Converging evidence now supports the idea that auditory cortex is an important step for the emergence of auditory percepts. Recent studies have extended the list of complex, nonlinear sound features coded by cortical neurons. Moreover, we are beginning to uncover general properties of cortical representations, such as invariance and discreteness, which reflect the structure of auditory perception. Complexity, however, emerges not only through nonlinear shaping of auditory information into perceptual bricks. Behavioral context and task-related information strongly influence cortical encoding of sounds via ascending neuromodulation and descending top-down frontal control. These effects appear to be mediated through local inhibitory networks. Thus, auditory cortex can be seen as a hub linking structured sensory representations with behavioral variables.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2018.04.002 | DOI Listing |
Sci Rep
December 2024
Department of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA.
Alteration of responses to salient stimuli occurs in a wide range of brain disorders and may be rooted in pathophysiological brain state dynamics. Specifically, tonic and phasic modes of activity in the reticular activating system (RAS) influence, and are influenced by, salient stimuli, respectively. The RAS influences the spectral characteristics of activity in the neocortex, shifting the balance between low- and high-frequency fluctuations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurosci
December 2024
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville VA 22904, USA
Sensory experience during development has lasting effects on perception and neural processing. Exposing juvenile animals to artificial stimuli influences the tuning and functional organization of the auditory cortex, but less is known about how the rich acoustical environments experienced by vocal communicators affect the processing of complex vocalizations. Here, we show that in zebra finches (), a colonial-breeding songbird species, exposure to a naturalistic social-acoustical environment during development has a profound impact on auditory perceptual behavior and on cortical-level auditory responses to conspecific song.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuroSci
December 2024
Audiology Program, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1S 5L5, Canada.
At the cortical level, the central auditory neural system (CANS) includes primary and secondary areas. So far, much research has focused on recording fronto-central auditory evoked potentials/responses (P1-N1-P2), originating mainly from the primary auditory areas, to explore the neural processing in the auditory cortex. However, less is known about the secondary auditory areas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurophysiol
December 2024
Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon. Eugene, OR 97403.
Psychedelics are known to induce profound perceptual distortions, yet the neural mechanisms underlying these effects, particularly within the auditory system, remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the effects of the psychedelic compound 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI), a serotonin 2A receptor agonist, on the activity of neurons in the auditory cortex of awake mice. We examined whether DOI administration alters sound-frequency tuning, variability in neural responses, and deviance detection (a neural process reflecting the balance between top-down and bottom-up processing).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain Res
December 2024
Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China. Electronic address:
Introduction: Prior researches have reported abnormal changes of thalamus in patients with subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD), which was usually analyzed as a whole. However, it was currently unclear whether the structure, function and connectivity of thalamic subregions were differentially affected by this disease and affected different cognitive functions.
Methods: This study recruited 30 SIVD patients with cognitive impairment (SIVD-CI), 30 SIVD patients with cognitive unimpaired (SIVD-CU) and 32 normal controls.
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