Sensory processes and age effects in normal adults.
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Accommodation, Ocular↗
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Age and decision strategies in running memory for speech: effects of prosody and linguistic structure.
Young and elderly adults heard recorded passages of English prose spoken with and without normal prosody, and passages that were devoid of either linguistic or prosodic structure. Subjects were instructed to interrupt the speech input at points of their choosing for immediate recall on a segment-by-segment basis. For both age groups segmentation strategies varied with type of speech materials as did their levels of recall accuracy. Age differences in recall performance were diminished by the presence of normal prosody, an effect only partially attributable to the use of prosody to detect linguistic boundaries at the surface level.
Age Factors↗
Auditory peripersonal space in humans: a case of auditory-tactile extinction.
Animal experiments have shown that the spatial correspondence between auditory and tactile receptive fields of ventral pre-motor neurons provides a map of auditory peripersonal space around the head. This allows neurons to localize a near sound with respect to the head. In the present study, we demonstrated the existence of an auditory peripersonal space around the head in humans. In a right-brain damaged patient with tactile extinction, a sound delivered near the ipsilesional side of the head extinguished a tactile stimulus delivered to the contralesional side of the head (cross-modal auditory-tactile extinction). In contrast, when an auditory stimulus was presented far from the head, cross-modal extinction was dramatically reduced. This spatially specific cross-modal extinction was found only when a complex sound like a white noise burst was presented; pure tones did not produce spatially specific cross-modal extinction. These results show a high degree of functional similarity between the characteristics of the auditory peripersonal space representation in humans and monkeys. This similarity suggests that analogous physiological substrates might be responsible for coding this multisensory integrated representation of peripersonal space in human and non-human primates.
Aged↗
Burst-firing sharpens frequency-tuning in primary auditory cortex.
Frequency-tuning in 46 high-firing single units from primary auditory cortex of ketamine-anaesthetized cats was studied separately for isolated-spike firing and burst spike firing. The tuning curve for burst firing was significantly narrower than for the overall firing rate condition and, consequently, much narrower than for the isolated spikes. The burst firing was found in excess of that predicted from a modulated Poisson process, so the results cannot be explained on basis of a change in firing rate criterion. We propose that burst firing in auditory cortex may selectively enhance frequency tuning dynamically controlled by the behavioural state of the animal as well as its stimulus history. Thus burst firing may have functional implications for cortical processing.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
Neural mechanisms of the octave illusion: electrophysiological evidence for central origin.
The octave illusion is experienced when two simultaneous tones, separated by one octave and presented to the opposite ears, are continuously reversed between the two ears. Subjects consistently report a sequence of alternating single tones: the high tone in the right ear and the low in the left. We wished to determine whether such a complex tone sequence is encoded as it is presented or as it is perceived. This was accomplished by making the tone sequence infrequently correspond to how it is perceived, and recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to these perceptually equivalent but physically different events. The illusion-mimicking tones elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN), a change-specific ERP component with origin in the auditory cortex. This indicates that the stimuli giving rise to the octave illusion are encoded according to their physical rather than perceptual properties. Consequently, the generator of the octave illusion is located beyond the level of the auditory cortex.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
Dichotic pitch: a new stimulus distinguishes normal and dyslexic auditory function.
Two patterns of appropriately filtered acoustic white noise can be binaurally fused by the human auditory system to extract pitch and location information that is not available to either ear alone. This phenomenon is called dichotic pitch. Here we present a new method for generating more effective and useful dichotic pitch stimuli. These novel stimuli allow the psychophysical assessment of dichotic pitch detection thresholds. We show that dichotic pitch detection is significantly impaired in individuals with developmental dyslexia, as compared to average readers. These results suggest a low-level auditory deficit associated with dyslexia and also demonstrate the potential value of our new dichotic pitch stimuli for assessment of auditory processing.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
Event-related brain activity associated with auditory pattern processing.
One of the basic properties of the auditory system is the ability to analyse complex temporal patterns. Here, we investigated the neural activity associated with auditory pattern processing using event-related brain potentials. Participants were presented with a continuously repeating sequence of four tones with rare changes in either the frequency or timing of one of the tones. Both frequency- and time-deviant sounds generated mismatch negativity (MMN) waves that peaked at midline central electrode sites and inverted in polarity at inferior temporal and occipital sites, consistent with generators in the supratemporal plane. The MMN scalp topography was similar for the frequency- and time-deviant stimuli, suggesting that both spectral and temporal relations among elements of an auditory pattern are encoded in a unified memory trace.
