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PubMed2001

Enhanced phase synchrony in the electroencephalograph gamma band for musicians while listening to music.

Multichannel electroencephalograph signals from two broad groups, 10 musicians and 10 nonmusicians, recorded in different states (in resting states or no task condition, with eyes opened and eyes closed, and with two musical tasks, listening to two different pieces of music) were studied. Degrees of phase synchrony in various frequency bands were assessed. No differences in the degree of synchronization in any frequency band were found between the two groups in resting conditions. Yet, while listening to music, significant increases of synchronization were found only in the gamma-frequency range (>30 Hz) over large cortical areas for the group of musicians. This high degree of synchronization elicited by music in the group of musicians might be due to their ability to host long-term memory representations of music and mediate access to these stored representations.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1984

Interaural time sensitivity of high-frequency neurons in the inferior colliculus.

Recent psychoacoustic experiments have shown that interaural time differences provide adequate cues for lateralizing high-frequency sounds, provided the stimuli are complex and not pure tones. We present here physiological evidence in support of these findings. Neurons of high best frequency in the cat inferior colliculus respond to interaural phase differences of amplitude modulated waveforms, and this response depends upon preservation of phase information of the modulating signal. Interaural phase differences were introduced in two ways: by interaural delays of the entire waveform and by binaural beats in which there was an interaural frequency difference in the modulating waveform. Results obtained with these two methods are similar. Our results show that high-frequency cells can respond to interaural time differences of amplitude modulated signals and that they do so by a sensitivity to interaural phase differences of the modulating waveform.

Animals↗
PubMed1985

Pulse-number distribution for the neural spike train in the cat's auditory nerve.

Pulse-number distributions (PNDs) were recorded from primary afferent fibers in the auditory nerve of the cat, using standard extracellular microelectrode recording techniques. Pure-tone and broadband-noise stimuli were used. The number of neural spikes (pulses) n was measured in a set of contiguous intervals, each of duration T seconds. The quantity n varies from one interval to another. These data were then used to determine the PND, which is the probability p(n,T) of occurrence of n spikes in the time T, versus the number n. The estimated mean and variance of p(n,T) were obtained. Two different values of T were used. An unexpected observation was that the count mean-to-variance ratio R is relatively constant and independent of the stimulus intensity. Use of the PND as a statistical measure of the underlying neural point process has a number of virtues. For example, the PND readily exhibits the existence of spike clusters (e.g., pairs) for some units. The PND is essentially unaffected by time jitter and time quantization and provides a statistically significant measure for units firing at low rates. A study of the scaled and unscaled pulse-interval distributions (PIDs), under conditions of spontaneous firing, demonstrates that the occurrences of neural events are generally not describable by a renewal process. Our investigation shows that none of the point processes customarily used to model the auditory neural spike train is consistent with all of the data. It appears that the encoding of acoustic information into nerve spikes in the peripheral auditory system takes the form of a cluster point process similar to the Neyman-Scott type. For pure-tone excitation, the PND will be well represented as a multinomial distribution in this case.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

The combination of interaural time and intensity in the lateralization of high-frequency complex signals.

In an effort to examine the rules by which information arising from interaural differences of time (IDT) and interaural differences of intensity (IDI) is combined, d"s were measured for trains of high-frequency clicks (4000 Hz, bandpass) possessing various combinations of IDT and IDI. The number of clicks was either 1 or 8, with the interclick interval either 2 or 10 ms. A 2-IFC task was employed in which the paired values of IDT and IDI favored one side during one interval and the other side during the other interval. Data obtained with the combined cues are compared to those obtained with IDTs or IDIs alone in order to determine the degree to which processing of the two cues is done independently. Results suggest that lateralization with such stimuli is based on the sum of the temporal and intensive differences and not on independent evaluations of their separate presences.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Comparison of spectral and nonspectral frequency difference limens for human and nonhuman primates.

Difference limens for frequency were measured in normal-hearing human and nonhuman-primate (macaque) subjects. Stimuli were 1-kHz pure tones, containing both spectral and temporal cues, and 100-Hz sinusoidally amplitude modulated broadband noise (SAM noise), containing only temporal (nonspectral) cues. Subjects were tested for a minimum of 20 sessions and until difference limens were stable over time for each stimulus at each of several sensation levels. Difference limens for pure-tone stimuli showed almost no overlap between human and nonhuman-primate subjects. Difference limens for SAM-noise stimuli for human and nonhuman-primate subjects overlapped considerably. The correlations between performance for the pure-tone stimuli and performance for the SAM noise stimuli averaged 0.60. These data suggest that at least two factors influence pure-tone frequency discrimination. One factor is dependent on the presence of place mechanisms while the other factor, or group of factors, seems to influence both spectral and nonspectral frequency discrimination.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1994

Detection of a mistuned component in a harmonic complex.

