Attentional modulation of human auditory cortex

Attention powerfully influences auditory perception, but little is understood about the mechanisms whereby attention sharpens responses to unattended sounds. We used high-resolution surface mapping techniques (using functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) to examine activity in human auditory c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNature neuroscience Vol. 7; no. 6; pp. 658 - 663
Main Authors Petkov, Christopher I, Kang, Xiaojian, Alho, Kimmo, Bertrand, Olivier, Yund, E William, Woods, David L
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Nature Publishing Group US 01.06.2004
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
Acoustic Stimulation - methods
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Animal Genetics and Genomics
Attention - physiology
Auditory cortex
Auditory Cortex - physiology
Bats
Behavioral Sciences
Biological Techniques
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Brain
Female
Humans
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Medical examination
Neurobiology
Neurosciences
Photic Stimulation - methods
Physiological aspects
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Sound
United States
United States > US
California
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Summary:Attention powerfully influences auditory perception, but little is understood about the mechanisms whereby attention sharpens responses to unattended sounds. We used high-resolution surface mapping techniques (using functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) to examine activity in human auditory cortex during an intermodal selective attention task. Stimulus-dependent activations (SDAs), evoked by unattended sounds during demanding visual tasks, were maximal over mesial auditory cortex. They were tuned to sound frequency and location, and showed rapid adaptation to repeated sounds. Attention-related modulations (ARMs) were isolated as response enhancements that occurred when subjects performed pitch-discrimination tasks. In contrast to SDAs, ARMs were localized to lateral auditory cortex, showed broad frequency and location tuning, and increased in amplitude with sound repetition. The results suggest a functional dichotomy of auditory cortical fields: stimulus-determined mesial fields that faithfully transmit acoustic information, and attentionally labile lateral fields that analyze acoustic features of behaviorally relevant sounds.
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ISSN:1097-6256
1546-1726
DOI:10.1038/nn1256