 'spectrum picture processing.' Complex sounds are Fourier analyzed to produce an amplitude-by-frequency 'picture' and the perception process is modeled as if the listener were analyzing the spectral picture. This approach leads to studies such as 'profile analysis' and the power-spectrum model of masking. Our approach leads us to investigate time-varying, complex sounds. We refer to them as dynamic signals and we have developed auditory signal processing models to help guide our experimental work.

Effects of auditory selective attention on chirp evoked auditory steady state responses.

PubMed

Bohr, Andreas; Bernarding, Corinna; Strauss, Daniel J; Corona-Strauss, Farah I

2011-01-01

Auditory steady state responses (ASSRs) are frequently used to assess auditory function. Recently, the interest in effects of attention on ASSRs has increased. In this paper, we investigated for the first time possible effects of attention on AS-SRs evoked by amplitude modulated and frequency modulated chirps paradigms. Different paradigms were designed using chirps with low and high frequency content, and the stimulation was presented in a monaural and dichotic modality. A total of 10 young subjects participated in the study, they were instructed to ignore the stimuli and after a second repetition they had to detect a deviant stimulus. In the time domain analysis, we found enhanced amplitudes for the attended conditions. Furthermore, we noticed higher amplitudes values for the condition using frequency modulated low frequency chirps evoked by a monaural stimulation. The most difference between attended and unattended modality was exhibited at the dichotic case of the amplitude modulated condition using chirps with low frequency content.

Age-related delay in visual and auditory evoked responses is mediated by white- and grey-matter differences.

PubMed

Price, D; Tyler, L K; Neto Henriques, R; Campbell, K L; Williams, N; Treder, M S; Taylor, J R; Henson, R N A

2017-06-09

Slowing is a common feature of ageing, yet a direct relationship between neural slowing and brain atrophy is yet to be established in healthy humans. We combine magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measures of neural processing speed with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures of white and grey matter in a large population-derived cohort to investigate the relationship between age-related structural differences and visual evoked field (VEF) and auditory evoked field (AEF) delay across two different tasks. Here we use a novel technique to show that VEFs exhibit a constant delay, whereas AEFs exhibit delay that accumulates over time. White-matter (WM) microstructure in the optic radiation partially mediates visual delay, suggesting increased transmission time, whereas grey matter (GM) in auditory cortex partially mediates auditory delay, suggesting less efficient local processing. Our results demonstrate that age has dissociable effects on neural processing speed, and that these effects relate to different types of brain atrophy.

Age-related delay in visual and auditory evoked responses is mediated by white- and grey-matter differences

PubMed Central

Price, D.; Tyler, L. K.; Neto Henriques, R.; Campbell, K. L.; Williams, N.; Treder, M.S.; Taylor, J. R.; Brayne, Carol; Bullmore, Edward T.; Calder, Andrew C.; Cusack, Rhodri; Dalgleish, Tim; Duncan, John; Matthews, Fiona E.; Marslen-Wilson, William D.; Rowe, James B.; Shafto, Meredith A.; Cheung, Teresa; Davis, Simon; Geerligs, Linda; Kievit, Rogier; McCarrey, Anna; Mustafa, Abdur; Samu, David; Tsvetanov, Kamen A.; van Belle, Janna; Bates, Lauren; Emery, Tina; Erzinglioglu, Sharon; Gadie, Andrew; Gerbase, Sofia; Georgieva, Stanimira; Hanley, Claire; Parkin, Beth; Troy, David; Auer, Tibor; Correia, Marta; Gao, Lu; Green, Emma; Allen, Jodie; Amery, Gillian; Amunts, Liana; Barcroft, Anne; Castle, Amanda; Dias, Cheryl; Dowrick, Jonathan; Fair, Melissa; Fisher, Hayley; Goulding, Anna; Grewal, Adarsh; Hale, Geoff; Hilton, Andrew; Johnson, Frances; Johnston, Patricia; Kavanagh-Williamson, Thea; Kwasniewska, Magdalena; McMinn, Alison; Norman, Kim; Penrose, Jessica; Roby, Fiona; Rowland, Diane; Sargeant, John; Squire, Maggie; Stevens, Beth; Stoddart, Aldabra; Stone, Cheryl; Thompson, Tracy; Yazlik, Ozlem; Barnes, Dan; Dixon, Marie; Hillman, Jaya; Mitchell, Joanne; Villis, Laura; Henson, R. N. A.

2017-01-01

Slowing is a common feature of ageing, yet a direct relationship between neural slowing and brain atrophy is yet to be established in healthy humans. We combine magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measures of neural processing speed with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures of white and grey matter in a large population-derived cohort to investigate the relationship between age-related structural differences and visual evoked field (VEF) and auditory evoked field (AEF) delay across two different tasks. Here we use a novel technique to show that VEFs exhibit a constant delay, whereas AEFs exhibit delay that accumulates over time. White-matter (WM) microstructure in the optic radiation partially mediates visual delay, suggesting increased transmission time, whereas grey matter (GM) in auditory cortex partially mediates auditory delay, suggesting less efficient local processing. Our results demonstrate that age has dissociable effects on neural processing speed, and that these effects relate to different types of brain atrophy. PMID:28598417

Impaired encoding of rapid pitch information underlies perception and memory deficits in congenital amusia.

