scholarly journals Neural signatures of the processing of temporal patterns in sound

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Herrmann ◽  
Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Auditory Task ◽  
Visual Object ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Tone Frequency ◽  
Neural Synchronization ◽  
Temporal Regularity ◽  
Sustained Activity ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Neural Signatures

AbstractThe ability to detect regularities in sound (i.e., recurring structure) is critical for effective perception, enabling, for example, change detection and prediction. Two seemingly unconnected lines of research concern the neural operations involved in processing regularities: one investigates how neural activity synchronizes with temporal regularities (e.g., frequency modulation; FM) in sounds, whereas the other focuses on increases in sustained activity during stimulation with repeating tone-frequency patterns. In three electroencephalography studies with male and female human participants, we investigated whether neural synchronization and sustained neural activity are dissociable, or whether they are functionally interdependent. Experiment I demonstrated that neural activity synchronizes with temporal regularity (FM) in sounds, and that sustained activity increases concomitantly. In Experiment II, phase coherence of FM in sounds was parametrically varied. Although neural synchronization was more sensitive to changes in FM coherence, such changes led to a systematic modulation of both neural synchronization and sustained activity, with magnitude increasing as coherence increased. In Experiment III, participants either performed a duration categorization task on the sounds, or a visual object tracking task to distract attention. Neural synchronization was observed irrespective of task, whereas the sustained response was observed only when attention was on the auditory task, not under (visual) distraction. The results suggest that neural synchronization and sustained activity levels are functionally linked: both are sensitive to regularities in sounds. However, neural synchronization might reflect a more sensory-driven response to regularity, compared with sustained activity which may be influenced by attentional, contextual, or other experiential factors.Significance statementOptimal perception requires that the auditory system detects regularities in sounds. Synchronized neural activity and increases in sustained neural activity both appear to index the detection of a regularity, but the functional interrelation of these two neural signatures is unknown. In three electroencephalography experiments, we measured both signatures concomitantly while listeners were presented with sounds containing frequency modulations that differed in their regularity. We observed that both neural signatures are sensitive to temporal regularity in sounds, although they functionally decouple when a listener is distracted by a demanding visual task. Our data suggest that neural synchronization reflects a more automatic response to regularity, compared with sustained activity which may be influenced by attentional, contextual, or other experiential factors.

scholarly journals Sustained neural activity correlates with rapid perceptual learning of auditory patterns

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjorn Herrmann ◽  
Kurdo Araz ◽  
Ingrid S Johnsrude
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Learning ◽  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Temporal Order ◽  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Sustained Activity ◽  
Response Increase ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Efficient Recognition ◽  
Regular Patterns

Recurring structures forming regular patterns are common in sounds. Learning such patterns is thought to be crucial for accurate auditory perceptual organization (scene analysis) and efficient recognition and prediction of sounds. The current study investigated the behavioral and neural signatures of rapid perceptual learning of regular patterns in sounds. In six behavioral and EEG experiments with over 120 human participants from both sexes, we show that individuals are faster to detect regular patterns, are more sensitive to pattern deviations, and are more accurate at judging the temporal order of pattern onset relative to a visual stimulus when patterns are repeated compared to novel. Sustained neural activity indexed perceptual learning in two ways. First, sustained activity increased earlier for repeated compared to novel regular patterns when participants attended to sounds, but not when they ignored them; this earlier response increase mirrored the rapid perceptual learning we observed behaviorally. Second, the magnitude of sustained activity was reduced for repeated compared to novel patterns, independent of whether participants attended to or ignored sounds. The reduction in the magnitude of sustained activity appeared only for later stimulus presentations, suggesting it is not directly related to perceptual learning, but to processes enabled by learning. Our study thus reveals neural markers of perceptual learning of auditory patterns, and of processes that may be related to reduced novelty or better prediction of learned auditory patterns.

scholarly journals Short-term Effects of Vagus Nerve Stimulation on Learning and Evoked Activity in Auditory Cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesyin Lai ◽  
Stephen V. David
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Vagus Nerve ◽  
Nerve Stimulation ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Neural Coding ◽  
Vagus Nerve Stimulation ◽  
Primary Auditory Cortex ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Tone Frequency

