Abstract

The human brain extracts statistical regularities embedded in real-world scenes to sift through the complexity stemming from changing dynamics and entwined uncertainty along multiple perceptual dimensions (e.g., pitch, timbre, location). While there is evidence that sensory dynamics along different auditory dimensions are tracked independently by separate cortical networks, how these statistics are integrated to give rise to unified objects remains unknown, particularly in dynamic scenes that lack conspicuous coupling between features. Using tone sequences with stochastic regularities along spectral and spatial dimensions, this study examines behavioral and electrophysiological responses from human listeners (male and female) to changing statistics in auditory sequences and uses a computational model of predictive Bayesian inference to formulate multiple hypotheses for statistical integration across features. Neural responses reveal multiplexed brain responses reflecting both local statistics along individual features in frontocentral networks, together with global (object-level) processing in centroparietal networks. Independent tracking of local surprisal along each acoustic feature reveals linear modulation of neural responses, while global melody-level statistics follow a nonlinear integration of statistical beliefs across features to guide perception. Near identical results are obtained in separate experiments along spectral and spatial acoustic dimensions, suggesting a common mechanism for statistical inference in the brain. Potential variations in statistical integration strategies and memory deployment shed light on individual variability between listeners in terms of behavioral efficacy and fidelity of neural encoding of stochastic change in acoustic sequences.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The world around us is complex and ever changing: in everyday listening, sound sources evolve along multiple dimensions, such as pitch, timbre, and spatial location, and they exhibit emergent statistical properties that change over time. In the face of this complexity, the brain builds an internal representation of the external world by collecting statistics from the sensory input along multiple dimensions. Using a Bayesian predictive inference model, this work considers alternative hypotheses for how statistics are combined across sensory dimensions. Behavioral and neural responses from human listeners show the brain multiplexes two representations, where local statistics along each feature linearly affect neural responses, and global statistics nonlinearly combine statistical beliefs across dimensions to shape perception of stochastic auditory sequences.

Highlights

  • In everyday environments, the brain sifts through a plethora of sensory inputs, tracking pertinent information along multiple dimensions despite the persistent uncertainty in real-worldReceived July 20, 2020; revised May 19, 2021; accepted May 26, 2021

  • The world around us is complex and ever changing: in everyday listening, sound sources evolve along multiple dimensions, such as pitch, timbre, and spatial location, and they exhibit emergent statistical properties that change over time

  • Computational modeling, and EEG to probe the mechanisms behind feature integration in predictive processing

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Summary

Introduction

The brain sifts through a plethora of sensory inputs, tracking pertinent information along multiple dimensions despite the persistent uncertainty in real-worldReceived July 20, 2020; revised May 19, 2021; accepted May 26, 2021. The brain sifts through a plethora of sensory inputs, tracking pertinent information along multiple dimensions despite the persistent uncertainty in real-world. 1F31-DC017629; and Office of Naval Research Grants N00014-19-1-2014 and N00014-17-1-2736. We thank Audrey Chang for help with data collection for the psychophysics experiments. Inferring statistical structure in complex environments is a hallmark of perception that facilitates robust representation of sensory objects as they evolve along different perceptual dimensions (or features, used interchangeably). Evidence of statistical inference has been documented in audition (Creel et al, 2004; Agus et al, 2010; Pearce et al, 2010; Krishnan et al, 2019); vision (Fiser and Aslin, 2002; Brady et al, 2009) and olfaction (Degel, 2001), as well as across sensory modalities (Conway and Christiansen, 2005; Frost et al, 2015), showing that it underlies the encoding of sensory surroundings in memory

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