Sound localization and selective auditory attention

声音定位和选择性听觉注意

• 批准号: 6856713
• 负责人: Tom C.T. Yin
• 金额: $ 28.81万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-12-01 至 2009-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6856713
• 关键词: attention; auditory cortex; auditory discrimination; auditory pathways; auditory stimulus; auditory tracking; brain electrical activity; cats; cell population study; hearing; inferior colliculus; neural information processing; neurons; neuropsychological tests; neuropsychology; sound perception; visual stimulus

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall aim of this project is to understand the neural mechanisms of sound localization and selective auditory attention. These results will help to understand how the brain integrates auditory information from the two ears and how it can direct attention to one source over others in a noisy environment. This circuitry plays a major role in our ability to detect signals in the presence of background noise, which is the major symptom of elderly people with hearing loss. Understanding the neural mechanisms will help in the design of hearing aids and therapy. There are two major aims. First, we will use two well-known spatial auditory illusions to study the representation of sound sources in space in the inferior colliculus. Experiments will use a combined behavioral and physiological preparation in awake and trained cats. We will continue our on-going experiments on the psychophysics and physiology of the precedence effect and begin a new series of experiments on the Franssen effect. Both of these are robust auditory illusions that can be readily demonstrated in our behaving preparation. Second, we will develop a new psychophysical paradigm for studying selective auditory attention. Cats will be trained to attend to a speaker on one side in order to make frequency discriminations while ignoring sounds from the contralateral side. We hypothesize that attending to one side will enhance the ability to perform the discrimination as compared to trials in which the animal is not cued to attend to one side or the other. We will then make physiological recordings from the auditory cortex using an innovative silicone multichannel probe to look for modulation by attention during this task. Spatial hearing and selective attention are important basic functions of the auditory system: defects in binaural function in human patients can lead to considerable difficulty in understanding conversations in a noisy room, which is the most common complaint of the hearing-impaired and can lead to severe social withdrawal.

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目的总体目标是了解声音定位和选择性听觉注意的神经机制。这些结果将有助于理解大脑如何整合来自两只耳朵的听觉信息，以及如何在嘈杂的环境中将注意力转移到一个来源而不是其他来源。该电路对于我们在背景噪声中检测信号的能力起着重要作用，背景噪声是老年人听力损失的主要症状。了解神经机制将有助于助听器和治疗的设计。 有两个主要目标。首先，我们将使用两种著名的空间听觉错觉来研究下丘中声源在空间中的表征。实验将在清醒且训练有素的猫身上进行行为和生理准备的结合。我们将继续正在进行的优先效应的心理物理学和生理学实验，并开始一系列新的弗兰森效应实验。这两种都是强烈的听觉错觉，可以很容易地在我们的行为准备中得到证明。其次，我们将开发一种新的心理物理学范式来研究选择性听觉注意。猫将接受​​训练，注意一侧的说话者，以便进行频率辨别，同时忽略对侧的声音。我们假设，与没有提示动物关注一侧或另一侧的试验相比，关注一侧将增强执行辨别能力。然后，我们将使用创新的硅胶多通道探针从听觉皮层进行生理记录，以寻找在此任务期间注意力的调节。 空间听力和选择性注意是听觉系统重要的基本功能：人类患者的双耳功能缺陷会导致在嘈杂的房间中理解对话相当困难，这是听力障碍者最常见的主诉，并可能导致严重的听力损失。社交退缩。