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Posterior cingulate cortical lesions eliminate learning-related unit activity in the anterior cingulate cortex.

The frequency of multi-unit neuronal firing in response to tonal conditional stimuli increases, and the neuronal responses become discriminative in character, in the anterior and posterior subfields of the cingulate cortex (Brodmann's Area 24 and 29, respectively) during the course of discriminative avoidance conditioning in rabbits. Bilateral electrolytic lesions of the dorsal subicular complex eliminated the training-induced excitatory response in both cortical subfields, suggesting that subiculocortical projection fibers are essential for this effect. Yet, available data indicate that the subicular projection reaches only Area 29, not Area 24. Here we test the hypothesis that the subicular influence attains Area 24 via a synaptic relay in Area 29. The results showed in keeping with the hypothesis, that bilateral aspirative or electrolytic lesions in Area 29 eliminated the training-induced neuronal responses in Area 24. As in the case of subicular lesions, the Area 29 lesions increased the amplitude of the macropotentials in Area 24. These results are discussed in relation to a model of the interactions of the cingulate cortex, hippocampus and the limbic thalamic nuclei during learning.

Animals↗

Abnormal tonotopic organization in the ventral cochlear nucleus of the hearing-impaired DBA/2 mouse.

The representation of sound frequency by auditory neurons (tonotopic organization) was evaluated in the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN) of DBA/2 mice, a strain with impaired sensitivity to the highest and lowest frequencies heard by normal mice. Tuning curves were obtained from multiple-unit activity (MUA) and compared with those of C57 mice, which do not have severe hearing loss. Tuning curves in the C57 VCN displayed the dorsoventral progression from high- to low-frequency sensitivity that is typical of mammals. By contrast, tuning curves of DBA mice varied little as a function of dorsoventral location, and most MUA thresholds were lowest for frequencies within a narrow range (about 12-16 kHz). Thus, normal tonotopic organization is absent in the DBA mouse's VCN. In addition, because of the consistently low thresholds for 12-16 kHz tones in DBA MUA, mean thresholds for these frequencies are lower than those of C57 MUA in the dorsal and ventral portions of the VCN.

Animals↗

"Recalibrating" the auditory system: the perception of loudness.

Listening to relatively intense tones at 1 frequency and weak tones at another makes the latter relatively louder. The auditory system's relative response to low-frequency (f1) and high-frequency (f2) tones depends on the separation between f1 and f2. When f1 and f2 differ little, loudness matches change little with shifts in mean sound pressure levels (SPLs) at each frequency; but when f1 and f2 differ more, matches change markedly, showing how the auditory system "recalibrates" its responses to f1 and f2. The magnitude of recalibration and its frequency bandwidth also depend to a modest degree on the range of SPLs, their mean level, and the experimental paradigm. The representation of loudness reflects the processing and recalibration of multidimensional peripheral inputs within a higher level, context-sensitive (adaptationlike) mechanism. Other perceptual modalities show evidence of analogous mechanisms.

Adult↗

Early auditory experience and the ontogeny of alarm-call discrimination in Belding's ground squirrels (Spermophilus beldingi).

Because young ground squirrels are vulnerable to predation, selection would favor the early ability to respond to alarm calls. This requires discrimination of classes of alarm calls from each other as well as from non-alarm calls. Pre-emergent auditory experience may influence the development of discrimination. As a means of determining when Belding's ground squirrels (Spermophilus beldingi) can discriminate among calls, cardiac responses to alarm calls and control stimuli were recorded from 2 rearing groups that differed in the frequency of alarm-call exposure. Results suggest that before natal emergence, young can discriminate between 2 classes of alarm calls but they may not discriminate these calls from control stimuli. No differences in responses were found between the rearing groups; thus experience with calls may not influence the onset of discrimination. Early discrimination may facilitate the rapid development of post-emergent behavioral alarm-call responses.

Aging↗

Early and rapid perceptual learning.

Major, rapid performance improvements in perceptual training are often dismissed as 'task' or 'procedural' learning because they are fast and generalize within a task. We assessed the contributions of perceptual and procedural learning to improvement in an auditory tone frequency learning task in humans and found that perceptual learning accounted for between 76% and 98% of the rapid early performance improvement.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Differential sensitivity to tonal frequency and to the rate of amplitude modulation of broadband noise by normally hearing listeners.