The ability to detect a mistuned component in a harmonic complex was measured as a function of harmonic number under three different stimulus procedures: simultaneous monotic, successive monotic, and simultaneous dichotic. In the first experiment, the fundamental frequency was 200 Hz, and the stimulus duration was 410 ms. The threshold obtained in the simultaneous-monotic procedure was lower than those obtained in the other two procedures, especially for harmonics above the third. It is argued that an envelope cue associated with lower-frequency components in the power spectrum of the envelope was the primary cue for the detection of a mistuned component in a harmonic complex in the simultaneous-monotic procedure. Thresholds did not differ for successive-monotic and simultaneous-dichotic procedures, suggesting that the detection of the mistuning was mediated above the level of the cochlea. In the second and third experiments, the stimulus duration and the fundamental frequency of the complex was altered. The envelope cue seemed to be weakened by decreasing the stimulus duration and by increasing the fundamental frequency.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Complex tone processing in primary auditory cortex of the awake monkey. I. Neural ensemble correlates of roughness.

Previous physiological studies [e.g., Bieser and Muller-Preuss, Exp. Brain Res. 108, 273-284 (1996); Schulze and Langner, J. Comp. Physiol. A 181, 651-663 (1997); Steinschneider et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 104, 2935-2955 (1998)] have suggested that neural activity in primary auditory cortex (A1) phase-locked to the waveform envelope of complex sounds with low (<300 Hz) periodicities may represent a neural correlate of roughness perception. However, a correspondence between these temporal response patterns and human psychophysical boundaries of roughness has not yet been demonstrated. The present study examined whether the degree of synchronized phase-locked activity of neuronal ensembles in A1 of the awake monkey evoked by complex tones parallels human psychoacoustic data defining the existence region and frequency dependence of roughness. Stimuli consisted of three consecutive harmonics of fundamental frequencies (f(0)s) ranging from 25 to 4000 Hz. The center frequency of the complex tones was fixed at the best frequency (BF) of the cortical sites, which ranged from 0.3 to 10 kHz. Neural ensemble activity in the thalamorecipient zone (lower lamina III) and supragranular cortical laminae (upper lamina III and lamina II) was measured using multiunit activity and current source density techniques and the degree of phase-locking to the f0 was quantified by spectral analysis. In the thalamorecipient zone, the stimulus f0 at which phase-locking was maximal increased with BF and reached an upper limit between 75 and 150 Hz for BFs greater than about 3 kHz. Estimates of limiting phase-locking rates also increased with BF and approximated psychoacoustic values for the disappearance of roughness. These physiological relationships parallel human perceptual data and therefore support the relevance of phase-locked activity of neuronal ensembles in A1 for the physiological representation of roughness.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

Auditory influences on visual temporal rate perception.

Visual stimuli are known to influence the perception of auditory stimuli in spatial tasks, giving rise to the ventriloquism effect. These influences can persist in the absence of visual input following a period of exposure to spatially disparate auditory and visual stimuli, a phenomenon termed the ventriloquism aftereffect. It has been speculated that the visual dominance over audition in spatial tasks is due to the superior spatial acuity of vision compared with audition. If that is the case, then the auditory system should dominate visual perception in a manner analogous to the ventriloquism effect and aftereffect if one uses a task in which the auditory system has superior acuity. To test this prediction, the interactions of visual and auditory stimuli were measured in a temporally based task in normal human subjects. The results show that the auditory system has a pronounced influence on visual temporal rate perception. This influence was independent of the spatial location, spectral bandwidth, and intensity of the auditory stimulus. The influence was, however, strongly dependent on the disparity in temporal rate between the two stimulus modalities. Further, aftereffects were observed following approximately 20 min of exposure to temporally disparate auditory and visual stimuli. These results show that the auditory system can strongly influence visual perception and are consistent with the idea that bimodal sensory conflicts are dominated by the sensory system with the greater acuity for the stimulus parameter being discriminated.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2001

Comparison of the basal ganglia and cerebellum in shifting attention.

