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

听觉感知不是一个纯粹的刺激驱动的，自下而上的机制。事实上，代表个人经验的记忆图式使其成为一个主观和建设性的过程。特别是，现有的记忆图式直接有助于我们获得实际的声学感知，并且似乎也增加了听觉事件进入注意力焦点的机会。这在复杂的听觉场景中是显而易见的，当听到诸如熟悉的音乐片段或自己的电话铃声之类的声音时，其他不熟悉但声学上相似的声音仍然没有被注意到。虽然这些现象毫无疑问地表明了个体记忆图式对听觉感知的影响，但我们对大脑中的潜在机制却知之甚少。最近的研究主要使用脑电描记术（EEG）开始解决这个问题，并确定了与感知个人重要的非言语声音相关的处理的不同阶段。然而，到目前为止，对这些加工阶段的特征只能做出有限的推断，特别是关于它们的非自愿性质。该项目旨在研究个体图式驱动的听觉处理，特别是在视觉或并发听觉输入竞争处理资源时，处理能力有限的情况下。它将进一步探讨是否以前发现的效果，特别是指示个人重要的声音的处理或是否涉及更一般的，非特定的相关性检测机制。应采用脑磁图（MEG）代替EEG，不仅在时间尺度上表征处理的不同阶段，而且还识别解释图式驱动听觉感知的神经结构。

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.