Distributed cortical networks for focused auditory attention and distraction

Abstract

We used behavioral measures and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the effects of parametrically varied task-irrelevant pitch changes in attended sounds on loudness-discrimination performance and brain activity in cortical surface maps. Ten subjects discriminated tone loudness in sequences that also included infrequent task-irrelevant pitch changes. Consistent with results of previous studies, the task-irrelevant pitch changes impaired performance in the loudness discrimination task. Auditory stimulation, attention-enhanced processing of sounds and motor responding during the loudness discrimination task activated supratemporal (auditory cortex) and inferior parietal areas bilaterally and left-hemisphere (contralateral to the hand used for responding) motor areas. Large pitch changes were associated with right hemisphere supratemporal activations as well as widespread bilateral activations in the frontal lobe and along the intraparietal sulcus. Loudness discrimination and distracting pitch changes activated common areas in the right supratemporal gyrus, left medial frontal cortex, left precentral gyrus, and left inferior parietal cortex. Keywords auditory processing; attention; change detection; distraction; fMRI While effective cognitive performance requires focusing of attention on relevant information and ignoring irrelevant sensory inputs, one must retain the ability to respond to potentially important novel events in the environment. Previous studies have used the so-called auditory distraction paradigm [3,7,26,32] to examine the effect of task-irrelevant sound changes on behavior and event-related potentials (ERPs). In this paradigm, subjects discriminate sounds on one dimension (e.g., sound duration) while task-irrelevant changes occur in some other dimension (e.g., pitch) of the same sounds. Typically, deviant auditory stimuli produce a brief degradation of performance (reaction times increase and hit rates decrease) that is accompanied by two characteristic responses in event-related brain potentials (ERPs), the mismatch Address correspondence to: Teemu Rinne, Department of Psychology, PO Box 9, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland, Phone : +358 50 4951351, Fax : +358-9-19129401, Email: teemu.rinne@helsinki.fi. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. [19,21,24]. However, previous studies have not focused directly on mapping the brain activation underlying the behavioral distraction effect. Here, we examine in detail the cortical circuits involved in auditory change detection and distraction of focused auditory attention usi...

Brain Structures Involved in Visual Search in the Presence and Absence of Color Singletons

“…Increased activation in the medial frontal gyrus is consistent with earlier reports showing that this area is involved in top-down control of attention (Mao et al, 2007;Rinne et al, 2007). Interestingly, this medial frontal activation seemed to be unique for top-down attention.…”

“…Even though this is feasible, it should be noted that the brain areas that we identified as being involved in top-down attentional control are consistent with earlier findings identifying similar areas as being involved in top-down attentional control (e.g., Mao, Zhou, Zhou, & Han, 2007;Rinne et al, 2007 for medial frontal gyrus and Hopfinger et al, 2000, for insular activity). Yet, we cannot exclude the possibility that the activation in these areas reflect a more generic cognitive control process that is involved in attentional control rather than being a pure attention-only process.…”

Acoustical and categorical tasks differently modulate activations of human auditory cortex to vowels

“…The anatomically normalized surfaces were rotated and projected to a two dimensional (2D) space separately for each hemisphere using equal area Mollweide projection (Python libraries matplotlib and basemap, http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net; for previous studies using a similar approach see Rinne et al, 2007Rinne et al, , 2009Woods et al, 2009). This procedure was then applied separately for each subject to transform the results of the 3D second-level statistical analysis to 2D.…”

Top-down controlled and bottom-up triggered orienting of auditory attention to pitch activate overlapping brain networks

“…According to Näätänen's model, involuntary attention may be caught by sounds causing enhanced afferent activity in the auditory cortex (e.g., tones in silence) or by deviant events breaking regularity in an auditory input stream and eliciting the mismatch negativity (MMN) response in ERPs (see also Näätänen and Winkler, 1999;Escera et al, 2000). Numerous fMRI studies have shown that in addition to enhanced activity in the auditory cortex, such deviant events are followed by enhanced prefrontal and parietal activity presumably associated with involuntary attention to these events (Molholm et al, 2005;Opitz et al, 2002;Rinne et al, 2005;Rinne et al, 2007;Schall et al 2003; for auditory-and frontal-cortex contributions to the MMN, see Rinne et al, 2000;Yago et al, 2001). Näätänen's (1990Näätänen's ( , 1992 model does not explicitly propose an overlap of brain networks for voluntary or top-down controlled and involuntary or bottom-up triggered auditory attention.…”