Selective auditory attention to features of complex sounds: A comparative approach

Abstract

When listeners are trained to respond based on one spectrotemporal component of a complex sound, enhanced processing of the behaviorally relevant feature provides an objective correlate of selective attention [I. J. Hirsh and C. S. Watson, Annu. Rev. Psychol. 47, 461–484 (1996)]. To study this issue in a nonhuman species, rats were trained to classify multidimensional acoustic stimuli based on the rate, direction, and range of frequency modulation. Rats successfully learned to classify complex sounds along the dimensions of rate and direction of frequency modulation, but not based on the range of frequency modulation. Rats classified stimuli most accurately when the relevant dimension was rate of frequency modulation. The relative ease with which rats learn to classify complex sounds along a particular dimension can be predicted based on how auditory cortical neurons in rats respond to such sounds. These findings provide new insights into how neural processing may constrain selective auditory attention to features of complex sounds. [Work supported by NIH.]