PubMed

Albouy, Philippe; Cousineau, Marion; Caclin, Anne; Tillmann, Barbara; Peretz, Isabelle

2016-01-06

Recent theories suggest that the basis of neurodevelopmental auditory disorders such as dyslexia or specific language impairment might be a low-level sensory dysfunction. In the present study we test this hypothesis in congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe deficits in the processing of pitch-based material. We manipulated the temporal characteristics of auditory stimuli and investigated the influence of the time given to encode pitch information on participants' performance in discrimination and short-term memory. Our results show that amusics' performance in such tasks scales with the duration available to encode acoustic information. This suggests that in auditory neuro-developmental disorders, abnormalities in early steps of the auditory processing can underlie the high-level deficits (here musical disabilities). Observing that the slowing down of temporal dynamics improves amusics' pitch abilities allows considering this approach as a potential tool for remediation in developmental auditory disorders.

Head-Up Auditory Displays for Traffic Collision Avoidance System Advisories: A Preliminary Investigation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Begault, Durand R.

1993-01-01

The advantage of a head-up auditory display was evaluated in a preliminary experiment designed to measure and compare the acquisition time for capturing visual targets under two auditory conditions: standard one-earpiece presentation and two-earpiece three-dimensional (3D) audio presentation. Twelve commercial airline crews were tested under full mission simulation conditions at the NASA-Ames Man-Vehicle Systems Research Facility advanced concepts flight simulator. Scenario software generated visual targets corresponding to aircraft that would activate a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) aural advisory; the spatial auditory position was linked to the visual position with 3D audio presentation. Results showed that crew members using a 3D auditory display acquired targets approximately 2.2 s faster than did crew members who used one-earpiece head- sets, but there was no significant difference in the number of targets acquired.

The spectrotemporal filter mechanism of auditory selective attention

PubMed Central

Lakatos, Peter; Musacchia, Gabriella; O’Connell, Monica N.; Falchier, Arnaud Y.; Javitt, Daniel C.; Schroeder, Charles E.

2013-01-01

SUMMARY While we have convincing evidence that attention to auditory stimuli modulates neuronal responses at or before the level of primary auditory cortex (A1), the underlying physiological mechanisms are unknown. We found that attending to rhythmic auditory streams resulted in the entrainment of ongoing oscillatory activity reflecting rhythmic excitability fluctuations in A1. Strikingly, while the rhythm of the entrained oscillations in A1 neuronal ensembles reflected the temporal structure of the attended stream, the phase depended on the attended frequency content. Counter-phase entrainment across differently tuned A1 regions resulted in both the amplification and sharpening of responses at attended time points, in essence acting as a spectrotemporal filter mechanism. Our data suggest that selective attention generates a dynamically evolving model of attended auditory stimulus streams in the form of modulatory subthreshold oscillations across tonotopically organized neuronal ensembles in A1 that enhances the representation of attended stimuli. PMID:23439126

Oxytocin Enables Maternal Behavior by Balancing Cortical Inhibition

PubMed Central

Marlin, Bianca J.; Mitre, Mariela; D’amour, James A.; Chao, Moses V.; Froemke, Robert C.

2015-01-01

Oxytocin is important for social interactions and maternal behavior. However, little is known about when, where, and how oxytocin modulates neural circuits to improve social cognition. Here we show how oxytocin enables pup retrieval behavior in female mice by enhancing auditory cortical pup call responses. Retrieval behavior required left but not right auditory cortex, was accelerated by oxytocin in left auditory cortex, and oxytocin receptors were preferentially expressed in left auditory cortex. Neural responses to pup calls were lateralized, with co-tuned and temporally-precise excitatory and inhibitory responses in left cortex of maternal but not pup-naive adults. Finally, pairing calls with oxytocin enhanced responses by balancing the magnitude and timing of inhibition with excitation. Our results describe fundamental synaptic mechanisms by which oxytocin increases the salience of acoustic social stimuli. Furthermore, oxytocin-induced plasticity provides a biological basis for lateralization of auditory cortical processing. PMID:25874674

Engagement with the auditory processing system during targeted auditory cognitive training mediates changes in cognitive outcomes in individuals with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Biagianti, Bruno; Fisher, Melissa; Neilands, Torsten B; Loewy, Rachel; Vinogradov, Sophia

2016-11-01

Individuals with schizophrenia who engage in targeted cognitive training (TCT) of the auditory system show generalized cognitive improvements. The high degree of variability in cognitive gains maybe due to individual differences in the level of engagement of the underlying neural system target. 131 individuals with schizophrenia underwent 40 hours of TCT. We identified target engagement of auditory system processing efficiency by modeling subject-specific trajectories of auditory processing speed (APS) over time. Lowess analysis, mixed models repeated measures analysis, and latent growth curve modeling were used to examine whether APS trajectories were moderated by age and illness duration, and mediated improvements in cognitive outcome measures. We observed significant improvements in APS from baseline to 20 hours of training (initial change), followed by a flat APS trajectory (plateau) at subsequent time-points. Participants showed interindividual variability in the steepness of the initial APS change and in the APS plateau achieved and sustained between 20 and 40 hours. We found that participants who achieved the fastest APS plateau, showed the greatest transfer effects to untrained cognitive domains. There is a significant association between an individual's ability to generate and sustain auditory processing efficiency and their degree of cognitive improvement after TCT, independent of baseline neurocognition. APS plateau may therefore represent a behavioral measure of target engagement mediating treatment response. Future studies should examine the optimal plateau of auditory processing efficiency required to induce significant cognitive improvements, in the context of interindividual differences in neural plasticity and sensory system efficiency that characterize schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Testing the importance of auditory detections in avian point counts

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brewster, J.P.; Simons, T.R.

