No effects of attention or visual perceptual load on cochlear function, as measured with stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions

Abstract

The effects of selectively attending to a target stimulus in a background containing distractors can be observed in cortical representations of sound as an attenuation of the representation of distractor stimuli. The locus in the auditory system at which attentional modulations first arise is unknown, but anatomical evidence suggests that cortically driven modulation of neural activity could extend as peripherally as the cochlea itself. Previous studies of selective attention have used otoacoustic emissions to probe cochlear function under varying conditions of attention with mixed results. In the current study, two experiments combined visual and auditory tasks to maximize sustained attention, perceptual load, and cochlear dynamic range in an attempt to improve the likelihood of observing selective attention effects on cochlear responses. Across a total of 45 listeners in the two experiments, no systematic effects of attention or perceptual load were observed on stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions. The results revealed significant between-subject variability in the otoacoustic-emission measure of cochlear function that does not depend on listener performance in the behavioral tasks and is not related to movement-generated noise. The findings suggest that attentional modulation of auditory information in humans arises at stages of processing beyond the cochlea.

Effect of Auditory Predictability on the Human Peripheral Auditory System

“…Efferent MOC-fiber activity can be modulated in a 'topdown' manner: electric microstimulation or deactivation of the auditory cortex alters OHC activity as measured with cochlear microphonics or otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) (Perrot et al, 2006;Dragicevic et al, 2015;Terreros and Delano, 2015;Jager and Kossl, 2016). Similarly, changes in arousal or endogenous (interor intramodal) attention may lead to OHC-activity changes as measured with OAEs (Puel et al, 1988;Froehlich et al, 1990Froehlich et al, , 1993Giard et al, 1994;Ferber-Viart et al, 1995;Maison et al, 2001;de Boer and Thornton, 2007;Harkrider and Bowers, 2009;Smith et al, 2012;Srinivasan et al, 2012Srinivasan et al, , 2014Walsh et al, 2014Walsh et al, , 2015Wittekindt et al, 2014;Smith and Cone, 2015), although the existence and direction of these top-down attention effects are still debated (Picton et al, 1971;Avan and Bonfils, 1992;Michie et al, 1996;Beim et al, 2018Beim et al, , 2019Francis et al, 2018;Lopez-Poveda, 2018).…”

Otoacoustic Emissions Evoked by the Time-Varying Harmonic Structure of Speech

“…DPOAEs and other types of OAEs have been employed previously to investigate how cochlear activity can be affected by selective attention, such as auditory versus visual attention, but have yielded inconclusive results that include both positive ( Giard et al, 1994 ; Maison et al, 2001 ; de Boer and Thornton, 2007 ; Walsh et al, 2008 ; Harkrider and Bowers, 2009 ; Smith et al, 2012 ; Srinivasan et al, 2014 ; Wittekindt et al, 2014 ) and negative findings ( Avan and Bonfils, 1992 ; Beim et al, 2018 , 2019 ). Potential confounds in these measurements were a task-irrelevance of some of the stimuli that were used for eliciting the OAEs and a difficulty to assign attention tasks in different modalities that were balanced in perceptual load and working memory.…”

Muscles in and around the ear as the source of “physiological noise” during auditory selective attention: A review and novel synthesis

“…Compounding the puzzle, however, a second paper by the same authors (Beim et al., 2019), using the same general methodology, found no systematic attentional effects in either the visual or auditory domain. Aware of previous findings implicating movement‐generated noise, the authors specifically found no effect of measured physiological noise levels—although it is probably significant that the filter settings were such that noise below 250 Hz was filtered out.…”

“…There have been many psychological, neurological, electrophysiological and fMRI studies which have shown real differences in brain activity when a subject is, or is not, paying attention to a stimulus (Dragicevic et al., 2019 and references). However, despite many efforts to measure differences at the level of the cochlea, notably using otoacoustic emissions (OAEs), the results have been equivocal, at best small, and often inconsistent (Beim et al., 2018, 2019; Jedrzejczak et al., 2017; Walsh et al., 2015).…”

“…| 2727 BELL and JEdRZEJCZaK (Beim et al, 2018(Beim et al, , 2019Jedrzejczak et al, 2017;Walsh et al, 2015).…”