Adolescent↗
Mismatch negativity: deviance detection or the maintenance of the 'standard'.
Electric brain responses were measured to infrequent tones that broke the frequency alternation of two tones, deviated in duration or violated both regularities (alternation and constant duration). Mismatch negativity (MMN) was elicited by both simple deviants with the duration-related MMN peaking approximately 130 ms later than the alternation-related MMN. The double deviant elicited two successive MMNs. Thus violation of each regularity elicited a separate MMN, whereas previous studies showed that multiple temporally separate deviations from a single repetitive standard elicit one MMN only. These results suggest that the primary function of the MMN-generating process is more closely related to maintaining the representation of auditory regularities than to deviance detection per se.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
Musicians with absolute pitch show distinct neural activities in the auditory cortex.
Meg responses from musicians who had absolute pitch and from non-musicians were measured while they received different auditory stimuli. The parameters of single equivalent current dipoles (ECDs) were calculated for the N1m responses occurring in the auditory cortex. The location of the ECD for the noise burst was significantly posterior to the ECDs for the tones in the two hemispheres of the musicians, but not for those of the non-musicians. Further, in the left hemisphere the ECDs for the musicians were significantly posterior to those for the non-musicians. These results suggest distinct neural activities in the auditory cortex of musicians, which may be the result of cortical plasticity produced by training and/or an inherent cortical structural specificity.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
A pitch glide activates an intermediate response between auditory N1 and mismatch negativity.
Pitch glides of a continuous tone elicit auditory N1-like responses. However, their characteristics have not well been investigated, and it remained unclear whether the response is an auditory true N1 or the mismatch negativity (MMN). We found here that a rapid pitch glide activates almost the same response as a true N1. On the contrary, as the rate of the pitch glide decreases, the response continuously varies the characteristics from true N1 to MMN. This suggests that there would exist intermediate responses between auditory N1 and MMN.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
Selective interference reveals dissociation between auditory memory for location and pitch.
Effects of interfering task-irrelevant tones varying in location or pitch on auditory location and pitch n-back tasks were investigated to study whether there is segregation of spatial and non-spatial information processing in the auditory working memory. The subjects performed spatial and non-spatial auditory 1- and 2-back tasks with and without location or pitch interference. In the 1-back tasks, location but not pitch interference significantly impaired location task performance whereas pitch but not location interference disrupted pitch task performance. In the 2-back tasks, neither the location nor the pitch task performance was differentially disrupted by the distractors, suggesting that there is memory load-dependent segregation in the handling of location and pitch information in the neuronal networks engaged in auditory working memory.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
A common neural substrate for the analysis of pitch and duration pattern in segmented sound?
The analysis of patterns of pitch and duration over time in natural segmented sounds is fundamentally relevant to the analysis of speech, environmental sounds and music. The neural basis for differences between the processing of pitch and duration sequences is not established. We carried out a PET activation study on nine right-handed musically naive subjects, in order to examine the basis for early pitch- and duration-sequence analysis. The input stimuli and output task were closely controlled. We demonstrated a strikingly similar bilateral neural network for both types of analysis. The network is right lateralised and includes the cerebellum, posterior superior temporal cortices, and inferior frontal cortices. These data are consistent with a common initial mechanism for the analysis of pitch and duration patterns within sequences.
Adult↗
Auditory responses from the frontal cortex in the short-tailed fruit bat Carollia perspicillata.
