Temporal and Spatial Processing in the Lateral Belt of Auditory Cortex

听觉皮层外侧带的时空处理

• 批准号: 9223688
• 负责人: GREGG Howard RECANZONE
• 金额: $ 32.36万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-04-01 至 2021-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9223688
• 关键词: Acoustics; Affect; Aging; Anterior; Anterolateral; Area; Attention; Auditory; Auditory Perception; Auditory area; Auditory system; Biological Models; Brain Injuries; Cochlear Implants; Complex; Cues; Depressed mood; Disease; Environment; Event; Functional disorder; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Human; Individual; Intervention; Investigation; Lateral; Lead; Lesion; Location; Mate Selections; Medial; Mediating; Monkeys; Music; Neurons; Pathway interactions; Perception; Performance; Population; Primates; Process; Psychophysics; Research; Role; Speech; Speech Perception; Stimulus; Stream; Stroke; Task Performances; Testing; Visual Cortex; Wood material; auditory stimulus; base; cognitive function; deafness; effective therapy; experimental study; hearing impairment; improved; insight; neural correlate; neuromechanism; parallel processing; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; remediation; response; social; sound; suicidal

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability to process complex sounds is critical for identifying and localizing most real-world objects and events, understanding speech, and producing and appreciating music. Individuals with hearing deficits can be devastated by this dysfunction which can leave them socially isolated, depressed, and even suicidal. Some forms of hearing deficits are the result of problems in the auditory periphery, in which case hearing aids and cochlear implants can be beneficial. However, these interventions have limited if any effect for those with hearing deficits due to central causes, such as strokes, brain injury, and especially natural aging. Unfortunately there are currently no established remedial therapies or treatments for hearing deficits that are caused by central dysfunction. Similarly, attention to auditory stimuli is critical for the perception of those features, although we again have very litte understanding of the neural mechanisms of these attentional influences. A better understanding of the normal cortical processes that underlie auditory perception and selective auditory attention is necessary to develop effective treatments for centrally-mediated hearing deficits. Previous research has indicated that the primate auditory cortex processes spatial and non-spatial (temporal) information independently. Specifically, it is believed that in the lateral belt auditory cortex, the anterolateral field (AL) processes temporal information while the caudolateral field (CL) processes spatial information, with the middle-lateral field (ML) processing both features in an intermediate way. To date, however, there has been no direct evidence that the activity of neurons in the lateral belt is correlated with the perception of temporal or spatial acoustic features. In the proposed study we will record single neuron activity in the lateral belt while non-human subjects attend to and actively discriminate the temporal or spatial features of identical acoustic stimuli. We will use psychophysical tasks that will engage feature-based attention in order to determine how top-down attention influences the activity of cortical neurons believed to be processing the different acoustic features, and the subject's perception of those features. These results will provide the first direct test, at the single neuro level, of the long- held hypothesis that the primate auditory cortex is composed of at least two parallel processing streams. They will also provide the first investigation of how top-down attention influences neuronal activity in the auditory cortex at the single neuron level. These experiments will distinguish between two competing hypotheses: whether attentional effects are global across auditory cortical areas regardless of which acoustic feature is being attended vs the attentional effects are selective to only those neurons processing the attended acoustic feature. Finally, these results will also provide the first test of whether attention mechanisms in the auditory system fit into the current framework of top- down attentional influences on single neuron activity that are largely based on a plethora of studies in the visual cortex.

 描述（由申请人提供）：处理复杂声音的能力对于识别和定位大多数现实世界的物体和事件、理解语音以及创作和欣赏音乐至关重要。有听力缺陷的人可能会因这种功能障碍而遭受重创。某些形式的听力缺陷是由听觉外围问题造成的，在这种情况下，助听器和人工耳蜗可能是有益的，但这些干预措施即使有作用也是有限的。不幸的是，目前还没有针对中枢功能障碍引起的听力缺陷的既定治疗方法或治疗方法。尽管我们对这些注意影响的神经机制知之甚少，但对于这些特征的感知至关重要，更好地了解听觉感知和选择性听觉注意基础的正常皮层过程对于开发中枢介导的有效治疗方法是必要的。以前的听力缺陷。研究表明，灵长类听觉皮层独立处理空间和非空间（时间）信息，具体而言，据信在侧带中。 在听觉皮层中，前外侧场（AL）处理时间信息，而尾外侧场（CL）处理空间信息，中外侧场（ML）以中间方式处理这两种特征，然而迄今为止，还没有直接的方法。有证据表明，侧带中的神经元活动与时间或空间声学特征的感知相关。在拟议的研究中，我们将记录侧带中的单个神经元活动，而非人类受试者则注意并积极区分时间或空间。相同的声刺激的特征。使用心理物理学任务来吸引基于特征的注意力，以确定自上而下的注意力如何影响被认为正在处理不同声学特征的皮层神经元的活动，以及受试者对这些特征的感知。这些结果将提供第一个直接测试。在单一神经水平上，人们长期持有的假设是灵长类听觉皮层由至少两个并行处理流组成，他们还将首次研究自上而下的注意力如何影响听觉皮层的神经活动。这些实验将区分单个神经元水平。两个相互竞争的假设：无论正在关注哪个声学特征，注意力效应是否在整个听觉皮层区域都是全局的，而注意力效应仅对那些处理所关注的声学特征的神经元有选择性。最后，这些结果也将提供对注意力是否存在的第一个测试。中的机制 听觉系统符合目前对单个神经活动自上而下的注意力影响的框架，该框架主要基于视觉皮层的大量研究。