Temporal and Spatial Processing in the Lateral Belt of Auditory Cortex

听觉皮层外侧带的时空处理

• 批准号: 9894781
• 负责人: GREGG Howard RECANZONE
• 金额: $ 32.02万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-04-01 至 2022-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9894781
• 关键词: Acoustics; Affect; Aging; Anterior; Anterolateral; Area; Attention; Auditory; Auditory Perception; Auditory area; Auditory system; Biological Models; Brain Injuries; Cochlear Implants; Complex; Cues; Depressed mood; Disease; Environment; Event; Functional disorder; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Human; Individual; Intervention; Investigation; Lateral; Lead; Lesion; Location; Mate Selections; Medial; Mediating; Monkeys; Music; Neurons; Pathway interactions; Perception; Performance; Population; Primates; Process; Psychophysics; Research; Role; Speech; Speech Perception; Stimulus; Stream; Stroke; Task Performances; Testing; Visual Cortex; Wood material; auditory stimulus; base; cognitive function; deafness; effective therapy; experimental study; hearing impairment; improved; insight; neural correlate; neuromechanism; parallel processing; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; remediation; response; social; sound; suicidal

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability to process complex sounds is critical for identifying and localizing most real-world objects and events, understanding speech, and producing and appreciating music. Individuals with hearing deficits can be devastated by this dysfunction which can leave them socially isolated, depressed, and even suicidal. Some forms of hearing deficits are the result of problems in the auditory periphery, in which case hearing aids and cochlear implants can be beneficial. However, these interventions have limited if any effect for those with hearing deficits due to central causes, such as strokes, brain injury, and especially natural aging. Unfortunately there are currently no established remedial therapies or treatments for hearing deficits that are caused by central dysfunction. Similarly, attention to auditory stimuli is critical for the perception of those features, although we again have very litte understanding of the neural mechanisms of these attentional influences. A better understanding of the normal cortical processes that underlie auditory perception and selective auditory attention is necessary to develop effective treatments for centrally-mediated hearing deficits. Previous research has indicated that the primate auditory cortex processes spatial and non-spatial (temporal) information independently. Specifically, it is believed that in the lateral belt auditory cortex, the anterolateral field (AL) processes temporal information while the caudolateral field (CL) processes spatial information, with the middle-lateral field (ML) processing both features in an intermediate way. To date, however, there has been no direct evidence that the activity of neurons in the lateral belt is correlated with the perception of temporal or spatial acoustic features. In the proposed study we will record single neuron activity in the lateral belt while non-human subjects attend to and actively discriminate the temporal or spatial features of identical acoustic stimuli. We will use psychophysical tasks that will engage feature-based attention in order to determine how top-down attention influences the activity of cortical neurons believed to be processing the different acoustic features, and the subject's perception of those features. These results will provide the first direct test, at the single neuro level, of the long- held hypothesis that the primate auditory cortex is composed of at least two parallel processing streams. They will also provide the first investigation of how top-down attention influences neuronal activity in the auditory cortex at the single neuron level. These experiments will distinguish between two competing hypotheses: whether attentional effects are global across auditory cortical areas regardless of which acoustic feature is being attended vs the attentional effects are selective to only those neurons processing the attended acoustic feature. Finally, these results will also provide the first test of whether attention mechanisms in the auditory system fit into the current framework of top- down attentional influences on single neuron activity that are largely based on a plethora of studies in the visual cortex.

 描述（由申请人提供）：处理复杂声音的能力对于识别和定位大多数现实世界的物体和事件，理解语音以及制作和欣赏音乐至关重要。听力障碍的人可能会被这种功能障碍所摧毁，这可能会使他们在社会上孤立，抑郁，甚至自杀。某些形式的听力缺陷是听觉外围问题的结果，在这种情况下，助听器和人工耳蜗植入物可能是有益的。然而，这些干预措施对那些由于中枢原因（如中风，脑损伤，特别是自然衰老）而导致听力障碍的人的影响有限。不幸的是，目前还没有针对由中枢功能障碍引起的听力缺陷的既定补救疗法或治疗。同样，对听觉刺激的注意力对于感知这些特征至关重要，尽管我们对这些注意力影响的神经机制仍然知之甚少。更好地了解听觉感知和选择性听觉注意的基础正常皮层过程是必要的，以开发有效的治疗中枢介导的听力障碍。以往的研究表明，灵长类动物的听觉皮层独立地处理空间和非空间（时间）信息。具体地说，据信，在侧带中， 在听觉皮层中，前外侧场（AL）处理时间信息，而尾外侧场（CL）处理空间信息，中间外侧场（ML）以中间方式处理这两个特征。然而，到目前为止，还没有直接的证据表明，在侧带的神经元的活动与时间或空间的声学特征的感知。在拟议的研究中，我们将记录单个神经元的活动在侧带，而非人类受试者出席，并积极区分相同的声学刺激的时间或空间特征。我们将使用心理物理任务，将从事基于特征的注意力，以确定如何自上而下的注意力影响皮层神经元的活动被认为是处理不同的声学特征，以及受试者的感知这些功能。这些结果将提供第一个直接测试，在单神经元水平上，长期持有的假设，即灵长类动物的听觉皮层是由至少两个平行的处理流。他们还将首次研究自上而下的注意力如何在单个神经元水平上影响听觉皮层的神经元活动。这些实验将区分两个相互竞争的假设：注意力效应是否在听觉皮层区域是全局性的，而不管哪种声学特征被注意;注意力效应是否只对那些处理被注意的声学特征的神经元有选择性。最后，这些结果也将提供第一个测试，是否注意机制， 听觉系统符合目前的框架，即注意力自上而下地影响单个神经元的活动，这种影响主要是基于对视觉皮层的大量研究。