Auditory-cognitive mapping in the frontal cortex during perceptual interference

感知干扰期间额叶皮层的听觉认知映射

基本信息

批准号：
8649875
负责人：
Nikolas Francis
金额：
$ 5.34万
依托单位：
UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2013
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2013-12-01 至 2014-11-30
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Interacting with natural acoustic environments requires learning how to respond to behaviorally meaningful sounds. The frontal cortex (FC) plays a central role in enabling us to learn associations between sounds and actions. Neurons within the FC are involved with attention, memory, knowledge of task rules, risk, and reward. A key feature of FC neurons is that they are highly adaptive in response to changes in ongoing cognitive demands. In this project, our long-term objective is to understand how the FC changes its neural codes for associations between sounds and their behavioral meanings when listening becomes difficult. Participating in a conversation in a crowded room is a common example of difficult listening, especially when neighboring voices are similar. It remains unclear how such listening tasks affect FC responses to sound for single neurons and small populations of neurons. To explore this topic, we developed an auditory task in which animals learn to receive a reward or avoid punishment by, respectively, continuing or stopping to lick a water spout in response to acoustic cues. We shall record neural responses in the FC while the animals perform these tasks. We hypothesize that increasing the similarity of task sounds will make the task more difficult, and that FC responses to the sounds will be modulated with similarity. Our preliminary results suggest that, even when the objective task-difficulty remains unchanged, the strength of FC responses is highly correlated with how well an animal performs the task. Thus, our results shed light on how the brain's response to sound changes according to the subjective experience of listening difficulty. In another twist on these questions, we shall consider how background noise makes listening difficult. Drawing from the previous example, having an intimate conversation in a crowded room will be difficult if the overall level of voices in the roo is high. To the best of our knowledge, the effect of background noise on FC responses to sounds during an auditory task has not been studied. To explore this topic, we will again have animals listen for behaviorally meaningful acoustic cues, but with the addition of acoustic background noise to increase task difficulty. We hypothesize that FC activity will be modulated by the level of noise, reflecting the animals' uncertainty in detecting the acoustic cues. Listenig can be challenging for healthy and hearing impaired people. Our studies will help clarify the basic understanding of FC physiology during difficult listening behaviors. As a result, our work will contribute to future therapies designed to enable better hearing in every-day settings.

描述（由申请人提供）：与自然声学环境互动需要学习如何对行为有意义的声音做出反应。额叶皮层（FC）在使我们能够学习声音和动作之间的关联方面起着核心作用。 FC内的神经元与注意力，记忆，任务规则，风险和奖励有关。 FC神经元的一个关键特征是，它们对正在进行的认知需求的变化具有很高的适应性。在这个项目中，我们的长期目标是了解FC如何改变其在聆听变得困难时声音与其行为含义之间的关联的神经代码。在拥挤的房间里参加对话是一个艰难聆听的一个常见例子，尤其是当相邻声音相似时。目前尚不清楚此类聆听任务如何影响FC对单个神经元和少量神经元种群的声音响应。为了探索这个话题，我们制定了一项听觉任务，在该任务中，动物学会获得奖励或避免通过继续或停止以响应声学提示来舔水喷口。当动物执行这些任务时，我们将记录FC中的神经反应。我们假设增加任务声音的相似性将使任务变得更加困难，并且FC对声音的响应将以相似性进行调制。我们的初步结果表明，即使客观的任务缺陷保持不变，FC反应的强度与动物的执行程度高度相关。因此，我们的结果阐明了大脑对声音的反应如何根据听力难度的主观经历而变化。在这些问题上的另一个转折中，我们将考虑背景噪音如何使聆听变得困难。从上一个示例来看，如果Roo中的整体声音很高，则很难在拥挤的房间内进行亲密对话。据我们所知，尚未研究背景噪声对听觉任务期间声音响应的影响。为了探索这个话题，我们将再次让动物聆听行为有意义的声学提示，但是增加了声学背景噪声以增加任务难度。我们假设FC活动将由噪声水平调节，反映了动物在检测声音提示时的不确定性。对于健康和听力受损的人来说，听可能是具有挑战性的。我们的研究将有助于阐明在艰难的聆听行为过程中对FC生理学的基本理解。结果，我们的工作将有助于未来的疗法，旨在在每日环境中更好地听力。