Dataset Information

Attention capture in birds performing an auditory streaming task.

ABSTRACT: Numerous animal models have been used to investigate the neural mechanisms of auditory processing in complex acoustic environments, but it is unclear whether an animal's auditory attention is functionally similar to a human's in processing competing auditory scenes. Here we investigated the effects of attention capture in birds performing an objective auditory streaming paradigm. The classical ABAB… patterned pure tone sequences were modified and used for the task. We trained the birds to selectively attend to a target stream and only respond to the deviant appearing in the target stream, even though their attention may be captured by a deviant in the background stream. When no deviant appeared in the background stream, the birds experience the buildup of streaming process in a qualitatively similar way as they did in a subjective paradigm. Although the birds were trained to selectively attend to the target stream, they failed to avoid the involuntary attention switch caused by the background deviant, especially when the background deviant was sequentially unpredictable. Their global performance deteriorated more with increasingly salient background deviants, where the buildup process was reset by the background distractor. Moreover, sequential predictability of the background deviant facilitated the recovery of the buildup process after attention capture. This is the first study that addresses the perceptual consequences of the joint effects of top-down and bottom-up attention in behaving animals.

SUBMITTER: Cai H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7319309 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Attention capture in birds performing an auditory streaming task.

Cai Huaizhen H Dent Micheal L ML

PloS one 20200626 6

Numerous animal models have been used to investigate the neural mechanisms of auditory processing in complex acoustic environments, but it is unclear whether an animal's auditory attention is functionally similar to a human's in processing competing auditory scenes. Here we investigated the effects of attention capture in birds performing an objective auditory streaming paradigm. The classical ABAB… patterned pure tone sequences were modified and used for the task. We trained the birds to select ...[more]

PMID: 32589692

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Project description:BackgroundHumans are able to extract regularities from complex auditory scenes in order to form perceptually meaningful elements. It has been shown previously that this process depends critically on both the temporal integration of the sensory input over time and the degree of frequency separation between concurrent sound sources. Our goal was to examine the relationship between these two aspects by means of magnetoencephalography (MEG). To achieve this aim, we combined time-frequency analysis on a sensor space level with source analysis. Our paradigm consisted of asymmetric ABA-tone triplets wherein the B-tones were presented temporally closer to the first A-tones, providing different tempi within the same sequence. Participants attended to the slowest B-rhythm whilst the frequency separation between tones was manipulated (0-, 2-, 4- and 10-semitones).ResultsThe results revealed that the asymmetric ABA-triplets spontaneously elicited periodic-sustained responses corresponding to the temporal distribution of the A-B and B-A tone intervals in all conditions. Moreover, when attending to the B-tones, the neural representations of the A- and B-streams were both detectable in the scenarios which allow perceptual streaming (2-, 4- and 10-semitones). Alongside this, the steady-state responses tuned to the presentation of the B-tones enhanced significantly with increase of the frequency separation between tones. However, the strength of the B-tones related steady-state responses dominated the strength of the A-tones responses in the 10-semitones condition. Conversely, the representation of the A-tones dominated the B-tones in the cases of 2- and 4-semitones conditions, in which a greater effort was required for completing the task. Additionally, the P1 evoked fields' component following the B-tones increased in magnitude with the increase of inter-tonal frequency difference.ConclusionsThe enhancement of the evoked fields in the source space, along with the B-tones related activity of the time-frequency results, likely reflect the selective enhancement of the attended B-stream. The results also suggested a dissimilar efficiency of the temporal integration of separate streams depending on the degree of frequency separation between the sounds. Overall, the present findings suggest that the neural effects of auditory streaming could be directly captured in the time-frequency spectrum at the sensor-space level.

Dataset Information

Attention capture in birds performing an auditory streaming task.

Publications

Attention capture in birds performing an auditory streaming task.

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