Modulation of Early Sensory Processing in Human Auditory Cortex During Auditory Selective Attention

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 90; no. 18; pp. 8722 - 8726
• Main Authors: Woldorff, Marty G., Gallen, Christopher C., Hampson, Scott A., Hillyard, Steven A., Pantev, Christo, Sobel, David, Bloom, Floyd E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 15.09.1993; National Acad Sciences; National Academy of Sciences
• Subjects: Acoustic data; Acoustic Stimulation; Analysis of Variance; Attention; Auditory cortex; Auditory Cortex - anatomy & histology; Auditory Cortex - physiology; Auditory Perception; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Mapping; Coordinate systems; Ears; Ears & hearing; Electrophysiology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Geodetic position; Humans; Magnetic fields; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Magnetics; Magnetism; Nervous system; Perceptual localization; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Selective attention; Sensors; Time Factors; Waveforms; Human; Vigilance; Magnetoencephalography; Central nervous system; Electrophysiology; Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; Auditory cortex; Selective attention; Hearing; Acoustic stimulus; Information processing; Sensorial perception; Perception; Early selection; Auditory pathway; Event evoked potential; Brain (vertebrata)
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.90.18.8722

Neuromagnetic fields were recorded from human subjects as they listened selectively to sequences of rapidly presented tones in one ear while ignoring tones of a different pitch in the opposite ear. Tones in the attended ear evoked larger magnetic brain responses than did unattended tones in the latency ranges 20-50 msec and 80-130 msec poststimulus. Source localization techniques in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging placed the neural generators of these early attention-sensitive brain responses in auditory cortex on the supratemporal plane. These data demonstrate that focused auditory attention in humans can selectively modulate sensory processing in auditory cortex beginning as early as 20 msec poststimulus, thereby providing strong evidence for an "early selection" mechanism of auditory attention that can regulate auditory input at or before the initial stages of cortical analysis.