22 UKRI-SBE: Contextually and probabilistically weighted auditory selective attention: from neurons to networks

在熙攘的咖啡馆里偷听闲言碎语，通过托儿所监视器跟踪生病孩子的呼吸质量，在沙沙作响的树叶中倾听老鼠的尖声尖叫，这些都依赖于听觉选择性注意。人类和非人类动物必须优先考虑、选择和保持对感官信号中与行为相关的特征的关注，并潜在地抑制无关的特征，以便信号所传达的信息可以用来指导决策和行动。这种选择性注意力对日常行为至关重要，尤其是在嘈杂的自然环境中，它的崩溃极大地影响了许多听众的生活质量，尤其是随着年龄的增长。然而，关于我们的大脑如何让我们有选择地倾听预期声音的基本问题仍然没有答案。该项目联合了英国和美国神经科学家的努力和专业知识，他们使用多种方法研究这些问题。人类和动物将接受训练，完成一项普通的听力任务，而研究小组将测量从单个细胞到更广泛的听觉系统的各个层面的大脑活动。通过汇集强大而互补的测量大脑功能方法的信息，该项目将为我们如何关注环境提供独特的见解。通过这项工作获得的对选择性注意的更好理解可能会通过指导助听器和机器听力设备（例如封闭字幕）的变革性改进而产生广泛的社会影响。

Eavesdropping on gossip in a bustling cafe, tracking the quality of a sick child's breathing through a nursery monitor, and listening for the high-pitched squeak of a mouse amongst rustling leaves all rely upon auditory selective attention. Human and nonhuman animals must prioritize, select, and sustain attention to behaviorally relevant features of sensory signals - and potentially suppress irrelevant features - so that the information conveyed by the signals can be used to guide decisions and actions. This selective attention is crucial to everyday behavior, especially in noisy natural environments, and its breakdown greatly impacts quality of life for many listeners, particularly as we age. Yet, basic questions about how our brain allows us to selectively listen to expected sounds remain unanswered. This project unites the efforts and expertise of UK and USA neuroscientists who study these questions using a number of approaches. Humans and animals will be trained to perform a common listening task, while the team measure brain activity at all levels from single cells to the wider auditory system. By pooling information across powerful and complimentary methods for measuring brain function, the project will provide unique insights how we attend to our environment. The better understanding of selective attention gained through this work may have broad societal impact by guiding transformative improvements to hearing aids and machine listening devices (e.g. closed captioning).