2009-01-01

Recent advances in the methods used to estimate detection probability during point counts suggest that the detection process is shaped by the types of cues available to observers. For example, models of the detection process based on distance-sampling or time-of-detection methods may yield different results for auditory versus visual cues because of differences in the factors that affect the transmission of these cues from a bird to an observer or differences in an observer's ability to localize cues. Previous studies suggest that auditory detections predominate in forested habitats, but it is not clear how often observers hear birds prior to detecting them visually. We hypothesized that auditory cues might be even more important than previously reported, so we conducted an experiment in a forested habitat in North Carolina that allowed us to better separate auditory and visual detections. Three teams of three observers each performed simultaneous 3-min unlimited-radius point counts at 30 points in a mixed-hardwood forest. One team member could see, but not hear birds, one could hear, but not see, and the third was nonhandicapped. Of the total number of birds detected, 2.9% were detected by deafened observers, 75.1% by blinded observers, and 78.2% by nonhandicapped observers. Detections by blinded and nonhandicapped observers were the same only 54% of the time. Our results suggest that the detection of birds in forest habitats is almost entirely by auditory cues. Because many factors affect the probability that observers will detect auditory cues, the accuracy and precision of avian point count estimates are likely lower than assumed by most field ornithologists. ?? 2009 Association of Field Ornithologists.

Changes in auditory memory performance following the use of frequency-modulated system in children with suspected auditory processing disorders.

PubMed

Umat, Cila; Mukari, Siti Z; Ezan, Nurul F; Din, Normah C

2011-08-01

To examine the changes in the short-term auditory memory following the use of frequency-modulated (FM) system in children with suspected auditory processing disorders (APDs), and also to compare the advantages of bilateral over unilateral FM fitting. This longitudinal study involved 53 children from Sekolah Kebangsaan Jalan Kuantan 2, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The study was conducted from September 2007 to October 2008 in the Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The children's age was between 7-10 years old, and they were assigned into 3 groups: 15 in the control group (not fitted with FM); 19 in the unilateral; and 19 in the bilateral FM-fitting group. Subjects wore the FM system during school time for 12 weeks. Their working memory (WM), best learning (BL), and retention of information (ROI) were measured using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test at pre-fitting, post (after 12 weeks of FM usage), and at long term (one year after the usage of FM system ended). There were significant differences in the mean WM (p=0.001), BL (p=0.019), and ROI (p=0.005) scores at the different measurement times, in which the mean scores at long-term were consistently higher than at pre-fitting, despite similar performances at the baseline (p>0.05). There was no significant difference in performance between unilateral- and bilateral-fitting groups. The use of FM might give a long-term effect on improving selected short-term auditory memories of some children with suspected APDs. One may not need to use 2 FM receivers to receive advantages on auditory memory performance.

Cell-type specific short-term plasticity at auditory nerve synapses controls feed-forward inhibition in the dorsal cochlear nucleus.

PubMed

Sedlacek, Miloslav; Brenowitz, Stephan D

2014-01-01

Feed-forward inhibition (FFI) represents a powerful mechanism by which control of the timing and fidelity of action potentials in local synaptic circuits of various brain regions is achieved. In the cochlear nucleus, the auditory nerve provides excitation to both principal neurons and inhibitory interneurons. Here, we investigated the synaptic circuit associated with fusiform cells (FCs), principal neurons of the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) that receive excitation from auditory nerve fibers and inhibition from tuberculoventral cells (TVCs) on their basal dendrites in the deep layer of DCN. Despite the importance of these inputs in regulating fusiform cell firing behavior, the mechanisms determining the balance of excitation and FFI in this circuit are not well understood. Therefore, we examined the timing and plasticity of auditory nerve driven FFI onto FCs. We find that in some FCs, excitatory and inhibitory components of FFI had the same stimulation thresholds indicating they could be triggered by activation of the same fibers. In other FCs, excitation and inhibition exhibit different stimulus thresholds, suggesting FCs and TVCs might be activated by different sets of fibers. In addition, we find that during repetitive activation, synapses formed by the auditory nerve onto TVCs and FCs exhibit distinct modes of short-term plasticity. Feed-forward inhibitory post-synaptic currents (IPSCs) in FCs exhibit short-term depression because of prominent synaptic depression at the auditory nerve-TVC synapse. Depression of this feedforward inhibitory input causes a shift in the balance of fusiform cell synaptic input towards greater excitation and suggests that fusiform cell spike output will be enhanced by physiological patterns of auditory nerve activity.

Visual and kinesthetic locomotor imagery training integrated with auditory step rhythm for walking performance of patients with chronic stroke.

PubMed

Kim, Jin-Seop; Oh, Duck-Won; Kim, Suhn-Yeop; Choi, Jong-Duk

2011-02-01

To compare the effect of visual and kinesthetic locomotor imagery training on walking performance and to determine the clinical feasibility of incorporating auditory step rhythm into the training. Randomized crossover trial. Laboratory of a Department of Physical Therapy. Fifteen subjects with post-stroke hemiparesis. Four locomotor imagery trainings on walking performance: visual locomotor imagery training, kinesthetic locomotor imagery training, visual locomotor imagery training with auditory step rhythm and kinesthetic locomotor imagery training with auditory step rhythm. The timed up-and-go test and electromyographic and kinematic analyses of the affected lower limb during one gait cycle. After the interventions, significant differences were found in the timed up-and-go test results between the visual locomotor imagery training (25.69 ± 16.16 to 23.97 ± 14.30) and the kinesthetic locomotor imagery training with auditory step rhythm (22.68 ± 12.35 to 15.77 ± 8.58) (P < 0.05). During the swing and stance phases, the kinesthetic locomotor imagery training exhibited significantly increased activation in a greater number of muscles and increased angular displacement of the knee and ankle joints compared with the visual locomotor imagery training, and these effects were more prominent when auditory step rhythm was integrated into each form of locomotor imagery training. The activation of the hamstring during the swing phase and the gastrocnemius during the stance phase, as well as kinematic data of the knee joint, were significantly different for posttest values between the visual locomotor imagery training and the kinesthetic locomotor imagery training with auditory step rhythm (P < 0.05). The therapeutic effect may be further enhanced in the kinesthetic locomotor imagery training than in the visual locomotor imagery training. The auditory step rhythm together with the locomotor imagery training produces a greater positive effect in improving the walking performance of patients with post-stroke hemiparesis.

