Auditory representations for long lasting sounds: Insights from event-related brain potentials and neural oscillations

Abstract

The basic features of short sounds, such as frequency and intensity including their temporal dynamics, are integrated in a unitary representation. Knowledge on how our brain processes long lasting sounds is scarce. We review research utilizing the Mismatch Negativity event-related potential and neural oscillatory activity for studying representations for long lasting simple versus complex sounds such as sinusoidal tones versus speech. There is evidence for a temporal constraint in the formation of auditory representations: Auditory edges like sound onsets within long lasting sounds open a temporal window of about 350 ms in which the sounds’ dynamics are integrated into a representation, while information beyond that window contributes less to that representation. This integration window segments the auditory input into short chunks. We argue that the representations established in adjacent integration windows can be concatenated into an auditory representation of a long sound, thus, overcoming the temporal constraint.