Research on Neural Mechanisms of Plasticity in Auditory Selective Attention
DOI:
Author:
Affiliation:

College of Information Engineering, Nanchang University,College of Information Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China,Institute of Biomedical Engineering, The Chinese Academy of Sciences DdDd Peking Union Medical College,College of Information Science and Engineering, Huaqiao University,College of Information Engineering, Nanchang University

Clc Number:

Fund Project:

This work was supported by grants from The National Natural Science Foundation of China (61463035), The Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (20142BAB217022,20142BAB207004 ) , and The Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Education Commission (GJJ14193)

  • Article
  • |
  • Figures
  • |
  • Metrics
  • |
  • Reference
  • |
  • Related
  • |
  • Cited by
  • |
  • Materials
  • |
  • Comments
    Abstract:

    This study explores whether musical training is able to enhance the perception of pitch- and location- based selective auditory attention, then analyzes the corresponding neural mechanism of the auditory plasticity through musical training. In the auditory perception experiment, listeners were instructed to select one of two simultaneous digits based on either the target digit's pitch or location. In the auditory cognitive experiment, the listeners' brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs)were recorded in response to the complex tones with various frequency resolutions in both quiet and in noisy acoustic environments. Further, four approaches of FFR analysis were proposed, including short-term phasing locking value of envelope-related frequency-following response (FFRENV), polar of FFR's instantaneous phase difference, vector of FFR's grand averaged phase difference, and spectrum signal-to-noise ratio of temporal-fine-structure-related frequency-following response (FFRTFS). Results show that compared to non-musicians, listeners with musical training were both more accurate at reporting the target digit and had a shorter reaction time, especially for attend-pitch trials. For both groups, noise had little effect on the neural encoding of the fundamental frequency (F0) but significantly degraded the neural encoding of harmonics. Compared to non-musicians, musicians showed enhanced phase locking of F0 as well as more robust phase locking to stimulus harmonics in the noise condition. Neural spectrum SNRs of FFRTFS to harmonics were correlated with listeners' behavioral correction rate on the pitch-based auditory attention, for which robustness of musicians' FFR out performed the non-musicians'. These findings suggest musician's better pitch perception in auditory selective attention is relevant to their enhanced neural cognition. Musical training is assumed to be able to enhance the FFRENV phase locking to the F0, the robustness and continuous phase locking of FFRTFS to the harmonics, and spectrum SNR FFRTFS to the harmonics. In conclusion, musical training has a significant effect on listeners' plasticity in auditory selective attention.

    Reference
    Related
    Cited by
Get Citation

ZHU Li, ZHENG Fen, DENG Juan, YAN Zheng, XU Xiao-Ling. Research on Neural Mechanisms of Plasticity in Auditory Selective Attention[J]. Progress in Biochemistry and Biophysics,2015,42(7):647-661

Copy
Share
Article Metrics
  • Abstract:
  • PDF:
  • HTML:
  • Cited by:
History
  • Received:April 26,2015
  • Revised:June 23,2015
  • Accepted:June 25,2015
  • Online: July 20,2015
  • Published: July 20,2015