On the influence of individual memory schemata on non-speech auditory processing - A neuroscientific perspective

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Auditory perception is not a purely stimulus-driven, bottom-up mechanism. In fact, memory schemata that represent individual experiences make it a subjective and constructive process. In particular, existing memory schemata directly contribute to the actual acoustic percept we get and also seem to enhance the chance of an auditory event to get into the focus of attention. This is obvious in complex auditory scenes when sounds such as a familiar piece of music or the ringing of the own phone are heard while other unfamiliar, yet acoustically similar sounds remain unnoticed. Although, these phenomena leave no doubt on the impact of individual memory schemata on auditory perception, we have relatively little empirical knowledge about the underlying mechanisms in the brain. Recent studies which mainly used electroencephalography (EEG) started to address this issue and identified different stages of processing associated with the perception of a personally significant, non-speech sound. However, only limited inferences on the characteristics of these stages of processing can be made so far, especially regarding their involuntary nature. The proposed project aims to study individual schema-driven auditory processing particularly in situations of limited processing capacity when visual or concurrent auditory input competes for processing resources. It will furthermore be explored whether previously found effects specifically indicate the processing of a personally significant sound or whether a more general, unspecific relevance detection mechanism is involved. Instead of EEG, magnetoencephalography (MEG) shall be applied to characterize the different stages of processing not only on a temporal scale but also to identify the neural structures that account for schema-driven auditory perception.