Formant-Based Recognition of Words and Other Naturalistic Sounds in Rhesus Monkeys
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Melchor J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8586527 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:In this study, we investigate the ability of the mammalian auditory pathway to adapt its strategy for temporal processing under natural stimulus conditions. We derive temporal receptive fields from the responses of neurons in the inferior colliculus to vocalization stimuli with and without additional ambient noise. We find that the onset of ambient noise evokes a change in receptive field dynamics that corresponds to a change from bandpass to lowpass temporal filtering. We show that these changes occur within a few hundred milliseconds of the onset of the noise and are evident across a range of overall stimulus intensities. Using a simple model, we illustrate how these changes in temporal processing exploit differences in the statistical properties of vocalizations and ambient noises to increase the information in the neural response in a manner consistent with the principles of efficient coding.
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Project description:The primate visual system is often described as a hierarchical feature-conjunction pathway, whereby each level represents an increasingly complex combination of image elements, culminating in the representation of whole coherent images in anterior inferior temporal cortex. Although many models of the ventral visual stream emphasize serial feedforward processing ((Poggio T, Mutch J, Leibo J, Rosasco L, Tacchetti A. The computationalmagic of the ventral stream: sketch of a theory (and why some deep architectures work). TechRep MIT-CSAIL-TR-2012-035. MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA. 2012); (Yamins DLK, DiCarlo JJ. Eight open questions in the computational modeling of higher sensory cortex. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2016:37:114-120.)), anatomical studies show connections that bypass intermediate areas and that feedback to preceding areas ((Distler C, Boussaoud D, Desimone R, Ungerleider LG. Cortical connections of inferior temporal area TEO in macaque monkeys. J Comp Neurol. 1993:334(1):125-150.); (Kravitz DJ, Saleem KS, Baker CI, Mishkin M. A new neural framework for visuospatial processing. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2011:12(4):217-230.)). Prior studies on visual discrimination and object transforms also provide evidence against a strictly feed-forward serial transfer of information between adjacent areas ((Kikuchi R, Iwai E. The locus of the posterior subdivision of the inferotemporal visual learning area in the monkey. Brain Res. 1980:198(2):347-360.); (Weiskrantz L, Saunders RC. Impairments of visual object transforms in monkeys. Brain. 1984:107(4):1033-1072.); (Kar K, DiCarlo JJ. Fast recurrent processing via ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is needed by the primate ventral stream for robust Core visual object recognition. Neuron. 2021:109(1):164-176.e5.)). Thus, we sought to investigate whether behaviorally relevant propagation of visual information is as strictly sequential as sometimes supposed. We compared the accuracy of visual recognition after selective removal of specific subregions of inferior temporal cortex-area TEO, area TE, or both areas combined. Removal of TEO alone had no detectable effect on recognition memory, whereas removal of TE alone produced a large and significant impairment. Combined removal of both areas created no additional deficit relative to removal of TE alone. Thus, area TE is critical for rapid visual object recognition, and detailed image-level visual information can reach area TE via a route other than through TEO.
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Project description:BackgroundExperimental studies in animals have shown that exposure to general anaesthesia in infancy can cause loss of cells in the central nervous system and long-term impairments in neurocognitive function. Some human epidemiological studies have shown increased risk of learning disability after repeated anaesthesia exposure in early childhood. Thus, we investigated in a highly translational rhesus monkey model, whether repeated exposure in infancy to the inhalation anaesthetic sevoflurane is associated with impaired visual recognition memory during the first two yr of life.MethodsRhesus monkeys of both sexes were exposed to sevoflurane inhalation anaesthesia on approximately postnatal day 7 and then again 14 and 28 days later, for four h each time. Visual recognition memory was tested using the visual paired comparison task, which measures memory by assessing preference for looking at a new image over a previously-viewed image. Monkeys were tested at 6-10 months of age, again at 12-18 months of age, and again at 24-30 months of age.ResultsNo memory impairment was detected at 6-10 months old, but significant impairment (reduced time looking at the novel image) was observed at 12-18 and 24-30 months old.ConclusionsRepeated exposure of infant rhesus monkeys to sevoflurane results in visual recognition memory impairment that emerges after the first yr of life. This is consistent with epidemiological studies that show increased risk of learning disability after repeated exposure to anaesthesia in infancy/early childhood. Moreover, these deficits may emerge at later developmental stages, even when memory performance is unaffected earlier in development.
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Project description:In the present study we used event-related potentials to compare the organization of linguistic and meaningful nonlinguistic sounds in memory. We examined N400 amplitudes as adults viewed pictures presented with words or environmental sounds that matched the picture (Match), that shared semantic features with the expected match (Near Violation), and that shared relatively few semantic features with the expected match (Far Violation). Words demonstrated incremental N400 amplitudes based on featural similarity from 300-700ms, such that both Near and Far Violations exhibited significant N400 effects, however Far Violations exhibited greater N400 effects than Near Violations. For environmental sounds, Far Violations but not Near Violations elicited significant N400 effects, in both early (300-400ms) and late (500-700ms) time windows, though a graded pattern similar to that of words was seen in the mid-latency time window (400-500ms). These results indicate that the organization of words and environmental sounds in memory is differentially influenced by featural similarity, with a consistently fine-grained graded structure for words but not sounds.
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Project description:Domesticated animals have been shown to recognize basic phonemic information from human speech sounds and to recognize familiar speakers from their voices. However, whether animals can spontaneously identify words across unfamiliar speakers (speaker normalization) or spontaneously discriminate between unfamiliar speakers across words remains to be investigated. Here, we assessed these abilities in domestic dogs using the habituation-dishabituation paradigm. We found that while dogs habituated to the presentation of a series of different short words from the same unfamiliar speaker, they significantly dishabituated to the presentation of a novel word from a new speaker of the same gender. This suggests that dogs spontaneously categorized the initial speaker across different words. Conversely, dogs who habituated to the same short word produced by different speakers of the same gender significantly dishabituated to a novel word, suggesting that they had spontaneously categorized the word across different speakers. Our results indicate that the ability to spontaneously recognize both the same phonemes across different speakers, and cues to identity across speech utterances from unfamiliar speakers, is present in domestic dogs and thus not a uniquely human trait.
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