Exploring the role of auditory analysis in atypical compared to typical language development.

PubMed

Grube, Manon; Cooper, Freya E; Kumar, Sukhbinder; Kelly, Tom; Griffiths, Timothy D

2014-02-01

The relationship between auditory processing and language skills has been debated for decades. Previous findings have been inconsistent, both in typically developing and impaired subjects, including those with dyslexia or specific language impairment. Whether correlations between auditory and language skills are consistent between different populations has hardly been addressed at all. The present work presents an exploratory approach of testing for patterns of correlations in a range of measures of auditory processing. In a recent study, we reported findings from a large cohort of eleven-year olds on a range of auditory measures and the data supported a specific role for the processing of short sequences in pitch and time in typical language development. Here we tested whether a group of individuals with dyslexic traits (DT group; n = 28) from the same year group would show the same pattern of correlations between auditory and language skills as the typically developing group (TD group; n = 173). Regarding the raw scores, the DT group showed a significantly poorer performance on the language but not the auditory measures, including measures of pitch, time and rhythm, and timbre (modulation). In terms of correlations, there was a tendency to decrease in correlations between short-sequence processing and language skills, contrasted by a significant increase in correlation for basic, single-sound processing, in particular in the domain of modulation. The data support the notion that the fundamental relationship between auditory and language skills might differ in atypical compared to typical language development, with the implication that merging data or drawing inference between populations might be problematic. Further examination of the relationship between both basic sound feature analysis and music-like sound analysis and language skills in impaired populations might allow the development of appropriate training strategies. These might include types of musical training to augment language skills via their common bases in sound sequence analysis. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Irregular Speech Rate Dissociates Auditory Cortical Entrainment, Evoked Responses, and Frontal Alpha

PubMed Central

Kayser, Stephanie J.; Ince, Robin A.A.; Gross, Joachim

2015-01-01

The entrainment of slow rhythmic auditory cortical activity to the temporal regularities in speech is considered to be a central mechanism underlying auditory perception. Previous work has shown that entrainment is reduced when the quality of the acoustic input is degraded, but has also linked rhythmic activity at similar time scales to the encoding of temporal expectations. To understand these bottom-up and top-down contributions to rhythmic entrainment, we manipulated the temporal predictive structure of speech by parametrically altering the distribution of pauses between syllables or words, thereby rendering the local speech rate irregular while preserving intelligibility and the envelope fluctuations of the acoustic signal. Recording EEG activity in human participants, we found that this manipulation did not alter neural processes reflecting the encoding of individual sound transients, such as evoked potentials. However, the manipulation significantly reduced the fidelity of auditory delta (but not theta) band entrainment to the speech envelope. It also reduced left frontal alpha power and this alpha reduction was predictive of the reduced delta entrainment across participants. Our results show that rhythmic auditory entrainment in delta and theta bands reflect functionally distinct processes. Furthermore, they reveal that delta entrainment is under top-down control and likely reflects prefrontal processes that are sensitive to acoustical regularities rather than the bottom-up encoding of acoustic features. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The entrainment of rhythmic auditory cortical activity to the speech envelope is considered to be critical for hearing. Previous work has proposed divergent views in which entrainment reflects either early evoked responses related to sound encoding or high-level processes related to expectation or cognitive selection. Using a manipulation of speech rate, we dissociated auditory entrainment at different time scales. Specifically, our results suggest that delta entrainment is controlled by frontal alpha mechanisms and thus support the notion that rhythmic auditory cortical entrainment is shaped by top-down mechanisms. PMID:26538641

L-type calcium channels refine the neural population code of sound level.

PubMed

Grimsley, Calum Alex; Green, David Brian; Sivaramakrishnan, Shobhana

2016-12-01

The coding of sound level by ensembles of neurons improves the accuracy with which listeners identify how loud a sound is. In the auditory system, the rate at which neurons fire in response to changes in sound level is shaped by local networks. Voltage-gated conductances alter local output by regulating neuronal firing, but their role in modulating responses to sound level is unclear. We tested the effects of L-type calcium channels (Ca L : Ca V 1.1-1.4) on sound-level coding in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICC) in the auditory midbrain. We characterized the contribution of Ca L to the total calcium current in brain slices and then examined its effects on rate-level functions (RLFs) in vivo using single-unit recordings in awake mice. Ca L is a high-threshold current and comprises ∼50% of the total calcium current in ICC neurons. In vivo, Ca L activates at sound levels that evoke high firing rates. In RLFs that increase monotonically with sound level, Ca L boosts spike rates at high sound levels and increases the maximum firing rate achieved. In different populations of RLFs that change nonmonotonically with sound level, Ca L either suppresses or enhances firing at sound levels that evoke maximum firing. Ca L multiplies the gain of monotonic RLFs with dynamic range and divides the gain of nonmonotonic RLFs with the width of the RLF. These results suggest that a single broad class of calcium channels activates enhancing and suppressing local circuits to regulate the sensitivity of neuronal populations to sound level. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

An auditory multiclass brain-computer interface with natural stimuli: Usability evaluation with healthy participants and a motor impaired end user.

