A Corticostriatal Neural System Enhances Auditory Perception through Temporal Context Processing

Abstract

The temporal context of an acoustic signal can greatly influence its perception. The present study investigated the neural correlates underlying perceptual facilitation by regular temporal contexts in humans. Participants listened to temporally regular (periodic) or temporally irregular (nonperiodic) sequences of tones while performing an intensity discrimination task. Participants performed significantly better on intensity discrimination during periodic than nonperiodic tone sequences. There was greater activation in the putamen for periodic than nonperiodic sequences. Conversely, there was greater activation in bilateral primary and secondary auditory cortices (planum polare and planum temporale) for nonperiodic than periodic sequences. Across individuals, greater putamen activation correlated with lesser auditory cortical activation in both right and left hemispheres. These findings suggest that temporal regularity is detected in the putamen, and that such detection facilitates temporal-lobe cortical processing associated with superior auditory perception. Thus, this study reveals a corticostriatal system associated with contextual facilitation for auditory perception through temporal regularity processing.

Auditory temporal preparation induced by rhythmic cues during concurrent auditory working memory tasks.

“…Our data seems to point to an independence between temporal preparation induced by rhythmic cues and WM at the behavioral and, presumably, at the neural level, even if previous research has pointed to overlapping brain areas (i.e., putamen and inferior frontal gyrus; Gaab et al, 2003;Geiser et al, 2012;Grahn & Brett, 2007;Griffiths et al, 1999;Protzner & McIntosh, 2007). However, any argument in that sense remains speculative since brain activity was not measured in the current study.…”

Neural dissociation of automatic and controlled temporal preparation by transcranial magnetic stimulation

“…Nevertheless, the current null result should be taken with caution as it is based on a small sample (N ¼12). In any case, the finding that rhythmic preparation was not affected by frontal TMS in our specific experimental setting it is not surprising according to neuroimaging studies pointing to subcortical rather than cortical structures, such as the putamen (Geiser et al, 2012;Marchant and Driver, 2013), and to more posterior rather than frontal areas, such as the premotor (Schubotz et al, 2003;Schubotz and von Cramon, 2001) or parietal cortex (Bolger et al, 2014;Marchant and Driver, 2013) in the ability to anticipate events unfolding in a rhythmic structure.…”

How may the basal ganglia contribute to auditory categorization and speech perception?

“…Geiser et al (2012) have shown that recruitment of a cortico-striatal system facilitates auditory perceptual processing in auditory temporal cortex. Directly relevant in the context of learning speech categories, Tricomi et al (2006) observed that observed recruitment of the striatum among native Japanese adults learning of English /r/ and /l/ categories via an overt categorization task with feedback.…”