Behavioral outcomes and neurobiological mechanisms of sustained auditory selective attention

项目总结/摘要 人类的交流和其他听觉行为通常发生在声学复杂或嘈杂的环境中， 学校、餐馆和工作场所等环境。很多日常生活要求我们在行为上做出选择- 相关的听觉维度，并潜在地抑制不相关的维度，使得传达的信息 可以被记住并做出适当的反应。不幸的是，这种重要的日常能力受到以下因素的影响： 许多神经系统疾病导致生活质量显著下降。尽管听觉的重要性 选择性注意，其认知和神经机制知之甚少。例如，虽然听觉 人们普遍认为，选择性注意既包括对行为相关听觉的选择性增强， 尺寸和抑制尺寸以外的注意力集中，证据抑制是很少的。的 这项研究的长期目标是从机制上理解听觉选择性 关注本项目追求的中心假设，人类听觉选择性注意是一个结果， 与增强（任务相关的声音）和抑制（任务无关的声音）有关的过程。 初步研究建立了一个非言语实验范式，用于参与和改善听觉 选择性注意指向特定的频带，并通过听觉皮层非侵入性地映射它 使用多模态MRI。一项平行的初步研究表明，注意力训练可以促进 听觉选择性注意的行为和电生理测量。目标1将决定罚款- 一种颗粒状的“听窗”，通过它，听觉选择性注意力在行为上优先考虑和选择 相关的听觉维度，并潜在地抑制不相关的维度。这些研究还将 确定从输入数据中创建的任务和期望在多大程度上塑造了倾听窗口。 目标2将评估听觉注意力过滤器的频谱时间形状的变化，因为听众学会 更有效地将听觉选择性注意力部署到特定维度。目标3将确定 听觉选择性注意的神经生物学基础及其在改善 选择性注意总之，拟议中的研究将把经典的心理物理学方法编织在一起， 行为训练作为一种手段，介绍有针对性的要求，选择性注意，和新开发的 人类神经成像工具来检查人类听觉选择性注意沿着听觉主轴 频率-频率。这将建立一个桥梁，从知觉-认知分析人类听觉选择性 注意机械电生理学和细胞/分子研究迄今为止只进行了 侵入性的非人类动物工作，从而复合理解和建立一个自然的道路， 未来以证据为基础的方法来补救听觉注意力障碍。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Human communication and other listening behaviors often take place in acoustically complex, or noisy environments like schools, restaurants, and workplaces. Much of daily life requires us to select behaviorally- relevant auditory dimensions, and potentially suppress irrelevant dimensions, so that the information conveyed can be remembered and responded to appropriately. Unfortunately, this vital everyday ability is affected by many neurological conditions resulting in marked decreases in quality of life. Despite the importance of auditory selective attention, its cognitive and neural mechanisms are poorly understood. For example, although auditory selective attention is widely presumed to involve both a selective enhancement of behaviorally relevant auditory dimensions and suppression of dimensions outside this attentional focus, evidence for suppression is scant. The long-term goal of the proposed research is to arrive at a mechanistic understanding of auditory selective attention. The present project pursues the central hypothesis that human auditory selective attention is a result of processes related to both enhancement (of task-relevant sounds) and suppression (of task-irrelevant sounds). Preliminary studies establish a nonspeech experimental paradigm for engaging - and improving –auditory selective attention directed to specific frequency bands, and for non-invasively mapping it across auditory cortex using multimodal MRI. A parallel preliminary study establishes that attention training drives improvements in behavioral and electrophysiological measures of auditory selective attention. Aim 1 will determine the fine- grained `listening window' through which auditory selective attention prioritizes and selects behaviorally relevant auditory dimensions, and potentially suppresses irrelevant dimensions. These studies also will determine the extent to which tasks and expectations created from input regularities shape the listening window. Aim 2 will assess changes in the spectrotemporal shape of the auditory attentional filter as listeners learn to more efficiently deploy auditory selective attention to specific dimensions. Aim 3 will identify the neurobiological underpinnings of auditory selective attention and their changes across improvements in selective attention. In all, the proposed research will weave together classic psychophysical approaches, behavioral training as a means to introduce targeted demands on selective attention, and newly-developed human neuroimaging tools to examine human auditory selective attention along the primary axis of auditory representation – frequency. This will build a bridge from perceptuo-cognitive assays of human auditory selective attention to mechanistic electrophysiological and cellular/molecular studies thus far only undertaken with invasive nonhuman animal work, thereby compounding understanding and building a natural path toward future evidence-based approaches to the remediation of auditory attention impairments.