No Counterpart of Visual Perceptual Echoes in the Auditory System

İlhan, Barkın; VanRullen, Rufin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0049287

Cited by 27 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Such an effect has not yet been shown in audition where findings are limited to cases in which an oscillating stimulus persists in the test phase (thus limiting inferences regarding their predictive utility) (e.g., Henry & Obleser, 2012) or cases where an entrained neural oscillation exhibits post-stimulus persistence with no behavioral correlates presented (Lakatos et al, 2013). A similar effect has recently been reported in vision (Spaak et al, 2014) but using a modulation rate (10Hz) that failed to show an effect in hearing (Ilhan & VanRullen, 2012). Given the low-frequency modulation rate of many naturally occurring sounds such as speech, we explored this question at a correspondingly lower modulation rate (3Hz).…”

supporting

confidence: 82%

The Rhythm of Perception

2015

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Acoustic rhythms are pervasive in speech, music, and environmental sounds. Evidence for neural codes representing periodic information has recently emerged, which seem a likely neural basis for the ability to detect rhythm and rhythmic information has been found to modulate auditory system excitability, providing a potential mechanism for parsing the acoustic stream. Here we explore the effects of a previous rhythmic stimulus on subsequent auditory perception. We found that a low-frequency (3 Hz) amplitute modulated signal induces a subsequent oscillation of perceptual detectability of a brief non-periodic acoustic stimulus (1 kHz tone); the frequency but not phase of the perceptual oscillation matches the entrained stimulus-driven rhythmic oscillation. This provides evidence that rhythmic contexts have a direct influence on subsequent auditory perception of discrete acoustic events. Rhythm coding is likely a fundamental feature of auditory system design that predates the development of explicit human enjoyment of rhythm in music or poetry.

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confidence: 82%

The Rhythm of Perception

2015

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“…Auditory detection sensitivity depends on the phase of underlying delta-theta, but not alpha, oscillations (28). In response to aperiodic stimulation, visual cortex oscillates in the alpha band (20), whereas auditory cortex does not show consistent oscillatory activity (38).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual cortex entrains to sign language

Brookshire

Nusbaum

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Despite immense variability across languages, people can learn to understand any human language, spoken or signed. What neural mechanisms allow people to comprehend language across sensory modalities? When people listen to speech, electrophysiological oscillations in auditory cortex entrain to slow (<8 Hz) fluctuations in the acoustic envelope. Entrainment to the speech envelope may reflect mechanisms specialized for auditory perception. Alternatively, flexible entrainment may be a general-purpose cortical mechanism that optimizes sensitivity to rhythmic information regardless of modality. Here, we test these proposals by examining cortical coherence to visual information in sign language. First, we develop a metric to quantify visual change over time. We find quasiperiodic fluctuations in sign language, characterized by lower frequencies than fluctuations in speech. Next, we test for entrainment of neural oscillations to visual change in sign language, using electroencephalography (EEG) in fluent speakers of American Sign Language (ASL) as they watch videos in ASL. We find significant cortical entrainment to visual oscillations in sign language <5 Hz, peaking at ∼1 Hz. Coherence to sign is strongest over occipital and parietal cortex, in contrast to speech, where coherence is strongest over the auditory cortex. Nonsigners also show coherence to sign language, but entrainment at frontal sites is reduced relative to fluent signers. These results demonstrate that flexible cortical entrainment to language does not depend on neural processes that are specific to auditory speech perception. Low-frequency oscillatory entrainment may reflect a general cortical mechanism that maximizes sensitivity to informational peaks in time-varying signals.sign language | cortical entrainment | oscillations | EEG L anguages differ dramatically from one another, yet people can learn to understand any natural language. What neural mechanisms allow humans to understand the vast diversity of languages and to distinguish linguistic signal from noise? One mechanism that has been implicated in language comprehension is neural entrainment to the volume envelope of speech. The volume envelope of speech fluctuates at low frequencies (< 8 Hz), decreasing at boundaries between syllables, words, and phrases. When people listen to speech, neural oscillations in the delta (1-4 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) bands become entrained to these fluctuations in volume (1-4).Entrainment to the volume envelope may represent an active neural mechanism to boost perceptual sensitivity to rhythmic stimuli (2, 5-7). Although entrainment is partly driven by bottom-up features of the stimulus (8-10), it also depends on top-down signals to auditory cortex from other brain areas. Auditory entrainment is strengthened when people see congruent visual and auditory information (11,12) and is modulated by attention (13) and by top-down signals from frontal cortex (4, 14).Cortical entrainment is proposed to perform a key role in speech comprehension, such as segmenting out sylla...

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“…VanRullen and MacDonald (2012) had subjects view flicker sequences. By reversely correlating the EEG signal with the luminance sequence, they found an oscillatory “echo” at 10 Hz lasting >1 s, but attempts to replicate these findings in the auditory domain failed (Ilhan and VanRullen, 2012). Only one recent study reported that thresholds for detecting a brief auditory signal in noise depended on the phase of α-oscillations entrained by o-tDCS (Neuling et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of Near-Threshold Sounds is Independent of EEG Phase in Common Frequency Bands

Zoefel¹,

Heil²

2013

Front. Psychol.

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Low-frequency oscillations in the electroencephalogram (EEG) are thought to reflect periodic excitability changes of large neural networks. Consistent with this notion, detection probability of near-threshold somatosensory, visual, and auditory targets has been reported to co-vary with the phase of oscillations in the EEG. In audition, entrainment of δ-oscillations to the periodic occurrence of sounds has been suggested to function as a mechanism of attentional selection. Here, we examine in humans whether the detection of brief near-threshold sounds in quiet depends on the phase of EEG oscillations. When stimuli were presented at irregular intervals, we did not find a systematic relationship between detection probability and phase. When stimuli were presented at regular intervals (2-s), reaction times were significantly shorter and we observed phase entrainment of EEG oscillations corresponding to the frequency of stimulus presentation (0.5 Hz), revealing an adjustment of the system to the regular stimulation. The amplitude of the entrained oscillation was higher for hits than for misses, suggesting a link between entrainment and stimulus detection. However, detection was independent of phase at frequencies ≥1 Hz. Furthermore, we show that when the data are analyzed using acausal, though common, algorithms, an apparent “entrainment” of the δ-phase to presented stimuli emerges and detection probability appears to depend on δ-phase, similar to reports in the literature. We show that these effects are artifacts from phase distortion at stimulus onset by contamination with the event-related potential, which differs markedly for hits and misses. This highlights the need to carefully deal with this common problem, since otherwise it might bias and mislead this exciting field of research.

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No Counterpart of Visual Perceptual Echoes in the Auditory System

Cited by 27 publications

References 14 publications

The Rhythm of Perception

The Rhythm of Perception

Visual cortex entrains to sign language

Detection of Near-Threshold Sounds is Independent of EEG Phase in Common Frequency Bands

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