PubMed

Simon, Nadine; Käthner, Ivo; Ruf, Carolin A; Pasqualotto, Emanuele; Kübler, Andrea; Halder, Sebastian

2014-01-01

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can serve as muscle independent communication aids. Persons, who are unable to control their eye muscles (e.g., in the completely locked-in state) or have severe visual impairments for other reasons, need BCI systems that do not rely on the visual modality. For this reason, BCIs that employ auditory stimuli were suggested. In this study, a multiclass BCI spelling system was implemented that uses animal voices with directional cues to code rows and columns of a letter matrix. To reveal possible training effects with the system, 11 healthy participants performed spelling tasks on 2 consecutive days. In a second step, the system was tested by a participant with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in two sessions. In the first session, healthy participants spelled with an average accuracy of 76% (3.29 bits/min) that increased to 90% (4.23 bits/min) on the second day. Spelling accuracy by the participant with ALS was 20% in the first and 47% in the second session. The results indicate a strong training effect for both the healthy participants and the participant with ALS. While healthy participants reached high accuracies in the first session and second session, accuracies for the participant with ALS were not sufficient for satisfactory communication in both sessions. More training sessions might be needed to improve spelling accuracies. The study demonstrated the feasibility of the auditory BCI with healthy users and stresses the importance of training with auditory multiclass BCIs, especially for potential end-users of BCI with disease.

Human Time-Frequency Acuity Beats the Fourier Uncertainty Principle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oppenheim, Jacob N.; Magnasco, Marcelo O.

2013-01-01

The time-frequency uncertainty principle states that the product of the temporal and frequency extents of a signal cannot be smaller than 1/(4π). We study human ability to simultaneously judge the frequency and the timing of a sound. Our subjects often exceeded the uncertainty limit, sometimes by more than tenfold, mostly through remarkable timing acuity. Our results establish a lower bound for the nonlinearity and complexity of the algorithms employed by our brains in parsing transient sounds, rule out simple “linear filter” models of early auditory processing, and highlight timing acuity as a central feature in auditory object processing.

Home-based Early Intervention on Auditory and Speech Development in Mandarin-speaking Deaf Infants and Toddlers with Chronological Aged 7-24 Months.

PubMed

Yang, Ying; Liu, Yue-Hui; Fu, Ming-Fu; Li, Chun-Lin; Wang, Li-Yan; Wang, Qi; Sun, Xi-Bin

2015-08-20

Early auditory and speech development in home-based early intervention of infants and toddlers with hearing loss younger than 2 years are still spare in China. This study aimed to observe the development of auditory and speech in deaf infants and toddlers who were fitted with hearing aids and/or received cochlear implantation between the chronological ages of 7-24 months, and analyze the effect of chronological age and recovery time on auditory and speech development in the course of home-based early intervention. This longitudinal study included 55 hearing impaired children with severe and profound binaural deafness, who were divided into Group A (7-12 months), Group B (13-18 months) and Group C (19-24 months) based on the chronological age. Categories auditory performance (CAP) and speech intelligibility rating scale (SIR) were used to evaluate auditory and speech development at baseline and 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months of habilitation. Descriptive statistics were used to describe demographic features and were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance. With 24 months of hearing intervention, 78% of the patients were able to understand common phrases and conversation without lip-reading, 96% of the patients were intelligible to a listener. In three groups, children showed the rapid growth of trend features in each period of habilitation. CAP and SIR scores have developed rapidly within 24 months after fitted auxiliary device in Group A, which performed much better auditory and speech abilities than Group B (P < 0.05) and Group C (P < 0.05). Group B achieved better results than Group C, whereas no significant differences were observed between Group B and Group C (P > 0.05). The data suggested the early hearing intervention and home-based habilitation benefit auditory and speech development. Chronological age and recovery time may be major factors for aural verbal outcomes in hearing impaired children. The development of auditory and speech in hearing impaired children may be relatively crucial in thefirst year's habilitation after fitted with the auxiliary device.

Evolutionary trends in directional hearing

PubMed Central

Carr, Catherine E.; Christensen-Dalsgaard, Jakob

2016-01-01

Tympanic hearing is a true evolutionary novelty that arose in parallel within early tetrapods. We propose that in these tetrapods, selection for sound localization in air acted upon pre-existing directionally sensitive brainstem circuits, similar to those in fishes. Auditory circuits in birds and lizards resemble this ancestral, directionally sensitive framework. Despite this anatomically similarity, coding of sound source location differs between birds and lizards. In birds, brainstem circuits compute sound location from interaural cues. Lizards, however, have coupled ears, and do not need to compute source location in the brain. Thus their neural processing of sound direction differs, although all show mechanisms for enhancing sound source directionality. Comparisons with mammals reveal similarly complex interactions between coding strategies and evolutionary history. PMID:27448850

Auditory brainstem activity and development evoked by apical versus basal cochlear implant electrode stimulation in children.

PubMed

Gordon, K A; Papsin, B C; Harrison, R V

2007-08-01

The role of apical versus basal cochlear implant electrode stimulation on central auditory development was examined. We hypothesized that, in children with early onset deafness, auditory development evoked by basal electrode stimulation would differ from that evoked more apically. Responses of the auditory nerve and brainstem, evoked by an apical and a basal implant electrode, were measured over the first year of cochlear implant use in 50 children with early onset severe to profound deafness who used hearing aids prior to implantation. Responses at initial stimulation were of larger amplitude and shorter latency when evoked by the apical electrode. No significant effects of residual hearing or age were found on initial response amplitudes or latencies. With implant use, responses evoked by both electrodes showed decreases in wave and interwave latencies reflecting decreased neural conduction time through the brainstem. Apical versus basal differences persisted with implant experience with one exception; eIII-eV interlatency differences decreased with implant use. Acute stimulation shows prolongation of basally versus apically evoked auditory nerve and brainstem responses in children with severe to profound deafness. Interwave latencies reflecting neural conduction along the caudal and rostral portions of the brainstem decreased over the first year of implant use. Differences in neural conduction times evoked by apical versus basal electrode stimulation persisted in the caudal but not rostral brainstem. Activity-dependent changes of the auditory brainstem occur in response to both apical and basal cochlear implant electrode stimulation.

