Auditory Discrimination Learning: Role of Working Memory.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Zhang YX
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4723131 | biostudies-literature | 2016
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Working memory (WM), the ability to actively hold information in memory over a delay period of seconds, is a fundamental constituent of cognition. Delay-period activity in sensory cortices has been observed in WM tasks, but whether and when the activity plays a functional role for memory maintenance remains unclear. Here, we investigated the causal role of auditory cortex (AC) for memory maintenance in mice performing an auditory WM task. Electrophysiological recordings revealed that AC neurons were active not only during the presentation of the auditory stimulus but also early in the delay period. Furthermore, optogenetic suppression of neural activity in AC during the stimulus epoch and early delay period impaired WM performance, whereas suppression later in the delay period did not. Thus, AC is essential for information encoding and maintenance in auditory WM task, especially during the early delay period.
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Project description:Despite vast literature on catecholaminergic neuromodulation of auditory cortex functioning in general, knowledge about its role for long-term memory formation is scarce. Our previous pharmacological studies on cortex-dependent frequency-modulated tone-sweep discrimination learning of Mongolian gerbils showed that auditory-cortical D1/5 -dopamine receptor activity facilitates memory consolidation and anterograde memory formation. Considering overlapping functions of D1/5 -dopamine receptors and ?-adrenoceptors, we hypothesised a role of ?-adrenergic signalling in the auditory cortex for sweep discrimination learning and memory. Supporting this hypothesis, the ?1/2 -adrenoceptor antagonist propranolol bilaterally applied to the gerbil auditory cortex after task acquisition prevented the discrimination increment that was normally monitored 1 day later. The increment in the total number of hurdle crossings performed in response to the sweeps per se was normal. Propranolol infusion after the seventh training session suppressed the previously established sweep discrimination. The suppressive effect required antagonist injection in a narrow post-session time window. When applied to the auditory cortex 1 day before initial conditioning, ?1 -adrenoceptor-antagonising and ?1 -adrenoceptor-stimulating agents retarded and facilitated, respectively, sweep discrimination learning, whereas ?2 -selective drugs were ineffective. In contrast, single-sweep detection learning was normal after propranolol infusion. By immunohistochemistry, ?1 - and ?2 -adrenoceptors were identified on the neuropil and somata of pyramidal and non-pyramidal neurons of the gerbil auditory cortex. The present findings suggest that ?-adrenergic signalling in the auditory cortex has task-related importance for discrimination learning of complex sounds: as previously shown for D1/5 -dopamine receptor signalling, ?-adrenoceptor activity supports long-term memory consolidation and reconsolidation; additionally, tonic input through ?1 -adrenoceptors may control mechanisms permissive for memory acquisition.
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Project description:We examined the relationship between cognitive-linguistic mechanisms and auditory closure ability in children. Sixty-seven school-age children recognized isolated words and keywords in sentences that were interrupted at a rate of 2.5 Hz and 5 Hz. In essence, children were given only 50% of speech information and asked to repeat the complete word or sentence. Children's working memory capacity (WMC), attention, lexical knowledge, and retrieval from long-term memory (LTM) abilities were also measured to model their role in auditory closure ability. Overall, recognition of monosyllabic words and lexically easy multisyllabic words was significantly better at 2.5 Hz interruption rate than 5 Hz. Recognition of lexically hard multisyllabic words and keywords in sentences was better at 5 Hz relative to 2.5 Hz. Based on the best fit generalized "logistic" linear mixed effects models, there was a significant interaction between WMC and lexical difficulty of words. WMC was positively related only to recognition of lexically easy words. Lexical knowledge was found to be crucial for recognition of words and sentences, regardless of interruption rate. In addition, LTM retrieval ability was significantly associated with sentence recognition. These results suggest that lexical knowledge and the ability to retrieve information from LTM is crucial for children's speech recognition in adverse listening situations. Study findings make a compelling case for the assessment and intervention of lexical knowledge and retrieval abilities in children with listening difficulties.
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Project description:The ability to group sensory data into behaviorally meaningful classes and to maintain these perceptual categories active in working memory is key to intelligent behavior. Here, we show that carrion crows, highly vocal and cognitively advanced corvid songbirds, possess categorical auditory working memory. The crows were trained in a delayed match-to-category task that required them to flexibly match remembered sounds based on the upward or downward shift of the sounds' frequency modulation. After training, the crows instantaneously classified novel sounds into the correct auditory categories. The crows showed sharp category boundaries as a function of the relative frequency interval of the modulation. In addition, the crows generalized frequency-modulated sounds within a category and correctly classified novel sounds kept in working memory irrespective of other acoustic features of the sound. This suggests that crows can form and actively memorize auditory perceptual categories in the service of cognitive control of their goal-directed behaviors.
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Project description:Can cognitive load enhance concentration on task-relevant information and help filter out distractors? Most of the prior research in the area of selective attention has focused on visual attention or cross-modal distraction and has yielded controversial results. Here, we studied whether working memory load can facilitate selective attention when both target and distractor stimuli are auditory. We used a letter n-back task with four levels of working memory load and two levels of distraction: congruent and incongruent distractors. This combination of updating and inhibition tasks allowed us to manipulate working memory load within the selective attention task. Participants sat in front of three loudspeakers and were asked to attend to the letter presented from the central loudspeaker while ignoring that presented from the flanking ones (spoken by a different person), which could be the same letter as the central one (congruent) or a different (incongruent) letter. Their task was to respond whether or not the central letter matched the letter presented n (0, 1, 2, or 3) trials back. Distraction was measured in terms of the difference in reaction time and accuracy on trials with incongruent versus congruent flankers. We found reduced interference from incongruent flankers in 2- and 3-back conditions compared to 0- and 1-back conditions, whereby higher working memory load almost negated the effect of incongruent flankers. These results suggest that high load on verbal working memory can facilitate inhibition of distractors in the auditory domain rather than make it more difficult as sometimes claimed.