The basal ganglia and cerebellum have traditionally been associated with motor performance. Recently, there has been considerable interest regarding the contributions of these subcortical structures to aspects of cognition. In particular, both the basal ganglia and cerebellum have been hypothesized to be involved in the control of attentional set. To date, no neuropsychological studies have directly compared the effects of basal ganglia and cerebellar dysfunction on the same attention shifting tasks. To this end, we employed an alternating attention task that has been used to demonstrate putative attentional control deficits in children with cerebellar pathology, either related to autism or neurological insult. When adult patients with either Parkinson's disease or cerebellar lesions were tested on this task, a similar pattern of deficits was observed for both groups. However, when the motor demands were reduced, cerebellar patients showed a significant improvement on the alternating attention task, whereas the Parkinson patients continued to exhibit an impairment. This dissociation suggests that attentional deficits reported previously as being due to cerebellar dysfunction may be, at least in part, secondary to problems related to coordinating successive responses. In contrast, attention-shifting deficits associated with basal ganglia impairment cannot be explained by recourse to the motor demands of the task.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2005

The power of listening: auditory-motor interactions in musical training.

We trained musically naive subjects to play a short piano melody by ear in a fully monitored computerized environment and tested their potential to acquire a functional linkage between actions and sounds. Individual notes that were simply acoustic pretraining signals became "physically meaningful" posttraining. In addition, we found preliminary evidence that passive listening to a newly learned musical piece can enhance motor performance in the absence of physical practice.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Does music instruction improve fine motor abilities?

The fine motor abilities of children who participated in two years of piano instruction and those who had never received formal music training were compared before and after the instruction. A significant improvement in fine motor skills was found only for the children who received the lessons, and a significant difference in the speed of response was found between the two groups at the end of the two years of instruction. The innumerable opportunities to assess, refine, and time their motor responses to specific stimuli during musical practice and the availability of constant evaluative feedback (i.e., sound) may allow musicians to improve the accuracy and speed of perceiving and responding to relevant stimuli.

Auditory Perception↗
PubMed2007

Critical period window for spectral tuning defined in the primary auditory cortex (A1) in the rat.

Experience-dependent plasticity during development results in the emergence of highly adapted representations of the external world in the adult brain. Previous studies have convincingly shown that the primary auditory cortex (A1) of the rat possesses a postnatal period of sensory input-driven plasticity but its precise timing (onset, duration, end) has not been defined. In the present study, we examined the effects of pure-tone exposure on the auditory cortex of developing rat pups at different postnatal ages with a high temporal resolution. We found that pure-tone exposure resulted in profound, persistent alterations in sound representations in A1 only if the exposure occurred during a brief period extending from postnatal day 11 (P11) to P13. We also found that postnatal sound exposure in this epoch led to striking alterations in the cortical representation of sound intensity.

Aging↗
PubMed1979

Dichotic ear effects with digits and tones: a within-subject comparison.

56 right-handed adults (23 men, 33 women) with IQs ranging from 79 to 140 on the Quick Test each performed on two dichotic tests, one with digital input, one with tonal input. The average magnitude of the right-ear advantage for digits was comparable to that of the left-ear advantage for tones, but there was greater between-subject variability with tonal input than with digital input. Ear advantage with digits was unrelated with ear advantage with tones, and high intelligence was not associated with clearly opposite directions of ear advantage for the two types of test material. The results were discussed in terms of hemispheric specializations, as well as the reliability and validity of the dichotic ear effects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Auditory illusion analogous to the Baldwin figure in vision.

An auditory illusion was demonstrated in which there was perceptual shortening of the temporal interval contiguous to a low frequency (large) tone and/or perceptual lengthening of the temporal interval contiguous to a high frequency (small) tone. This auditory analogy to the Baldwin figure was demonstrated after first determining that there was a symmetrical expansion of perceived time during the auditory filled-duration illusion.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Rate and filter effects on the developing middle-latency response.

Auditory middle-latency responses (MLRs) were obtained from 71 unanesthetized gerbils ranging in age from 10 to greater than 90 days. Effects of age, stimulation rate, high- and lowpass filter settings and filter slope were examined. MLR amplitude decreased significantly with increased stimulation rate at all ages, at rates up to 40/s. The detection of MLR waves (presence or absence) varied inversely with the rate of stimulation only in immature subjects. The amplitude of waves B (15 ms) and C (25 ms) was significantly larger with a highpass filter setting of 3 Hz as compared to 10 and 30 Hz. This effect was significantly more pronounced in developing animals as compared to adults. MLR amplitude was greater with a filter slope of 6 dB/octave as compared to 48 dB/octave, (10-2,000 Hz) and this effect was also significantly greater in developing animals than in adults. There was no interaction between lowpass filter setting and age (100 vs. 2,000 Hz). A prominent positive wave occurring at approximately 50 ms was present in the 48 dB/octave condition although it was not observed with 6 dB/octave filtering. The clinical use of the MLR requires a better understanding of the effects of stimulus and recording procedures on the response, and how they vary as a function of subject age.

Aging↗