Normal listeners possess the remarkable perceptual ability to select a single speech stream among many competing talkers. However, few studies of selective attention have addressed the unique nature of speech as a temporally extended and complex auditory object. We hypothesized that sustained selective attention to speech in a multitalker environment would act as gain control on the early auditory cortical representations of speech. Using high-density electroencephalography and a template-matching analysis method, we found selective gain to the continuous speech content of an attended talker, greatest at a frequency of 4 -8 Hz, in auditory cortex. In addition, the difference in alpha power (8 -12 Hz) at parietal sites across hemispheres indicated the direction of auditory attention to speech, as has been previously found in visual tasks. The strength of this hemispheric alpha lateralization, in turn, predicted an individual's attentional gain of the cortical speech signal. These results support a model of spatial speech stream segregation, mediated by a supramodal attention mechanism, enabling selection of the attended representation in auditory cortex.

P2 and N1c components of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) have been shown to be sensitive to remodeling of the auditory cortex by training at pitch discrimination in nonmusician subjects. Here, we investigated whether these neuroplastic components of the AEP are enhanced in musicians in accordance with their musical training histories. Highly skilled violinists and pianists and nonmusician controls listened under conditions of passive attention to violin tones, piano tones, and pure tones matched in fundamental frequency to the musical tones. Compared with nonmusician controls, both musician groups evidenced larger N1c (latency, 138 msec) and P2 (latency, 185 msec) responses to the three types of tonal stimuli. As in training studies with nonmusicians, N1c enhancement was expressed preferentially in the right hemisphere, where auditory neurons may be specialized for processing of spectral pitch. Equivalent current dipoles fitted to the N1c and P2 field patterns localized to spatially differentiable regions of the secondary auditory cortex, in agreement with previous findings. These results suggest that the tuning properties of neurons are modified in distributed regions of the auditory cortex in accordance with the acoustic training history (musical- or laboratory-based) of the subject. Enhanced P2 and N1c responses in musicians need not be considered genetic or prenatal markers for musical skill.

We investigated whether N1 and P2 auditory-evoked responses are modulated by the spectral complexity of musical sounds in pianists and non-musicians. Study participants were presented with three variants of a C4 piano tone equated for temporal envelope but differing in the number of harmonics contained in the stimulus. A fourth tone was a pure tone matched to the fundamental frequency of the piano tones. A simultaneous electroencephalographic/magnetoencephalographic recording was made. P2 amplitude was larger in musicians and increased with spectral complexity preferentially in this group, but N1 did not. The results suggest that P2 reflects the specific features of acoustic stimuli experienced during musical practice and point to functional differences in P2 and N1 that relate to their underlying mechanisms.

Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) express the development of mature synaptic connections in the upper neocortical laminae known to occur between 4 and 15 years of age. AEPs evoked by piano, violin, and pure tones were measured twice in a group of 4- to 5-year-old children enrolled in Suzuki music lessons and in non-musician controls. P1 was larger in the Suzuki pupils for all tones whereas P2 was enhanced specifically for the instrument of practice (piano or violin). AEPs observed for the instrument of practice were comparable to those of non-musician children about 3 years older in chronological age. The findings set into relief a general process by which the neocortical synaptic matrix is shaped by an accumulation of specific auditory experiences.

Oscillatory gamma band activity (GBA, has been shown to correlate with perceptual and cognitive phenomena including feature binding, template matching, and learning and memory formation. We hypothesized that if GBA reflects highly learned perceptual template matching, we should observe its development in musicians specific to the timbre of their instrument of practice. EEG was recorded in adult professional violinists and amateur pianists as well as in four-and fiveyear-old children studying piano in the Suzuki method before they commenced music lessons and one year later. The adult musicians showed robust enhancement of induced (non-time-locked) GBA, specifically to their instrument of practice, with the strongest effect in professional violinists. Consistent with this result, the children receiving piano lessons exhibited increased power of induced GBA for piano tones with one year of training, while children not taking lessons showed no effect. In comparison to induced GBA, evoked (time-locked) gamma band activity (30-90 Hz, ~80 ms latency) was present only in adult groups. Evoked GBA was more pronounced in musicians than non-musicians, with synchronization equally exhibited for violin and piano tones but enhanced for these tones compared to pure tones. Evoked gamma activity may index the physical properties of a sound and is modulated by acoustical training, while induced GBA may reflect higher perceptual learning and is shaped by specific auditory experiences.