The role of primary auditory and visual cortices in temporal processing: A tDCS approach.

PubMed

Mioni, G; Grondin, S; Forgione, M; Fracasso, V; Mapelli, D; Stablum, F

2016-10-15

Many studies showed that visual stimuli are frequently experienced as shorter than equivalent auditory stimuli. These findings suggest that timing is distributed across many brain areas and that "different clocks" might be involved in temporal processing. The aim of this study is to investigate, with the application of tDCS over V1 and A1, the specific role of primary sensory cortices (either visual or auditory) in temporal processing. Forty-eight University students were included in the study. Twenty-four participants were stimulated over A1 and 24 participants were stimulated over V1. Participants performed time bisection tasks, in the visual and the auditory modalities, involving standard durations lasting 300ms (short) and 900ms (long). When tDCS was delivered over A1, no effect of stimulation was observed on perceived duration but we observed higher temporal variability under anodic stimulation compared to sham and higher variability in the visual compared to the auditory modality. When tDCS was delivered over V1, an under-estimation of perceived duration and higher variability was observed in the visual compared to the auditory modality. Our results showed more variability of visual temporal processing under tDCS stimulation. These results suggest a modality independent role of A1 in temporal processing and a modality specific role of V1 in the processing of temporal intervals in the visual modality. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Transmodal comparison of auditory, motor, and visual post-processing with and without intentional short-term memory maintenance.

PubMed

Bender, Stephan; Behringer, Stephanie; Freitag, Christine M; Resch, Franz; Weisbrod, Matthias

2010-12-01

To elucidate the contributions of modality-dependent post-processing in auditory, motor and visual cortical areas to short-term memory. We compared late negative waves (N700) during the post-processing of single lateralized stimuli which were separated by long intertrial intervals across the auditory, motor and visual modalities. Tasks either required or competed with attention to post-processing of preceding events, i.e. active short-term memory maintenance. N700 indicated that cortical post-processing exceeded short movements as well as short auditory or visual stimuli for over half a second without intentional short-term memory maintenance. Modality-specific topographies pointed towards sensory (respectively motor) generators with comparable time-courses across the different modalities. Lateralization and amplitude of auditory/motor/visual N700 were enhanced by active short-term memory maintenance compared to attention to current perceptions or passive stimulation. The memory-related N700 increase followed the characteristic time-course and modality-specific topography of the N700 without intentional memory-maintenance. Memory-maintenance-related lateralized negative potentials may be related to a less lateralised modality-dependent post-processing N700 component which occurs also without intentional memory maintenance (automatic memory trace or effortless attraction of attention). Encoding to short-term memory may involve controlled attention to modality-dependent post-processing. Similar short-term memory processes may exist in the auditory, motor and visual systems. Copyright © 2010 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Audio-vocal system regulation in children with autism spectrum disorders.

PubMed

Russo, Nicole; Larson, Charles; Kraus, Nina

2008-06-01

Do children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) respond similarly to perturbations in auditory feedback as typically developing (TD) children? Presentation of pitch-shifted voice auditory feedback to vocalizing participants reveals a close coupling between the processing of auditory feedback and vocal motor control. This paradigm was used to test the hypothesis that abnormalities in the audio-vocal system would negatively impact ASD compensatory responses to perturbed auditory feedback. Voice fundamental frequency (F(0)) was measured while children produced an /a/ sound into a microphone. The voice signal was fed back to the subjects in real time through headphones. During production, the feedback was pitch shifted (-100 cents, 200 ms) at random intervals for 80 trials. Averaged voice F(0) responses to pitch-shifted stimuli were calculated and correlated with both mental and language abilities as tested via standardized tests. A subset of children with ASD produced larger responses to perturbed auditory feedback than TD children, while the other children with ASD produced significantly lower response magnitudes. Furthermore, robust relationships between language ability, response magnitude and time of peak magnitude were identified. Because auditory feedback helps to stabilize voice F(0) (a major acoustic cue of prosody) and individuals with ASD have problems with prosody, this study identified potential mechanisms of dysfunction in the audio-vocal system for voice pitch regulation in some children with ASD. Objectively quantifying this deficit may inform both the assessment of a subgroup of ASD children with prosody deficits, as well as remediation strategies that incorporate pitch training.

A Dynamic Compressive Gammachirp Auditory Filterbank

PubMed Central

Irino, Toshio; Patterson, Roy D.

2008-01-01

It is now common to use knowledge about human auditory processing in the development of audio signal processors. Until recently, however, such systems were limited by their linearity. The auditory filter system is known to be level-dependent as evidenced by psychophysical data on masking, compression, and two-tone suppression. However, there were no analysis/synthesis schemes with nonlinear filterbanks. This paper describe18300060s such a scheme based on the compressive gammachirp (cGC) auditory filter. It was developed to extend the gammatone filter concept to accommodate the changes in psychophysical filter shape that are observed to occur with changes in stimulus level in simultaneous, tone-in-noise masking. In models of simultaneous noise masking, the temporal dynamics of the filtering can be ignored. Analysis/synthesis systems, however, are intended for use with speech sounds where the glottal cycle can be long with respect to auditory time constants, and so they require specification of the temporal dynamics of auditory filter. In this paper, we describe a fast-acting level control circuit for the cGC filter and show how psychophysical data involving two-tone suppression and compression can be used to estimate the parameter values for this dynamic version of the cGC filter (referred to as the “dcGC” filter). One important advantage of analysis/synthesis systems with a dcGC filterbank is that they can inherit previously refined signal processing algorithms developed with conventional short-time Fourier transforms (STFTs) and linear filterbanks. PMID:19330044

An autism-associated serotonin transporter variant disrupts multisensory processing.

