Functional network properties of the auditory cortex.

The auditory system transforms auditory stimuli from the external environment into perceptual auditory objects. Recent studies have focused on the contribution of the auditory cortex to this transformation. Other studies have yielded important insights into the contributions of neural activity in the auditory cortex to cognition and decision-making.

Dimensionally Specific Attention Capture in Birds Performing Auditory Streaming Task.

Previous studies in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) have indicated that they experience attention capture in a qualitatively similar way to humans. Here, we apply a similar objective auditory streaming paradigm, using modified budgerigar vocalizations instead of ABAB-… patterned pure tones, in the sound sequences. The birds were trained to respond to deviants in the target stream while ignoring the distractors in the background stream.

Attention capture in birds performing an auditory streaming task.

Numerous animal models have been used to investigate the neural mechanisms of auditory processing in complex acoustic environments, but it is unclear whether an animal's auditory attention is functionally similar to a human's in processing competing auditory scenes. Here we investigated the effects of attention capture in birds performing an objective auditory streaming paradigm. The classical ABAB… patterned pure tone sequences were modified and used for the task.

Best sensitivity of temporal modulation transfer functions in laboratory mice matches the amplitude modulation embedded in vocalizations.

The perception of spectrotemporal changes is crucial for distinguishing between acoustic signals, including vocalizations. Temporal modulation transfer functions (TMTFs) have been measured in many species and reveal that the discrimination of amplitude modulation suffers at rapid modulation frequencies. TMTFs were measured in six CBA/CaJ mice in an operant conditioning procedure, where mice were trained to discriminate an 800 ms amplitude modulated white noise target from a continuous noise background.

Behavioral measurements of auditory streaming and build-up by budgerigars ().

The perception of the build-up of auditory streaming has been widely investigated in humans, while it is unknown whether animals experience a similar perception when hearing high (H) and low (L) tonal pattern sequences. The paradigm previously used in European starlings () was adopted in two experiments to address the build-up of auditory streaming in budgerigars (). In experiment 1, different numbers of repetitions of low-high-low triplets were used in five conditions to study the build-up process.