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Title:Is There Feature-Specific Enhancement in the Auditory Cortex When Attending to Sounds?
Abstract:Selective attention is a crucial function that encompasses all perceptual modalities and which enables us to focus on the behaviourally relevant information and ignore the rest. The main goal of the two fMRI studies presented here was to test a well-established hypothesis about the mechanisms of visual selective attention in the auditory domain, the hypothesis of feature-specific attentional enhancement. This hypothesis states that when attending to an object or a feature, there should be an enhancement of the response in the sensory region that is sensitive to that object or feature. In the first fMRI study we investigated feature-specific attentional modulation mainly within the tonotopic fields around the primary auditory cortex, when participants were attending to sound frequency. A second fMRI experiment investigated feature-specific attentional enhancement mainly around the non-primary auditory cortex, when attending to frequency modulation or motion of the same auditory object. The results showed partial support for feature-specific enhancement when attending to frequency and frequency modulation, but not for motion. In conjunction with other relevant studies, there is some support for feature-specific enhancement in the auditory cortex, although this effect appears to be sensitive to factors such as the choice of experimental set up and stimuli.
- Speaker
- Dr Aspasia Paltoglou
- Hosted by
- Department of Music, School of Education
- Venue
- MR055, MacRobert Building
- Contact
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Free and open to the public