PubMed

Siemann, J K; Muller, C L; Forsberg, C G; Blakely, R D; Veenstra-VanderWeele, J; Wallace, M T

2017-03-21

Altered sensory processing is observed in many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with growing evidence that these impairments extend to the integration of information across the different senses (that is, multisensory function). The serotonin system has an important role in sensory development and function, and alterations of serotonergic signaling have been suggested to have a role in ASD. A gain-of-function coding variant in the serotonin transporter (SERT) associates with sensory aversion in humans, and when expressed in mice produces traits associated with ASD, including disruptions in social and communicative function and repetitive behaviors. The current study set out to test whether these mice also exhibit changes in multisensory function when compared with wild-type (WT) animals on the same genetic background. Mice were trained to respond to auditory and visual stimuli independently before being tested under visual, auditory and paired audiovisual (multisensory) conditions. WT mice exhibited significant gains in response accuracy under audiovisual conditions. In contrast, although the SERT mutant animals learned the auditory and visual tasks comparably to WT littermates, they failed to show behavioral gains under multisensory conditions. We believe these results provide the first behavioral evidence of multisensory deficits in a genetic mouse model related to ASD and implicate the serotonin system in multisensory processing and in the multisensory changes seen in ASD.

Approaches to the study of neural coding of sound source location and sound envelope in real environments

PubMed Central

Kuwada, Shigeyuki; Bishop, Brian; Kim, Duck O.

2012-01-01

The major functions of the auditory system are recognition (what is the sound) and localization (where is the sound). Although each of these has received considerable attention, rarely are they studied in combination. Furthermore, the stimuli used in the bulk of studies did not represent sound location in real environments and ignored the effects of reverberation. Another ignored dimension is the distance of a sound source. Finally, there is a scarcity of studies conducted in unanesthetized animals. We illustrate a set of efficient methods that overcome these shortcomings. We use the virtual auditory space method (VAS) to efficiently present sounds at different azimuths, different distances and in different environments. Additionally, this method allows for efficient switching between binaural and monaural stimulation and alteration of acoustic cues singly or in combination to elucidate neural mechanisms underlying localization and recognition. Such procedures cannot be performed with real sound field stimulation. Our research is designed to address the following questions: Are IC neurons specialized to process what and where auditory information? How does reverberation and distance of the sound source affect this processing? How do IC neurons represent sound source distance? Are neural mechanisms underlying envelope processing binaural or monaural? PMID:22754505

Adult attention deficit hyperactivity symptoms and psychosis: Epidemiological evidence from a population survey in England.

PubMed

Marwaha, Steven; Thompson, Andrew; Bebbington, Paul; Singh, Swaran P; Freeman, Daniel; Winsper, Catherine; Broome, Matthew R

2015-09-30

Despite both having some shared features, evidence linking psychosis and adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is sparse and inconsistent. Hypotheses tested were (1) adult ADHD symptoms are associated with auditory hallucinations, paranoid ideation and psychosis (2) links between ADHD symptoms and psychosis are mediated by prescribed ADHD medications, use of illicit drugs, and dysphoric mood. The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007 (N=7403) provided data for regression and multiple mediation analyses. ADHD symptoms were coded from the ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS). Higher ASRS total score was significantly associated with psychosis, paranoid ideation and auditory hallucinations despite controlling for socio-demographic variables, verbal IQ, autism spectrum disorder traits, childhood conduct problems, hypomanic and dysphoric mood. An ASRS score indicating probable ADHD diagnosis was also significantly associated with psychosis. The link between higher ADHD symptoms and psychosis, paranoia and auditory hallucinations was significantly mediated by dysphoric mood, but not by use of amphetamine, cocaine or cannabis. In conclusion, higher levels of adult ADHD symptoms and psychosis are linked and dysphoric mood may form part of the mechanism. Our analyses contradict the traditional clinical view that the main explanation for people with ADHD symptoms developing psychosis is illicit drugs. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Representations of pitch and slow modulation in auditory cortex

PubMed Central

Barker, Daphne; Plack, Christopher J.; Hall, Deborah A.

2013-01-01

Iterated ripple noise (IRN) is a type of pitch-evoking stimulus that is commonly used in neuroimaging studies of pitch processing. When contrasted with a spectrally matched Gaussian noise, it is known to produce a consistent response in a region of auditory cortex that includes an area antero-lateral to the primary auditory fields (lateral Heschl's gyrus). The IRN-related response has often been attributed to pitch, although recent evidence suggests that it is more likely driven by slowly varying spectro-temporal modulations not related to pitch. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study showed that both pitch-related temporal regularity and slow modulations elicited a significantly greater response than a baseline Gaussian noise in an area that has been pre-defined as pitch-responsive. The region was sensitive to both pitch salience and slow modulation salience. The responses to pitch and spectro-temporal modulations interacted in a saturating manner, suggesting that there may be an overlap in the populations of neurons coding these features. However, the interaction may have been influenced by the fact that the two pitch stimuli used (IRN and unresolved harmonic complexes) differed in terms of pitch salience. Finally, the results support previous findings suggesting that the cortical response to IRN is driven in part by slow modulations, not by pitch. PMID:24106464

Auditory brainstem responses to stop consonants predict literacy.

