Passive Listening Paradigm Research Articles

Gamma band pitch responses in human auditory cortex measured with magnetoencephalography

We have previously used direct electrode recordings in two human subjects to identify neural correlates of the perception of pitch (Griffiths, Kumar, Sedley et al., Direct recordings of pitch responses from human auditory cortex, Curr. Biol. 22 (2010), pp. 1128–1132). The present study was carried out to assess virtual-electrode measures of pitch perception based on non-invasive magnetoencephalography (MEG). We recorded pitch responses in 13 healthy volunteers using a passive listening paradigm and the same pitch-evoking stimuli (regular interval noise; RIN) as in the previous study. Source activity was reconstructed using a beamformer approach, which was used to place virtual electrodes in auditory cortex. Time-frequency decomposition of these data revealed oscillatory responses to pitch in the gamma frequency band to occur, in Heschl's gyrus, from 60 Hz upwards. Direct comparison of these pitch responses to the previous depth electrode recordings shows a striking congruence in terms of spectrotemporal profile and anatomical distribution. These findings provide further support that auditory high gamma oscillations occur in association with RIN pitch stimuli, and validate the use of MEG to assess neural correlates of normal and abnormal pitch perception.

Is My Mobile Ringing? Evidence for Rapid Processing of a Personally Significant Sound in Humans

Anecdotal reports and also empirical observations suggest a preferential processing of personally significant sounds. The utterance of one's own name, the ringing of one's own telephone, or the like appear to be especially effective for capturing attention. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the time course and functional neuroanatomy of the voluntary and the involuntary detection of personally significant sounds. To address this issue, we applied an active and a passive listening paradigm, in which male and female human participants were presented with the SMS ringtone of their own mobile and other's ringtones, respectively. Enhanced evoked oscillatory activity in the 35-75 Hz band for one's own ringtone shows that the brain distinguishes complex personally significant and nonsignificant sounds, starting as early as 40 ms after sound onset. While in animals it has been reported that the primary auditory cortex accounts for acoustic experience-based memory matching processes, results from the present study suggest that in humans these processes are not confined to sensory processing areas. In particular, we found a coactivation of left auditory areas and left frontal gyri during passive listening. Active listening evoked additional involvement of sensory processing areas in the right hemisphere. This supports the idea that top-down mechanisms affect stimulus representations even at the level of sensory cortices. Furthermore, active detection of sounds additionally activated the superior parietal lobe supporting the existence of a frontoparietal network of selective attention.

Processing Interaural Cues in Sound Segregation by Young and Middle-Aged Brains

When listening to one speaker while another conversation is occurring simultaneously, we separate the competing sounds by processing physical cues such as common onset time, intensity, frequency harmonicity, and spatial location of the sound sources. Spatial location is determined in large part by differences in arrival of a sound at one ear versus the other ear, otherwise known as interaural time difference (ITD) or interaural phase difference (IPD). There is ample anecdotal evidence that middle-aged adults experience greater difficulty listening to speech in noise, even when their audiological evaluation does not reveal abnormal results. Furthermore, it has been shown that the frequency range for IPD processing is reduced in middle-aged adults compared to young adults, even though morphological changes in the auditory evoked potential (AEP) response were only observed in older adults. The purpose of the current study was to examine early aging effects (< 60 years) on IPD processing in concurrent sound segregation. We examined the change AEP evoked by detection of a mistuned and/or phase-shifted second harmonic during the last 1500 msec of a 3000 msec amplitude-modulated harmonic complex. A passive listening paradigm was used. Ten young (21-35 years) and 11 middle-aged (48-57 years) adults with normal hearing were included in the study. Scalp electroencephalographic activity was recorded from 63 electrodes. A temporospatial principal component analysis was conducted. Spatial factor scores of individual spatial factors were the dependent variable in separate mixed-design ANOVAs for each temporal factor of interest. Stimulus type was the within-subject independent variable, and age group was the between-subject independent variable. Results indicated a delay in the upward P2 slope and the P2 peak latency to a sudden phase shift in the second harmonic of a harmonic complex in middle-aged adults compared to young adults. This AEP difference increased as mistuning (as a second grouping cue) decreased and remained evident when the IPD was the only grouping cue. We conclude that our findings reflect neurophysiologic differences between young and middle-aged adults for IPD processing in concurrent sound segregation.

Altered attentional processing of background stimuli in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome: a study in auditory event-related potentials evoked in an oddball paradigm.

In 24 adults and 29 children both with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome and in 24 control adults and 17 control children we studied auditory event-related potentials (ERP's) evoked in 2 different oddball paradigms: a passive listening paradigm (PLP) in which subjects had only to attend tones (260 standards, 40 deviants), followed by an active discrimination paradigm (ADP) in which subjects had to press a microswitch in response to the deviant tones. In the adult Tourette patients the PLP disclosed between 200-300 msec at all derivations (Fz, Cz, Pz, C3, C4, P3, P4) a significantly more negative activity than in the controls. In the Tourette children such a result was only found at Fz. In the ADP the differences between both adult groups disappeared, but the curves of the control children became now significantly more positive than those of the Tourette ones except at C3 and P3. Between 200-300 msec the curves of all 4 groups were significantly less negative in the ADP than in the PLP. This decrease in negativity was significantly larger in the adult Tourette patients than in the adult controls, but in the children groups the reverse occurred. It is hypothesized that the differences in amplitude between patients and controls and between both paradigms are due to differences in amplitude of an endogenous negative component overlapping the exogenous N100-N200 standard curve. Based on this hypothesis the results could suggest that one of the problems in Tourette syndrome is an increased attention to non-relevant stimuli.

