The human auditory system represents sounds at multiple levels, from low-level acoustic features to abstract category- and object-level information. Although selective attention enables listening in complex natural soundscapes, it remains unclear which representational levels are modulated by attention and how this depends on scene structure. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, representational similarity analysis, and cross-experiment decoding, we examined attentional modulation of auditory representations under three conditions: 1) listening to isolated sounds, 2) attending to one of three overlapping sounds from different categories, or 3) one of three overlapping sounds from the same category. We show that attentional modulation is task-dependent: when competing sounds could not be distinguished by category, attention enhanced low-level acoustic feature processing, whereas in cross-category scenes it targeted abstract category-level representations. Object-identity representations were modulated by attention across both scene types, with category-specific differences, demonstrating flexible, task-dependent targeting of auditory features.
Models of auditory attention propose that multiple sound features are integrated into a perceptual object and that selective attention enhances the fidelity of these object-based representations. Similar attentional mechanisms appear to operate on representations held in auditory working memory, yet evidence has largel...
David Peita, Sung-Joo Lim· Psychonomic Bulletin & Revie...· 0 citations
In cocktail party-type environments, listeners must segregate simultaneous acoustic sources and select one for processing. Behavioral studies have established that both low-level voice differences (e.g., pitch) and high-level linguistic differences (e.g., word content) aid these processes. Electroencephalography (EEG)...
Sahil Luthra, Eric Parker, Marysia Brown et al.· bioRxiv· 0 citations
The auditory brainstem plays a crucial role in speech-in-noise (SiN) listening, refining numerous acoustic features such as pitch and spatial location under continual descending influence from the cortex. However, the difficulty of characterizing brainstem activity during continuous speech listening has obscured its fu...
Kelsey Mankel, Daniel C. Comstock, B. M. Bormann et al.· eNeuro· 1 citation
Attention can spread across sensory modalities so that when attention is directed to the visual component of a multisensory object, its task-irrelevant auditory component will also be bestowed with enhanced processing, which operates in either a stimulus-driven or representation-driven manner contingent on whether the...
Song Zhao, Fang-Fang Ma, Yu-Xin Zhou et al.· Cortex; a journal devoted to...· 0 citations
How does the auditory system implement spatial selection without a dedicated cortical map for space? One hypothesis holds that auditory spatial attention draws on a supra-modal network including the parietal-occipital cortex; an alternative implicates subcortical structures (e.g., superior colliculus) with no direct re...
Neural representations of acoustic features that are key to speech perception have been studied extensively within the auditory cortex (AC), but their representations in higher-order cortical regions remain poorly understood. This study investigates the cortical encoding of three acoustic features in spoken vowels to d...
Yong-Tian Ou, K. Kay, A. Oxenham· Journal of Neuroscience· 0 citations
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