Differential sensitivities for tones which varied in frequency (containing cues for place and periodicity) and for broadband noise which varied in the rate of sinusoidal amplitude modulation (presumably containing only a periodicity cue) were measured at common frequencies and modulation rates of the stimulus for four normally hearing listeners. A forced-choice adaptive psychophysical procedure was used in all measurements. Through 60 Hz, tonal-frequency and rate discrimination were similar (on average, 2.5-3.0 Hz) across listeners. From 80-400 Hz, differential sensitivity for tones was between 1.0 and 2.0 Hz, whereas values for rate discrimination increased almost linearly from about 3.6 to 122.0 Hz. Apparently, differential sensitivities for both tonal frequency and modulation rate are mediated similarly, presumably by the same (periodicity) mechanism, through 60 Hz. Above 60 Hz, the listener is more sensitive to differences in tonal frequency than modulation rate. Detection thresholds for sinusoidal amplitude modulation of noise also were measured for these listeners. An average modulation threshold function was obtained and a half-power frequency was estimated for the function at 60 Hz; from this value a time constant of 2.65 ms may be derived, which is consistent with time constants measured by other psychophysical methods. These data further point to some change in perceptual quality above about 60 Hz, that frequency above which we found tonal-frequency and rate discrimination functions to separate.

Adult↗

Auditory psychophysical scaling exposure effects: magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate possible effects of exposure upon suprathreshold psychological responses when auditory magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching with audition as the standard are conducted within the same experiment. Four groups of 10 subjects each whose over-all age range was 18 to 23 yr. were employed. During the cross-modal matching task the Groups 1 and 2 subjects adjusted a vibrotactile stimulus presented to the dorsal surface of the tongue and the Groups 3 and 4 subjects adjusted a vibrotactile stimulus presented to the thenar eminence of the right hand to match binaurally presented auditory stimuli. The magnitude-estimation task was conducted before the cross-modal matching task for Groups 1 and 3 and the cross-modal matching task was conducted before the magnitude-estimation task for Groups 2 and 4. The psychophysical methods of magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching showed no effect of one upon the other when used in the same experiment.

Adolescent↗

The perception of temporal deviations in isochronic patterns.

In a study of perceptual synchronization with an isochronic sequence, subjects were given the following task: They heard an isochronic sequence of tones in which the last interval was either correct or too long. Their task was to detect irregularity. The independent variables were the number of tones heard and the time interval between them. The dependent variable was the difference limen (DL) for the detectability of the irregularity. Two experiments were performed in this study, differing in the way in which the trials were blocked: In Experiment 1, stimuli with the same period were presented in blocks, whereas in Experiment 2, the period of the stimulus was randomized. The results show that in Experiment 1 the number of tones in the stimulus did not affect the detectability of the anisochrony. In Experiment 2, the number of the DL was a decreasing function of the number of tones heard. Moreover, the decrease of the DL was larger than one would expect from a simple model of information integration, which assumes that subjects improve their performance by averaging their percepts of the first intervals in the sequence. The difference between this task and experiments on the discrimination of temporal intervals is discussed.

Adult↗

Modality pairing effects and the response selection bottleneck.

The present experiment examined the effects of input/output modality pairings on dual-task performance using the psychological refractory period (PRP) procedure. Four groups of participants performed two tasks composed of the same sets of inputs (visual and auditory) and the same sets of outputs (manual and vocal), but with different input/output modality pairings. Whereas modality pairings had only small effects on single-task reaction times, they had large effects on dual-task reaction times. The modality pairing effect cannot stem from differences in the difficulty of stimulus classification or response execution, because these task demands were the same across groups. The effect also does not appear to result from changes in stimulus-response compatibility. The present findings suggest dual-task interference arises not only from postponement of central operations (due to a central bottleneck), but also from a slowing of central operations whose magnitude is sensitive to the input/output modality pairings.

Adolescent↗

Discriminative conditioning-related slow potential and single-unit responses in the frontal cortex of urethane-anesthetized rats.

A model is described for obtaining long-term and stable discriminative conditioning-related slow-potential and single-unit responses from the frontal cortex of urethane-anesthetized rats. Responses were recorded and analyzed to reinforced (rewarding medial forebrain bundle stimulation) and non-reinforced tone cues. In the present study, cortical event-related slow potentials provided an adequate index of the level of discriminative conditioning. Single-unit response patterns are described for 57 neurons which demonstrated a discriminative response to either the reinforced or non-reinforced tone cue.

Anesthesia, General↗