Elucidating neural circuits and pupil readouts of motivated effortful listening

阐明积极努力倾听的神经回路和瞳孔读数

• 批准号: 10673174
• 负责人: Matthew J McGinley
• 金额: $ 48.15万
• 依托单位: BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10673174
• 关键词: Acetylcholine; Acoustic Nerve; Animals; Area; Arousal; Attention; Audiology; Auditory; Auditory area; Auditory system; Axon; Behavior; Behavioral; Biological Assay; Brain; Brain region; Cochlear Implants; Code; Cognitive; Data; Detection; Employment; Environment; Eye; Fatigue; Feedback; Foundations; Goals; Head; Hearing Aids; Hearing Tests; Human; Image; Individual; Laboratories; Literature; Measurement; Measures; Modernization; Motivation; Mus; Mydriasis; Nerve Fibers; Neurons; Noise; Norepinephrine; Ouabain; Patients; Performance; Phase; Physiological; Physiology; Process; Psyche structure; Pupil; Quality of life; Reporting; Resources; Rewards; Rodent; Role; Sensory; Signal Transduction; Source; Speech; Statistical Models; Stimulus; Stress; Structure; System; Task Performances; Testing; Time; Update; Vulnerable Populations; Whole-Cell Recordings; Work; auditory feedback; behavior prediction; cholinergic; cognitive function; cognitive process; design; experience; experimental study; frontal lobe; hearing impairment; high reward; improved; neural; neural circuit; neuroregulation; noradrenergic; normal hearing; optogenetics; patient population; patient screening; sensory cortex; sound; sugar; tool; two-photon

Project Summary . Attending to a speaker in a noisy environment, such as a cocktail party, can be an effortless and pleasantly immersive experience for individuals with normal hearing and cognitive function. However, for individuals with hearing loss, this ‘listening effort’ is their primary complaint, and can be a severe source of stress and fatigue that impacts their quality of life and employment. Unlike an audiogram, which can be measured objectively, listening effort is a high-level cognitive process, and challenging to measure. Pupillometry, measuring the size of the pupil of the eye, has proven extremely useful as a physiological readout of listening effort. However, we have very little understanding about the neural interactions underlie mental effort, and therefore do not know what the pupil tells us, specifically, about these circuits. Experiments are needed that behaviorally engage listening effort while probing the underlying neural circuits mechanisms, and determining which circuit interactions are read out by pupil dilation. Our laboratory has recently developed a behavioral approach to study the attentional component of listening effort (attentional effort), in mice. Mice report detection of temporal coherence in ongoing noise by licking for sugar reward. We parametrically vary the difficulty on each trial, and manipulate listening effort by changing reward volume in blocks of trials. We find that mice expend more attentional effort during high-reward blocks, resulting in better detection of temporal coherence during blocks. In parallel work, we have extensively characterized the physiological correlates in the auditory system of several pupillometry metrics during a simpler auditory detection behavior. Furthermore, human and animal work consistently show that frontal cortex structures that combine task performance and motivational information are active during attentional effort. These results lead to the following central hypothesis: differences in cortical coding between states of low and high reward, result from changes in modulation on fast and slow time scales, together with auditory-frontal interactions that enhance coding of high-value sounds and provide feedback signals that improve subsequent performance, and that these circuits are upregulated after hearing loss. We will test this hypothesis by electrically recording from neurons in the auditory cortex and assaying their coding of sounds, while two-photon imaging or optopgenetically manipulating inputs from neuromodulatory systems or frontal cortex, and doing pupillometry during our listening effort task. Our results will reveal the contributions of neuromodulatory and frontal cortex inputs to auditory cortex to shifts in listening effort allocated to temporal coherence detection, and will directly relate multiple pupil metrics and statistical modeling approaches to these circuit mechanisms.

项目摘要。 在嘈杂的环境中出席演讲者，例如鸡尾酒会，可以毫不费力地 为听力和认知功能正常的个人提供令人愉快的身临其境体验。然而，对于 对于听力受损的人来说，这种“倾听的努力”是他们的主要抱怨，也可能是严重的压力来源 和疲劳，影响他们的生活质量和就业。与听力图不同的是，听力图可以测量 客观地说，听力努力是一个高水平的认知过程，具有测量的挑战性。斜视测量法，测量 眼睛的瞳孔大小已被证明是一种非常有用的听力生理读数。 然而，我们对脑力活动背后的神经相互作用知之甚少，因此确实如此。 不知道这个学生具体告诉了我们什么，关于这些回路。在行为上需要实验 进行倾听，同时探索潜在的神经回路机制，并确定哪个回路 相互作用是通过放大瞳孔来读出的。我们实验室最近开发了一种行为方法来研究 小鼠听力努力的注意力成分(注意力努力)。小鼠报告检测到颞叶 通过舔糖奖励来保持持续噪音的连贯性。我们在每一次试验中都有不同的难度， 通过改变一组试验中的奖励音量来控制听力。我们发现老鼠花的钱更多 高奖赏区块期间的注意努力，导致更好地检测区块期间的时间一致性。在……里面 并行工作，我们已经广泛地表征了几个听觉系统中的生理关联 在更简单的听觉检测行为期间的瞳孔测量指标。此外，人类和动物的工作 一致地表明，结合了任务表现和动机信息的额叶皮质结构 在注意力集中的过程中很活跃。这些结果导致了以下中心假设：大脑皮层的差异 在低和高奖励状态之间进行编码，这是由快和慢时间尺度上的调制变化引起的， 以及增强高价值声音编码并提供反馈的听觉-额叶交互 改善后续性能的信号，并且这些电路在听力损失后被上调。我们会 通过对听觉皮质神经元进行电记录并分析它们的编码，来验证这一假设 声音，而双光子成像或光遗传学操作来自神经调节系统或 额叶皮质，并在我们的听力努力任务中做斜视测量。我们的结果将揭示出 神经调制和额叶皮质对听觉皮质的输入对分配给颞叶的听努力的转移 相干检测，并将直接将多个光瞳度量和统计建模方法与这些 电路机构。