Acoustic, Phonetic and Phonological Mismatch in Adolescents

Event Abstract Back to Event Acoustic, Phonetic and Phonological Mismatch in Adolescents Bjoern Albrecht1*, E. Keller2, W. Woerner3, A. Rothenberger1 and T. Banaschewski4 1 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Göttingen, Germany 2 University of Lausanne, Switzerland 3 German Institute for International Educational Research, Germany 4 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health , Germany Competence in speech processing develops early in life and preattentive mechanisms that detect auditory alterations may play an important role, but the underlying neuronal processes are not well understood. In this study, twenty-seven school-aged children with normal hearing capabilities showed the expected deflections in the auditory evoked potentials during a passive oddball listening paradigm with sine tones or speech sounds incorporating acoustic, phonetic and phonological mismatch. Mismatch response comprises a distinct early and later part. Early mismatch negativity (MMN) appears to be related to processing of physical f0 deviance for both sine tones and speech sounds, and was diminished following phonological mismatch. The subsequent late discriminative negativity (LDN) eminent in acoustic and phonological mismatch is diminished due to linguistic congruency despite physical deviance and may thus also reflect higher order linguistic processing. Conference: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Presentations Citation: Albrecht B, Keller E, Woerner W, Rothenberger A and Banaschewski T (2009). Acoustic, Phonetic and Phonological Mismatch in Adolescents. Conference Abstract: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.142 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: 26 Mar 2009; Published Online: 26 Mar 2009. * Correspondence: Bjoern Albrecht, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, bjoern.albrecht@uni-marburg.de 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 Bjoern Albrecht E. Keller W. Woerner A. Rothenberger T. Banaschewski Google Bjoern Albrecht E. Keller W. Woerner A. Rothenberger T. Banaschewski Google Scholar Bjoern Albrecht E. Keller W. Woerner A. Rothenberger T. Banaschewski PubMed Bjoern Albrecht E. Keller W. Woerner A. Rothenberger T. Banaschewski 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.

Age-related differences in sensitivity to small changes in frequency assessed with cortical evoked potentials

As part of an ongoing study of age-related changes in auditory processing, sensitivity to small changes in frequency were assessed using the cortical auditory evoked potential, P1-N1-P2, in younger and older adults with normal hearing. Behavioral measures have shown age-related differences in intensity and frequency discrimination that are larger at lower than higher frequencies. However, substantial individual differences and equivocal results among studies have been reported. This variability may reflect differences in tasks and procedures, as well as subject variables, such as hearing sensitivity and level of attention. To minimize these subject variables, the P1-N1-P2 response was investigated using a passive listening paradigm. Subjects were 10 younger and 10 older adults. The P1-N1-P2 was elicited by a 150-ms change in frequency in otherwise continuous 500-Hz and 3000-Hz pure tones presented at 70 dB SPL. P1-N1-P2 threshold was defined as the smallest change in frequency needed to evoke a P1-N1-P2 response. Furthermore, a frequency-dependent aging effect was observed for P1-N1-P2 thresholds, such that older subjects were significantly less sensitive to the frequency change than younger subjects, with significantly larger age-related differences at 500 Hz than at 3000 Hz. Age-related changes in response latencies and amplitude of the P1-N1-P2 response were also evident at 500 and 3000 Hz. These results are consistent with age-related changes in the central auditory system and suggest that changes in frequency discrimination abilities of older adults may be, in part, related to changes in preattentive levels of auditory processing.

Cerebral Responses to Change in Spatial Location of Unattended Sounds

The neural basis of spatial processing in the auditory cortex has been controversial. Human fMRI studies suggest that a part of the planum temporale (PT) is involved in auditory spatial processing, but it was recently argued that this region is active only when the task requires voluntary spatial localization. If this is the case, then this region cannot harbor an ongoing spatial representation of the acoustic environment. In contrast, we show in three fMRI experiments that a region in the human medial PT is sensitive to background auditory spatial changes, even when subjects are not engaged in a spatial localization task, and in fact attend the visual modality. During such times, this area responded to rare location shifts, and even more so when spatial variation increased, consistent with spatially selective adaptation. Thus, acoustic space is represented in the human PT even when sound processing is not required by the ongoing task.