ABSTRACTChronic vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) can facilitate learning of sensory and motor behaviors. VNS is believed to trigger release of neuromodulators, including norepinephrine and acetylcholine, which can mediate cortical plasticity associated with learning. Most previous work has studied effects of VNS over many days, and less is known about how acute VNS influences neural coding and behavior over the shorter term. To explore this question, we measured effects of VNS on learning of an auditory discrimination over 1-2 days. Ferrets implanted with cuff electrodes on the vagus nerve were trained by classical conditioning on a tone frequency-reward association. One tone was associated with reward while another tone, was not. The frequencies and reward associations of the tones were changed every two days, requiring learning of a new relationship. When the tones (both rewarded and non-rewarded) were paired with VNS, rates of learning increased on the first day following a change in reward association. To examine VNS effects on auditory coding, we recorded single- and multi-unit neural activity in primary auditory cortex (A1) of passively listening animals following brief periods of VNS (20 trials/session) paired with tones. Because afferent VNS induces changes in pupil size associated with fluctuations in neuromodulation, we also measured pupil during recordings. After pairing VNS with a neuron’s best-frequency (BF) tone, responses in a subpopulation of neurons were reduced. Pairing with an off-BF tone or performing VNS during the inter-trial interval had no effect on responses. We separated the change in A1 activity into two components, one that could be predicted by fluctuations in pupil and one that persisted after VNS and was not accounted for by pupil. The BF-specific reduction in neural responses remained, even after regressing out changes that could be explained by pupil. In addition, the size of VNS-mediated changes in pupil predicted the magnitude of persistent changes in the neural response. This interaction suggests that changes in neuromodulation associated with arousal gate the long-term effects of VNS on neural activity. Taken together, these results support a role for VNS in auditory learning and help establish VNS as a tool to facilitate neural plasticity.

Responses of the teleostean nucleus isthmi to looming objects and other moving stimuli

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHAWN P. GALLAGHER ◽  
DAVID P.M. NORTHMORE
Keyword(s):  
Visual Field ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Object Motion ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Nucleus Isthmi ◽  
Spike Density ◽  
Ball Size ◽  
Longitudinal Body Axis ◽  
The Right

Visually evoked extracellular neural activity was recorded from the nucleus isthmi (NI) of goldfish and bluegill sunfish. When moving anywhere within the right eye's visual field, three-dimensional checkered balls or patterns on a computer screen evoked bursts of spikes in the left NI. Object motion parallel to the longitudinal body axis gave responses that habituated markedly upon repetition, but movement into recently unstimulated regions of the visual field gave vigorous responses. Thus, while NI's response is not visuotopic, its habituation is. An object approaching the animal's body generated a rising spike density, whereas object recession generated only a transient burst. During the approach of a checkered stimulus ball, average NI spike density rose linearly as the ball-to-eye distance decreased and at a rate proportional to the ball's speed (2.5–30 cm/s). Increasing ball size (2.2–9.2 cm) did not affect the rate of activity rise at a given speed, but did increase overall activity levels. NI also responded reliably to expanding textures of fixed overall size. The results suggest that NI signals changes in motion of objects relative to the fish, and estimates the proximity of approaching objects.

scholarly journals Speech-related auditory salience detection in the posterior superior temporal region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik C. Brown ◽  
Brittany Stedelin ◽  
Ahmed M. Raslan ◽  
Nathan R. Selden
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Task ◽  
Temporal Region ◽  
Paired Stimulus ◽  
Correlated Noise ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Sustained Activity ◽  
High Gamma ◽  
Partial Suppression ◽  
Intracranial Electroencephalography ◽  
Relative Salience

AbstractProcessing auditory human speech requires both detection (early and transient) and analysis (sustained). We analyzed high gamma (70-110Hz) activity of intracranial electroencephalography waveforms acquired during an auditory task that paired forward speech, reverse speech, and signal correlated noise. We identified widespread superior temporal sites with sustained activity responding only to forward and reverse speech regardless of paired order. More localized superior temporal auditory onset sites responded to all stimulus types when presented first in a pair and responded in recurrent fashion to the second paired stimulus in select conditions even in the absence of interstimulus silence; a novel finding. Auditory onset activity to a second paired sound recurred according to relative salience, with evidence of partial suppression during linguistic processing. We propose that temporal lobe auditory onset sites facilitate a salience detector function with hysteresis of 200ms and are influenced by cortico-cortical feedback loops involving linguistic processing and articulation.

scholarly journals A distributed neocortical action map associated with reach-to-grasp

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eros Quarta ◽  
Alessandro Scaglione ◽  
Jessica Lucchesi ◽  
Leonardo Sacconi ◽  
Anna Letizia Allegra Mascaro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Wide Field ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Large Network ◽  
Reach To Grasp ◽  
Neural Repair ◽  
Neocortical Dynamics ◽  
Motor Areas