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Project description:Auditory working memory (WM) processing in everyday acoustic environments depends on our ability to maintain relevant information online in our minds, and to suppress interference caused by competing incoming stimuli. A challenge in communication settings is that the relevant content and irrelevant inputs may emanate from a common source, such as a talkative conversationalist. An open question is how the WM system deals with such interference. Will the distracters become inadvertently filtered before processing for meaning because the primary WM operations deplete all available processing resources? Or are they suppressed post perceptually, through an active control process? We tested these alternative hypotheses by measuring magnetoencephalography (MEG), EEG, and functional MRI (fMRI) during a phonetic auditory continuous performance task. Contextual WM maintenance load was manipulated by adjusting the number of "filler" letter sounds in-between cue and target letter sounds. Trial-to-trial variability of pre- and post-stimulus activations in fMRI-informed cortical MEG/EEG estimates was analyzed within and across 14 subjects using generalized linear mixed effect (GLME) models. High contextual WM maintenance load suppressed left auditory cortex (AC) activations around 250-300 ms after the onset of irrelevant phonetic sounds. This effect coincided with increased 10-14 Hz alpha-range oscillatory functional connectivity between the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left AC. Suppression of AC responses to irrelevant sounds during active maintenance of the task context also correlated with increased pre-stimulus 7-15 Hz alpha power. Our results suggest that under high auditory WM load, irrelevant sounds are suppressed through a "late" active suppression mechanism, which prevents short-term consolidation of irrelevant information without affecting the initial screening of potentially meaningful stimuli. The results also suggest that AC alpha oscillations play an inhibitory role during auditory WM processing.
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Project description:BACKGROUND:Past research indicates that when younger adults are engaged in a visual working memory task, they are less distracted by novel auditory stimuli than when engaged in a visual task that does not require working memory. The current study aimed to determine whether working memory affords the same protection to older adults. METHOD:We examined behavioral and EEG responses in 16 younger and 16 older adults to distractor sounds when the listeners performed two visual tasks; one that required working memory (W1) and the other that did not (W0). Auditory distractors were presented in an oddball paradigm, participants were exposed to either standard tones (600?Hz: 80%) or various novel environmental sounds (20%). RESULTS:It was found that: 1) when presented with novel vs standard sounds, older adults had faster correct response times in the W1 visual task than in the W0 task, indicating that they were less distracted by the novel sound; there was no difference in error rates. Younger adults did not show a task effect for correct response times but made slightly more errors when a novel sound was presented in the W1 task compared to the W0 task. 2) In older adults (but not the younger adults), the amplitude of N1 was smaller in the W1 condition compared to the W0 condition. 3) The working memory manipulation had no effect on MMN amplitude in older adults. 4) For the W1 compared to W0 task, the amplitude of P3a was attenuated for the older adults but not for the younger adults. CONCLUSIONS:These results suggest that during the working memory manipulation older adults were able to engage working memory to reduce the processing of task-irrelevant sounds.
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Project description:This work examines how sounds are held in auditory working memory (AWM) in humans by examining oscillatory local field potentials (LFPs) in candidate brain regions. Previous fMRI studies by our group demonstrated blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response increases during maintenance in auditory cortex, inferior frontal cortex and the hippocampus using a paradigm with a delay period greater than 10s. The relationship between such BOLD changes and ensemble activity in different frequency bands is complex, and the long delay period raised the possibility that long-term memory mechanisms were engaged. Here we assessed LFPs in different frequency bands in six subjects with recordings from all candidate brain regions using a paradigm with a short delay period of 3 s. Sustained delay activity was demonstrated in all areas, with different patterns in the different areas. Enhancement in low frequency (delta) power and suppression across higher frequencies (beta/gamma) were demonstrated in primary auditory cortex in medial Heschl's gyrus (HG) whilst non-primary cortex showed patterns of enhancement and suppression that altered at different levels of the auditory hierarchy from lateral HG to superior- and middle-temporal gyrus. Inferior frontal cortex showed increasing suppression with increasing frequency. The hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus showed low frequency increases and high frequency decreases in oscillatory activity. This work demonstrates sustained activity patterns during AWM maintenance, with prominent low-frequency increases in medial temporal lobe regions.
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Project description:Goal directed behavior and associated learning processes are tightly linked to neuronal activity in the ventral striatum. Mechanisms that integrate task relevant sensory information into striatal processing during decision making and learning are implicitly assumed in current reinforcement models, yet they are still weakly understood. To identify the functional activation of cortico-striatal subpopulations of connections during auditory discrimination learning, we trained Mongolian gerbils in a two-way active avoidance task in a shuttlebox to discriminate between falling and rising frequency modulated tones with identical spectral properties. We assessed functional coupling by analyzing the field-field coherence between the auditory cortex and the ventral striatum of animals performing the task. During the course of training, we observed a selective increase of functional coupling during Go-stimulus presentations. These results suggest that the auditory cortex functionally interacts with the ventral striatum during auditory learning and that the strengthening of these functional connections is selectively goal-directed.
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