Intensity dependence of auditory evoked dipole source activity in polydrug ecstasy users: evidence from an 18 months longitudinal study

Numerous animal studies have been able to demonstrate neurotoxic damage to central serotonergic systems after exposure to 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy). It has been suggested that a high loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) and, particularly, of the tangential N1/P2 source activity is associated with a low functioning of serotonergic activity. Therefore, the LDAEP may be used as a non-invasive indicator for a possible neurotoxic damage caused by the long-term use of ecstasy in recreational users. We recorded auditory evoked potentials (AEP) with a passive listening paradigm in 18 polydrug ecstasy users at baseline (t1) and after 18 months (t2). Several aspects of ecstasy use, such as frequency of use, cumulative lifetime dose or period of abstinence were associated with the LDAEP for several tangential dipoles at both measuring times. However, we failed to demonstrate any significant relationship between drug use reported at follow-up and AEP changes from baseline to follow-up. Despite some incertitude these data suggest, yet do not unambiguously con.rm, the hypothesis that abstinent ecstasy users present with diminished central serotonergic activity. This feature of information processing is potentially related to the neurotoxic potential of ecstasy. However, alternative interpretations of these data refer to possible preexisting traits and the potential impact of other illicit drugs, particularly amphetamine, since ecstasy users typically exhibit polydrug use patterns. Thus, further research with larger sample sizes and prospective study designs are needed to definitively establish a causative link between ecstasy use and neurotoxicity-related dysfunctions in sensory processing.

Auditory brain-stem, middle- and long-latency evoked potentials in mild cognitive impairment

Objective Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a selective episodic memory deficit in the elderly with a high risk of Alzheimer's disease. The amplitudes of a long-latency auditory evoked potential (P50) are larger in MCI compared to age-matched controls. We tested whether increased P50 amplitudes in MCI were accompanied by changes of middle-latency potentials occurring around 50 ms and/or auditory brain-stem potentials. Methods Auditory evoked potentials were recorded from age-matched controls ( n=16) and MCI ( n=17) in a passive listening paradigm at two stimulus presentation rates (2/s, 1/1.5 s). A subset of subjects also received stimuli at a rate of 1/3 s. Results Relative to controls, MCI subjects had larger long-latency P50 amplitudes at all stimulus rates. Significant group differences in N100 amplitude were dependent on stimulus rate. Amplitudes of the middle-latency components (Pa, Nb, P1 peaking at approximately 30, 40, and 50 ms, respectively) did not differ between groups, but a slow wave between 30 and 49 ms on which the middle-latency components arose was significantly increased in MCI. ABR Wave V latency and amplitude did not differ significantly between groups. Conclusions The increase of long-latency P50 amplitudes in MCI reflects changes of a middle-latency slow wave, but not of transient middle-latency components. There was no evidence of group difference at the brain-stem level. Significance Increased slow wave occurring as early as 50 ms may reflect neurophysiological consequences of neuropathology in MCI.

Distinct Pathways Involved in Sound Recognition and Localization: A Human fMRI Study

Evidence from psychophysical studies in normal and brain-damaged subjects suggests that auditory information relevant to recognition and localization are processed by distinct neuronal populations. We report here on anatomical segregation of these populations. Brain activation associated with performance in sound identification and localization was investigated in 18 normal subjects using fMRI. Three conditions were used: (i) comparison of spatial stimuli simulated with interaural time differences; (ii) identification of environmental sounds; and (iii) rest. Conditions (i) and (ii) required acknowledgment of predefined targets by pressing a button. After coregistering, images were normalized and smoothed. Activation patterns were analyzed using SPM99 for individual subjects and for the whole group. Sound recognition and localization activated, as compared to rest, inferior colliculus, medial geniculate body, Heschl gyrus, and parts of the temporal, parietal, and frontal convexity bilaterally. The activation pattern on the fronto-temporo-parietal convexity differed in the two conditions. Middle temporal gyrus and precuneus bilaterally and the posterior part of left inferior frontal gyrus were more activated by recognition than by localization. Lower part of inferior parietal lobule and posterior parts of middle and inferior frontal gyri were more activated, bilaterally, by localization than by recognition. Regions selectively activated by sound recognition, but not those selectively activated by localization, were significantly larger in women. Passive listening paradigm revealed segregated pathways on superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule. Thus, anatomically distinct networks are involved in sound recognition and sound localization.

Gender based differences in temporal lobe activation demonstrated using a novel passive listening paradigm

Gender based differences in temporal lobe activation demonstrated using a novel passive listening paradigm

Characterizing the Relationship between BOLD Contrast and Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Measurements by Varying the Stimulus Presentation Rate

This paper investigates the relationship between the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast effect and regional cerebral blood flow using the techniques of functional MRI (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). A passive listening paradigm with parametric variation in word presentation rate was used to investigate the rate dependency of both BOLD contrast fMRI and H 2 15O PET in primary auditory cortex. We attempted to equate the stimulus presentation acoustic environments by using prerecorded echoplanar imaging sounds during the PET paradigm. We show that there is a linear relationship between word presentation rate and cerebral blood flow in primary auditory cortex, whereas the relationship between BOLD contrast and stimulus presentation rate is highly nonlinear, showing a saturable effect. Two possible explanations for our results are discussed: a nonlinearity in the relationship between BOLD contrast and deoxyhemoglobin concentration or a nonlinear rate dependency of the physiological mechanisms causing changes in deoxyhemoglobin concentration.