PubMed

Neef, Nicole E; Schaadt, Gesa; Friederici, Angela D

2017-03-01

Precise temporal coding of speech plays a pivotal role in sound processing throughout the central auditory system, which, in turn, influences literacy acquisition. The current study tests whether an electrophysiological measure of this precision predicts literacy skills. Complex auditory brainstem responses were analysed from 62 native German-speaking children aged 11-13years. We employed the cross-phaseogram approach to compute the quality of the electrophysiological stimulus contrast [da] and [ba]. Phase shifts were expected to vary with literacy. Receiver operating curves demonstrated a feasible sensitivity and specificity of the electrophysiological measure. A multiple regression analysis resulted in a significant prediction of literacy by delta cross-phase as well as phonological awareness. A further commonality analysis separated a unique variance that was explained by the physiological measure, from a unique variance that was explained by the behavioral measure, and common effects of both. Despite multicollinearities between literacy, phonological awareness, and subcortical differentiation of stop consonants, a combined assessment of behavior and physiology strongly increases the ability to predict literacy skills. The strong link between the neurophysiological signature of sound encoding and literacy outcome suggests that the delta cross-phase could indicate the risk of dyslexia and thereby complement subjective psychometric measures for early diagnoses. Copyright © 2016 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Early sensory encoding of affective prosody: neuromagnetic tomography of emotional category changes.

PubMed

Thönnessen, Heike; Boers, Frank; Dammers, Jürgen; Chen, Yu-Han; Norra, Christine; Mathiak, Klaus

2010-03-01

In verbal communication, prosodic codes may be phylogenetically older than lexical ones. Little is known, however, about early, automatic encoding of emotional prosody. This study investigated the neuromagnetic analogue of mismatch negativity (MMN) as an index of early stimulus processing of emotional prosody using whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG). We applied two different paradigms to study MMN; in addition to the traditional oddball paradigm, the so-called optimum design was adapted to emotion detection. In a sequence of randomly changing disyllabic pseudo-words produced by one male speaker in neutral intonation, a traditional oddball design with emotional deviants (10% happy and angry each) and an optimum design with emotional (17% happy and sad each) and nonemotional gender deviants (17% female) elicited the mismatch responses. The emotional category changes demonstrated early responses (<200 ms) at both auditory cortices with larger amplitudes at the right hemisphere. Responses to the nonemotional change from male to female voices emerged later ( approximately 300 ms). Source analysis pointed at bilateral auditory cortex sources without robust contribution from other such as frontal sources. Conceivably, both auditory cortices encode categorical representations of emotional prosodic. Processing of cognitive feature extraction and automatic emotion appraisal may overlap at this level enabling rapid attentional shifts to important social cues. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Stimulus modality and working memory performance in Greek children with reading disabilities: additional evidence for the pictorial superiority hypothesis.

PubMed

Constantinidou, Fofi; Evripidou, Christiana

2012-01-01

This study investigated the effects of stimulus presentation modality on working memory performance in children with reading disabilities (RD) and in typically developing children (TDC), all native speakers of Greek. It was hypothesized that the visual presentation of common objects would result in improved learning and recall performance as compared to the auditory presentation of stimuli. Twenty children, ages 10-12, diagnosed with RD were matched to 20 TDC age peers. The experimental tasks implemented a multitrial verbal learning paradigm incorporating three modalities: auditory, visual, and auditory plus visual. Significant group differences were noted on language, verbal and nonverbal memory, and measures of executive abilities. A mixed-model MANOVA indicated that children with RD had a slower learning curve and recalled fewer words than TDC across experimental modalities. Both groups of participants benefited from the visual presentation of objects; however, children with RD showed the greatest gains during this condition. In conclusion, working memory for common verbal items is impaired in children with RD; however, performance can be facilitated, and learning efficiency maximized, when information is presented visually. The results provide further evidence for the pictorial superiority hypothesis and the theory that pictorial presentation of verbal stimuli is adequate for dual coding.

Gamma phase locking modulated by phonological contrast during auditory comprehension in reading disability.

PubMed

Han, Jooman; Mody, Maria; Ahlfors, Seppo P

2012-10-03

Children with specific reading impairment may have subtle deficits in speech perception related to difficulties in phonological processing. The aim of this study was to examine brain oscillatory activity related to phonological processing in the context of auditory sentence comprehension using magnetoencephalography to better understand these deficits. Good and poor readers, 16-18 years of age, were tested on speech perception of sentence-terminal incongruent words that were phonologically manipulated to be similar or dissimilar to corresponding congruent target words. Functional coupling between regions was measured using phase-locking values (PLVs). Gamma-band (30-45 Hz) PLV between auditory cortex and superior temporal sulcus in the right hemisphere was differentially modulated in the two groups by the degree of phonological contrast between the congruent and the incongruent target words in the latency range associated with semantic processing. Specifically, the PLV was larger in the phonologically similar than in the phonologically dissimilar condition in the good readers. This pattern was reversed in the poor readers, whose lower PLV in the phonologically similar condition may be indicative of the impaired phonological coding abilities of the group, and consequent vulnerability under perceptually demanding conditions. Overall, the results support the role of gamma oscillations in spoken language processing.

Audiovocal Integration in Adults Who Stutter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loucks, Torrey; Chon, HeeCheong; Han, Woojae

2012-01-01

Background: Altered auditory feedback can facilitate speech fluency in adults who stutter. However, other findings suggest that adults who stutter show anomalies in "audiovocal integration", such as longer phonation reaction times to auditory stimuli and less effective pitch tracking. Aims: To study audiovocal integration in adults who stutter…