Adaptation in the auditory system: an overview

Abstract

The early stages of the auditory system need to preserve the timing information of sounds in order to extract the basic features of acoustic stimuli. At the same time, different processes of neuronal adaptation occur at several levels to further process the auditory information. For instance, auditory nerve fiber responses already experience adaptation of their firing rates, a type of response that can be found in many other auditory nuclei and may be useful for emphasizing the onset of the stimuli. However, it is at higher levels in the auditory hierarchy where more sophisticated types of neuronal processing take place. For example, stimulus-specific adaptation, where neurons show adaptation to frequent, repetitive stimuli, but maintain their responsiveness to stimuli with different physical characteristics, thus representing a distinct kind of processing that may play a role in change and deviance detection. In the auditory cortex, adaptation takes more elaborate forms, and contributes to the processing of complex sequences, auditory scene analysis and attention. Here we review the multiple types of adaptation that occur in the auditory system, which are part of the pool of resources that the neurons employ to process the auditory scene, and are critical to a proper understanding of the neuronal mechanisms that govern auditory perception.

Analysis of Psychoacoustic and Vibration-Related Parameters to Track the Reasons for Health Complaints after the Introduction of New Tramways

“…Furthermore, changes in temporal and spectral signal features are other factors for an enhanced annoyance response found in laboratory and field studies [61][62][63]. These results are in compliance with neuro-biological and hearing research on the spectrotemporal filter mechanism of auditory attention [64][65][66][67]. If permanent changes of the temporal and frequency features occur the auditory system has difficulties to habituate and adapt-especially during nighttime.…”

Brain responses in humans reveal ideal observer-like sensitivity to complex acoustic patterns

“…This result cannot be attributed to lowlevel effects such as refractoriness or neural adaptation. Adaptation effects, measured with MEG or EEG, are commonly revealed as a decrease in response amplitude over time (49). The present data are characterized by the opposite effects.…”

Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): A review and meta-analysis of studies in psychiatric and neurological disorders

“…The model of neural fatigue is similar to the idea of "refractoriness" in the MMN field, and explains RS by firing rate attenuation, i.e., where the initial high neural response rate of spiking to a constant stimulus is not maintained but instead declines over time; a common feature of many sensory neurons (Hille,1992;Perez-Gonzalez & Malmierca, 2014). The second model proposes that RS involves sharpening of the neural populations that generate the initial response, such that fewer neurons respond to repeated stimuli (Henson & Rugg, 2003;Wiggs & Martin, 1998).…”

“…In electrophysiology simpler forms of use-dependent adaptation of firing rates are distinguished from more sophisticated, context-dependent SSA (Kohn, 2007;Nelken, 2014;Perez-Gonzalez & Malmierca, 2014). Using the term 'adaptation' to describe stimulus-specific attenuation of neural activity in electrophysiology is somewhat unfortunate (Nelken & Ulanovsky, 2007).…”

“…SSA is the closest known single-neuron phenomenon of aMMN (for reviews see Escera and Malmierca, 2014;Nelken, 2014;Nelken and Ulanovsky, 2007;Perez-Gonzalez & Malmierca, 2014). The magnitudes of SSA and aMMN are both negatively correlated with the probability of the deviant but positively correlated with the difference between standard and deviant.…”