Based on neuroanatomical findings it was hypothesized that an area in the bat frontal cortex is part of a sensorimotor feedback loop and probably important to goal-directed behaviors guided by auditory information. The present report describes the basic stimulus preferences and response properties of neurons from this area in the short-tailed fruit bat Carollia perspicillata. Responses to acoustic stimuli mimicking biosonar pulse-echo (i.e. FM-FM) combinations were found to be facilitated throughout but only rarely exhibited tuning to pulse-echo delay. As opposed to the often sharply delay-tuned FM-FM neurons in the species' auditory cortex, frontal cortical FM-FM neurons seem to be suited for indicating the presence of an insonified object irrespective of its distance and hence are likely to function as novelty detectors and to trigger changes in the bats' orientation behavior.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
Time estimation in schizophrenia: an fMRI study at adjusted levels of difficulty.
fMRI was performed in nine male schizophrenia patients and 15 healthy male controls during an auditory time estimation (timing), a frequency (i.e. pitch) discrimination task, and rest. An adaptive psychophysical approach, the weighted up-down method, was used to adjust individual performance to a level of 75% probability for correct answers. Although performing on the same level of individual difficulty, schizophrenia patients revealed less activations in prefrontal cortex and caudate nucleus, comparing time vs rest. Timing specific differences (i.e. timing vs pitch) between patients and controls were found in the posterior putamen, anterior thalamus, and right medial prefrontal cortex, with patients showing relative hypoactivity. Impairment in time estimation in schizophrenia might be mediated by specific fronto-thalamo-striatal dysfunction.
Adult↗
Cerebral mechanisms underlying orienting of attention towards auditory frequency changes.
Brain mechanisms underlying detection of auditory frequency changes were studied with event-related potentials (ERPs) in 14 human subjects discriminating visual stimuli. Scalp-current density mapping revealed bilateral components of mismatch negativity (MMN) in frontal and auditory cortices. Deviance-related activations in frontal and temporal cortex began to be significant at 94 ms and 154 ms in the right hemisphere, and at 128 ms and 132 ms in the left hemisphere. The magnitude of MMN-neuroelectric currents from the left temporal cortex correlated significantly (r = -0.56, p < 0.05) with distraction caused by MMN-eliciting deviant tones. These results suggest a complex cerebral circuitry involved in frequency change detection and strongly support the role of this circuitry in driving attention involuntarily towards potentially relevant frequency changes in the acoustic environment.
Adult↗
Spectral and temporal stimulus characteristics in the processing of abstract auditory features.
The processing of abstract stimulus features in the human brain was studied by presenting the subjects with frequent standard tone pairs and infrequent deviant tone pairs. Both pairs varied randomly over a wide frequency and/or intensity range, there being no physically constant standard stimulus. The common feature of the standard pairs was the direction of change within the pair, e.g. the second tone was louder in intensity and/or higher in frequency than the first tone. Deviant pairs, having opposite feature-change direction, elicited the mismatch-negativity (MMN) event-related potential component. MMN was similar to deviations in the direction of frequency and intensity changes and showed no additivity for simultaneous changes in both feature directions. Moreover, MMN was elicited even when the within-pair interval exceeded the 200 ms limit of auditory temporal integration. Results demonstrate that extraction of abstract features is not limited to frequency-based rules, nor is it dependent on temporal integration mechanisms. The lack of MMN additivity between violations of multiple abstract rules suggests that the processing of higher-order invariances differs from that of simple physical features.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
The effect of musicianship on pitch memory in performance matched groups.
We compared brain activation patterns between musicians and non-musicians (matched in performance score) while they performed a pitch memory task (using a sparse temporal sampling fMRI method). Both groups showed bilateral activation of the superior temporal, supramarginal, posterior middle and inferior frontal gyrus, and superior parietal lobe. Musicians showed more right temporal and supramarginal gyrus activation while non-musicians had more right primary and left secondary auditory cortex activation. Since both groups' performance were matched, these results probably indicate processing differences between groups that are possibly related to musical training. Non-musicians rely more on brain regions important for pitch discrimination while musicians prefer to use brain regions specialized in short-term memory and recall to perform well in this pitch memory task.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
The influence of sleep on auditory learning: a behavioral study.
Evidence continues to support a role for sleep in delayed learning without further practice. Here we demonstrate the beneficial influence of sleep on auditory skill learning. Fifty-six subjects were randomly assigned to two groups, trained and tested on a pitch memory task three times across 24 h. The morning group was trained at 09.00 h, retested 12 h later that same day, and again after 12 h sleep. The evening group was trained at 21.00 h, retested 12 h immediately after sleep, and again 12 h later the next day. At retesting, both groups combined showed significant delayed learning only after sleep, but not across equivalent periods of wake, regardless of which came first. These data add to the growing literature describing sleep-dependent learning throughout sensory and motor domains.
Acoustic Stimulation↗