Auditory selective attention in the human cochlea

Giard, Marie-He ́le`ne; Collet, Lionel; Bouchet, Patrick; Pernier, J.

doi:10.1016/0006-8993(94)91561-x

Cited by 133 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

102

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Interestingly, the frequency range of MOC inhibition corresponds to the frequency spectrum of human speech (27). One explanation may be that the MOC efferents facilitate speech perception and understanding while inhibiting nonrelevant stimuli such as background noise (28). Another explanation is related to the potential protective role of the MOC system against acoustic trauma located in the same frequency range as suggested by others (22,29) .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Early Maturation of Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions and Medial Olivocochlear Reflex in Preterm Neonates

et al. 2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present study was designed to investigate the early maturation of the brainstem regulation of the cochlear function in preterm neonates. Evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAE) and their regulation via the medial olivocochlear efferent (MOC) reflex were investigated in a large population of preterm neonates and compared with full-term neonates and young babies from birth to 4 y and school-aged children. In 28-wk preterm neonates, EOAE were seen in the mid-frequency range. These responses extended both to the low (down to 1025 Hz) and high (up to 6152 Hz) frequency ranges at 38 wk of gestational age and remained stable up to 4 mo. At this stage, the amplitude of EOAE overlapped adult values. EOAE amplitudes then decreased to reach adult values at 3 y of age. Maturation of MOC efferents innervating the outer hair cells was investigated by studying the suppressive effect of contralateral sound on the EOAE amplitudes (MOC reflex T he cochlea, the auditory organ of the inner ear, contains two types of mechanosensory hair cells, inner hair cells, and OHC. OHC are precisely adapted for mechanoreception, i.e. transduction of cochlear partition vibration into a bioelectrical signal. OHC electromotile properties (1) led to the concept of a "cochlear amplifier" involving active biomechanical feedback from OHC to the basilar membrane. This assumption is further supported by the cochlea's ability to produce acoustic energy, which can be easily detected by a sensitive microphone placed in the ear canal (2). The emitted responses, named evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAE), are vulnerable to the same forms of interference that reduce or destroy OHC function (3).The CNS controls the motor activity of the OHC via MOC neurons, originating in the medial nuclei of the superior olivary complex. Three populations of neurons projecting from the MOC efferents to each cochlea have been shown: 1) the largest group of efferent units, which are the most responsive to ipsilateral sound stimulation, originates in the contralateral medial olivary complex and constitutes the crossed projection; 2) a group consisting of efferent units, which respond best to a contralateral sound stimulation, originates in the ipsilateral medial olivary complex and constitutes the uncrossed projection; 3) a group of efferent neurons, which respond to both ipsi-and contralateral stimulation (4). Interrupting the MOC efferents at the floor of the fourth, which severed all the efferents crossing the middle line, but spared most of the uncrossed fibers, did not affect the suppression of auditory nerve responses induced by the contralateral sound stimulation (5). However, when cuts damaged both the crossed and uncrossed fibers at the vestibulocochlear anastomosis, the suppressive effect of the contralateral sound stimulation on auditory nerve responses was eliminated. Consequently, the suppressive effect of the contralateral sound stimulation is mediated by the uncrossed part of MOC efferents. Given that similar findings were also observed on distortion prod...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Early Maturation of Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions and Medial Olivocochlear Reflex in Preterm Neonates

et al. 2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A number of studies have reported effects of attention on MOCB activity (Froehlich et al, 1993;Giard et al, 1994;Meric and Collet, 1994). In particular, contralateral suppression of EOAEs was enhanced when attention was directed to the contralateral ear (Maison et al, 2001) and decreased when attention was directed toward the ipsilateral ear (de Boer and Thornton, 2007).…”

Section: Mocb and Attentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Correlates of Perceptual Learning in the Auditory Brainstem: Efferent Activity Predicts and Reflects Improvement at a Speech-in-Noise Discrimination Task

Boer¹,

Thornton²

2008

J. Neurosci.

182

170

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An extensive corticofugal system extends from the auditory cortex toward subcortical nuclei along the auditory pathway. Corticofugal influences reach even into the inner ear via the efferents of the olivocochlear bundle, the medial branch of which modulates preneural sound amplification gain. This corticofugal system is thought to contribute to neuroplasticity underlying auditory perceptual learning. In the present study, we investigated the involvement of the medial olivocochlear bundle (MOCB) in perceptual learning as a result of auditory training. MOCB activity was monitored in normal-hearing adult listeners during a 5 d training regimen on a consonant-vowel phoneme-in-noise discrimination task. The results show significant group learning, with great inter-individual variability in initial performance and improvement. As observed in previous auditory training studies, poor initial performers tended to show greater learning. Strikingly, MOCB activity measured on the first training day strongly predicted the subsequent amount of improvement, such that weaker initial MOCB activity was associated with greater improvement. Moreover, in listeners that improved significantly, an increase in MOCB activity was observed after training. Thus, as discrimination thresholds of listeners converged over the course of training, differences in MOCB activity between listeners decreased. Additional analysis showed that MOCB activity did not explain variation in performance between listeners on any training day but rather reflected an individual listener's performance relative to their personal optimal range. The findings suggest an MOCB-mediated listening strategy that facilitates speech-in-noise perception. The operation of this strategy is flexible and susceptible to training, presumably because of task-related adaptation of descending control from the cortex.

show abstract

“…For example, Puel et al (1988) and Froehlich et al (1990) had their subjects count the number of times a target letter appeared on a screen, Froehlich et al (1993), Ferber-Viart et al (1995, Meric and Collet (1994) measured reaction times following a light flash or a tone pip, and Giard et al (1994), Maison et al (2001), and Harkrider and Bowers (2009) asked their subjects simply to attend to sounds-sometimes those used to evoke their OAE measure-presented to one ear. By contrast, the present studies used more demanding behavioral tasks, and also used different acoustic stimuli to evoke the OAE.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in otoacoustic emissions during selective auditory and visual attention

Walsh

Pasanen

McFadden

2015

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous studies have demonstrated that the otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) measured during behavioral tasks can have different magnitudes when subjects are attending selectively or not attending. The implication is that the cognitive and perceptual demands of a task can affect the first neural stage of auditory processing-the sensory receptors themselves. However, the directions of the reported attentional effects have been inconsistent, the magnitudes of the observed differences typically have been small, and comparisons across studies have been made difficult by significant procedural differences. In this study, a nonlinear version of the stimulus-frequency OAE (SFOAE), called the nSFOAE, was used to measure cochlear responses from human subjects while they simultaneously performed behavioral tasks requiring selective auditory attention (dichotic or diotic listening), selective visual attention, or relative inattention. Within subjects, the differences in nSFOAE magnitude between inattention and attention conditions were about 2-3 dB for both auditory and visual modalities, and the effect sizes for the differences typically were large for both nSFOAE magnitude and phase. These results reveal that the cochlear efferent reflex is differentially active during selective attention and inattention, for both auditory and visual tasks, although they do not reveal how attention is improved when efferent activity is greater.

show abstract

Auditory selective attention in the human cochlea

Cited by 133 publications

References 23 publications

Early Maturation of Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions and Medial Olivocochlear Reflex in Preterm Neonates

Early Maturation of Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions and Medial Olivocochlear Reflex in Preterm Neonates

Neural Correlates of Perceptual Learning in the Auditory Brainstem: Efferent Activity Predicts and Reflects Improvement at a Speech-in-Noise Discrimination Task

Changes in otoacoustic emissions during selective auditory and visual attention

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About