The brain uses context and prior knowledge to repair degraded sensory inputs and improve perception. For example, listeners hear speech continuing uninterrupted through brief noises, even if the speech signal is artificially removed from the noisy epochs. In a functional MRI study, we show that this temporal filling-in process is based on two dissociable neural mechanisms: the subjective experience of illusory continuity, and the sensory repair mechanisms that support it. Areas mediating illusory continuity include the left posterior angular gyrus (AG) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the right STS. Unconscious sensory repair occurs in Broca’s area, bilateral anterior insula, and pre-supplementary motor area. The left AG/STS and all the repair regions show evidence for word-level template matching and communicate more when fewer acoustic cues are available. These results support a two-path process where the brain creates coherent perceptual objects by applying prior knowledge and filling-in corrupted sensory information.

Changes in oscillatory brain activity have been related to perceptual and cognitive processes such as selective attention and memory matching. Here we examined brain oscillations, measured with electroencephalography (EEG), during a semantic speech processing task that required both lexically mediated memory matching and selective attention. Participants listened to nouns spoken in male and female voices, and detected an animate target (p = 20%) in a train of inanimate standards or vice versa. For a control task, subjects listened to the same words and detected a target male voice in standards of a female voice or vice versa. The standard trials of the semantic task showed enhanced upper beta (25-30 Hz) and gamma band (GBA, 30-60 Hz) activity compared to the voice task. Upper beta and GBA enhancement was accompanied by a suppression of alpha (8-12 Hz) and lower to mid beta (13-20 Hz) activity mainly localized to posterior electrodes. Enhancement of phase-locked theta activity peaking near 275 ms also occurred over the midline electrodes. Theta, upper beta, and gamma band enhancement may reflect lexically mediated template matching in auditory memory, whereas the alpha and beta suppression likely indicate increased attentional processes and memory demands.

A spin-probe method to study the surface hydration of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) micelles (Bales, B. L.; Messina, L.; Vidal, A.; Peric, M.; Nascimento, O. R. J. Phys. Chem. 1998, 102, 10347; referred to as I) is applied to lithium dodecyl sulfate (LiDS) micelles in order to test both the method and a model of micelle hydration. The method is based on the fact that the hyperfine spacing between the low- and center-field resonance lines, A +, varies linearly with a polarity index, H(25 °C), which is the volume fraction occupied by water in a solvent mixture that contains only water as a source of OH dipoles. The model successfully employed in I predicts that H(25 °C) is determined only by the geometry of the micelle; the amount of water associated with the micelle is determined by the volume available to house the water. Thus, SDS and LiDS micelles of the same aggregation number, N A, ought to yield the same value of H(25 °C) (and, therefore A +) because, apart from their waters of hydration which are already taken into account by the geometrical model, neither Li+ nor Na+ occupies significant volume. Over the range of aggregation numbers N A = 50−110, values of H(25 °C) determined from measurements of A + in LiDS micelles were found to be within ±2% of those in SDS micelles. These data support the geometric model and show that specific interactions due to Li+ or Na+ which might affect A + are unimportant. The aggregation numbers of LiDS micelles are measured by time-resolved fluorescence quenching and are well described by N A = κ 2([Li+]aq)γ with κ 2 = 112 ± 2 and γ = 0.180 ± 0.005, where [Li+]aq is the concentration of lithium ions in the aqueous phase whether supplied by LiDS or by both LiDS and LiCl. Thus, LiDS micelles grow according to an empirical formula identical in form to that for SDS micelles, but at a slower rate. The aggregation numbers at the critical micelle concentration in the absence of added salt (cmc0) are the same for SDS and LiDS micelles, but above this concentration, LiDS micelles are significantly smaller than SDS micelles for a given ionic strength. By applying a simple model of a spherical hydrocarbon core surrounded by a polar shell and assuming that the spin-probe samples all portions of the shell, values of the polarity index H(25 °C) may be converted into values of N(H2O), the number of water molecules per surfactant molecule residing in the polar shell. This conversion involves no adjustable parameters because the geometrical parameters are fixed from small-angle neutron scattering measurements. As the micelles grow in the range N A = 50−110, N(H2O) decreases from 9.6 to 5.4 water molecules per surfactant molecule because the volume per surfactant molecule in the polar shell decreases allowing less water to reside within the shell. The sphere−rod transition previously observed in I for SDS at N A = 130 cannot be reproduced in LiDS, because LiCl is not sufficiently soluble to achieve an aggregation number of 130; however, interesting small, unidentified transitions appear to occur...