ABSTRACTReach-to-Grasp (RtG) is known to be dependent upon neocortical circuits and extensive research has provided insights into how selected neocortical areas contribute to control dexterous movements. Surprisingly, little infor-mation is available on the global neocortical computations underlying RtG in the mouse. Here, we characterized, employing fluorescence wide-field cal-cium imaging, the neocortex-wide dynamics from mice engaging in a RtG task. We demonstrate that, beyond canonical motor regions, several areas, such as the visual and the retrosplenial cortices, also increase their activ-ity levels during successful RtGs. Intriguingly, homologous regions across the ipsilateral hemisphere are also involved. Functional connectivity among areas increases transiently from rest to planning, and decreases during move-ment. Two anti-correlated neocortical networks emerged during movement. At variance, neural activity levels scale linearly with kinematics measures of successful RtGs in secondary motor areas. Our findings establish the coex-istence of distributed and localized neocortical dynamics for efficient control of complex movements.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTIn mammals, including humans, the cerebral cortex is known to be critical for the correct execution of dexterous movements. Despite the importance of the mouse for elucidating the neural circuitry for motor control, its neocortex-wide dynamics during RtG are largely unexplored. We used in-vivo fluores-cence microscopy to characterize the neural activity across the neocortex as mice performed a reach-to-grasp task. We show that for such complex movements, a large network of neocortical areas gets involved, while movement kinematics correlates with neural activity in secondary motor areas. These findings indicate the coexistence, at the mesoscale level, of distributed and localized neocortical dynamics for the execution of fine movements. This study offers a novel view on the neocortical correlates of motor control, with potential implications for neural repair.

scholarly journals A neural representation of invisibility: when stimulus-specific neural activity negatively correlates with conscious experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J Davidson ◽  
Will Mithen ◽  
Hinze Hogendoorn ◽  
Jeroen J.A. van Boxtel ◽  
Naotsugu Tsuchiya
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Visually Evoked Potentials ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Visual Objects ◽  
Human Participants

AbstractAlthough visual awareness of an object typically increases neural responses, we identify a neural response that increases prior to perceptual disappearances, and that scales with the amount of invisibility reported during perceptual filling-in. These findings challenge long-held assumptions regarding the neural correlates of consciousness and entrained visually evoked potentials, by showing that the strength of stimulus-specific neural activity can encode the conscious absence of a stimulus.Significance StatementThe focus of attention and the contents of consciousness frequently overlap. Yet what happens if this common correlation is broken? To test this, we asked human participants to attend and report on the invisibility of four visual objects which seemed to disappear, yet actually remained on screen. We found that neural activity increased, rather than decreased, when targets became invisible. This coincided with measures of attention that also increased when stimuli disappeared. Together, our data support recent suggestions that attention and conscious perception are distinct and separable. In our experiment, neural measures more strongly follow attention.

scholarly journals High-level cognition during story listening is reflected in high-order dynamic correlations in neural activity patterns

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy L. W. Owen ◽  
Thomas H. Chang ◽  
Jeremy R. Manning
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Dynamic Network ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
High Order ◽  
Dynamic Correlations ◽  
Neuroimaging Data ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
High Level

AbstractOur thoughts arise from coordinated patterns of interactions between brain structures that change with our ongoing experiences. High-order dynamic correlations in neural activity patterns reflect different subgraphs of the brain’s functional connectome that display homologous lower-level dynamic correlations. Here we test the hypothesis that high-level cognition is reflected in high-order dynamic correlations in brain activity patterns. We develop an approach to estimating high-order dynamic correlations in timeseries data, and we apply the approach to neuroimaging data collected as human participants either listen to a ten-minute story or listen to a temporally scrambled version of the story. We train across-participant pattern classifiers to decode (in held-out data) when in the session each neural activity snapshot was collected. We find that classifiers trained to decode from high-order dynamic correlations yield the best performance on data collected as participants listened to the (unscrambled) story. By contrast, classifiers trained to decode data from scrambled versions of the story yielded the best performance when they were trained using first-order dynamic correlations or non-correlational activity patterns. We suggest that as our thoughts become more complex, they are reflected in higher-order patterns of dynamic network interactions throughout the brain.

scholarly journals A dual role of prestimulus spontaneous neural activity in visual object recognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ella Podvalny ◽  
Matthew W. Flounders ◽  
Leana E. King ◽  
Tom Holroyd ◽  
Biyu J. He
Keyword(s):  
Object Recognition ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Dual Role ◽  
Visual Object ◽  
Visual Object Recognition ◽  
Spontaneous Neural Activity

scholarly journals Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a Cocktail Party

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paz Har-shai Yahav ◽  
Elana Zion Golumbic
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Irrelevant Speech ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Noisy Environments ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Processing Resources ◽  
Posterior Parietal ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
And Task

Paying attention to one speaker in noisy environments can be extremely difficult, because to-be-attended and task-irrelevant speech compete for processing resources. We tested whether this competition is restricted to acoustic-phonetic interference or if it extends to competition for linguistic processing as well. Neural activity was recorded using Magnetoencephalography as human participants were instructed to attended to natural speech presented to one ear, and task-irrelevant stimuli were presented to the other. Task-irrelevant stimuli consisted either of random sequences of syllables, or syllables structured to form coherent sentences, using hierarchical frequency-tagging. We find that the phrasal structure of structured task-irrelevant stimuli was represented in the neural response in left inferior frontal and posterior parietal regions, indicating that selective attention does not fully eliminate linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech. Additionally, neural tracking of to-be-attended speech in left inferior frontal regions was enhanced when competing with structured task-irrelevant stimuli, suggesting inherent competition between them for linguistic processing.

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