Document Detail


Processing asymmetry of transitions between order and disorder in human auditory cortex.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  17494707     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
Auditory environments vary as a result of the appearance and disappearance of acoustic sources, as well as fluctuations characteristic of the sources themselves. The appearance of an object is often manifest as a transition in the pattern of ongoing fluctuation, rather than an onset or offset of acoustic power. How does the system detect and process such transitions? Based on magnetoencephalography data, we show that the temporal dynamics and response morphology of the neural temporal-edge detection processes depend in precise ways on the nature of the change. We measure auditory cortical responses to transitions between "disorder," modeled as a sequence of random frequency tone pips, and "order," modeled as a constant tone. Such transitions embody key characteristics of natural auditory edges. Early cortical responses (from approximately 50 ms post-transition) reveal that order-disorder transitions, and vice versa, are processed by different neural mechanisms. Their dynamics suggest that the auditory cortex optimally adjusts to stimulus statistics, even when this is not required for overt behavior. Furthermore, this response profile bears a striking similarity to that measured from another order-disorder transition, between interaurally correlated and uncorrelated noise, a radically different stimulus. This parallelism suggests the existence of a general mechanism that operates early in the processing stream on the abstract statistics of the auditory input, and is putatively related to the processes of constructing a new representation or detecting a deviation from a previously acquired model of the auditory scene. Together, the data reveal information about the mechanisms with which the brain samples, represents, and detects changes in the environment.
Authors:
Maria Chait; David Poeppel; Alain de Cheveigné; Jonathan Z Simon
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Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural    
Journal Detail:
Title:  The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience     Volume:  27     ISSN:  1529-2401     ISO Abbreviation:  J. Neurosci.     Publication Date:  2007 May 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2007-05-14     Completed Date:  2007-06-22     Revised Date:  2007-12-03    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  8102140     Medline TA:  J Neurosci     Country:  United States    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  5207-14     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. mariac@wam.umd.edu
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adult
Auditory Cortex / physiology*
Auditory Pathways / physiology*
Auditory Perception / physiology*
Evoked Potentials, Auditory / physiology*
Female
Humans
Magnetoencephalography
Male
Nerve Net / physiology
Reaction Time / physiology
Time Factors
Time Perception / physiology
Grant Support
ID/Acronym/Agency:
R01DC05660/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


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