Perceptual decision making of environmental sounds

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Perceptual decision making of environmental sounds Marzia De Lucia1*, Athina Tzovara1, 2, Fosco Bernasconi3, Lucas Spierer3 and Micah M. Murray3 1 Center for Biomedical Imaging, Switzerland 2 University of Lausanne, Switzerland 3 Neuropsychology and Neurorehabilitation Service, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University Hospital, Switzerland Discriminating complex sounds relies on multiple stages of differential brain activity. The specific roles of these stages and their links to perception remain unknown and were the focus of the present study. We presented sounds of living and man-made objects while recording 160-channel electroencephalography (EEG). Subjects categorized each sound as a living, man-made or unknown object. We tested whether/when the brain discriminates between sound categories even when not transpiring behaviorally. We applied a single-trial EEG classifier that identified voltage topographies and latencies at which responses are most discriminative. For sounds that the subjects could not identify, we obtained differences in voltage topographies along the 111-180ms post stimulus period and an average classification accuracy of 66%. Sounds that were correctly recognized as living or man-made by the same cohort of subjects exhibited at least two periods of differences in voltage topographies at the single-trial level. All subjects exhibited differential activity before the sound ended and a second starting at ~280ms post-stimulus onset providing 63% and 65% average accuracy respectively. Because each of these two periods could be used to reliably decode semantic categories, we interpreted the first as being related to an implicit tuning for object representations and the second linked to perceptual decision-making processes. Collectively our results show that the brain discriminates complex sounds during early stages and independently of behavioral proficiency and that explicit sound identification relies on a subsequent stage of differential activity. Keywords: decision-making, EEG Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Sessions: Decision Making, Reward Processing & Response Selection Citation: De Lucia M, Tzovara A, Bernasconi F, Spierer L and Murray MM (2011). Perceptual decision making of environmental sounds. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00370 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Marzia De Lucia, Center for Biomedical Imaging, Lausanne, Switzerland, marzia.de-lucia@chuv.ch Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Marzia De Lucia Athina Tzovara Fosco Bernasconi Lucas Spierer Micah M Murray Google Marzia De Lucia Athina Tzovara Fosco Bernasconi Lucas Spierer Micah M Murray Google Scholar Marzia De Lucia Athina Tzovara Fosco Bernasconi Lucas Spierer Micah M Murray PubMed Marzia De Lucia Athina Tzovara Fosco Bernasconi Lucas Spierer Micah M Murray Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.