Dynamic phase-locking of the auditory envelope following response in the human brain
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1
Macquarie University, Department of Cognitive Science, Australia
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2
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Australia
The temporal variations of amplitude in sound waves carry information of considerable biological importance. The ability of the auditory system to lock on to, follow and encode information at different amplitude modulation rates provides much insight into the temporal resolving powers of the system and the degree of integration of temporal information at various levels of the auditory system. However, there is currently insufficient detailed information available concerning the brain’s ability to follow a wide range of AM frequencies (1 to 80 Hz or above). The present study used MEG to characterize the temporal modulation transfer function (mTMF) of human auditory cortex using segments white noise with amplitude modulation rate swept exponentially from 1 Hz to 80 Hz. The results provide a comprehensive picture of the dynamic phase locking capabilities of human auditory cortex and hemispheric differences in these capacities. More specifically, the inter-trial phase locking responses showed a continuous envelope following pattern of the temporal variations of the amplitude modulation through 1 Hz up to ~75Hz. Strong right dominance was found in the envelope following at higher frequencies (~30-75Hz), while left preference was found in lower frequencies (<20Hz). We conclude that amplitude envelope drives frequency specific phase locking in a precise manner. This implies that our auditory cortex has the capacity to segment acoustic signals with high precision over a wide range of amplitude modulation frequencies.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities Grant LEO668421, Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant LP0669471, and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders (CE110001021), http://www.ccd.edu.au. The authors gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of Kanazawa Institute of Technology in establishing the KIT-Macquarie MEG laboratory.
Keywords:
brain oscillation,
Magnetoencephalography,
phase-locking,
auditory steady state response,
Speech Perception,
envelope following response
Conference:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, 28 Nov - 1 Dec, 2013.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Other
Citation:
Tang
H,
Brock
J and
Johnson
BW
(2013). Dynamic phase-locking of the auditory envelope following response in the human brain.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.212.00050
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Received:
15 Oct 2013;
Published Online:
25 Nov 2013.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Huizhen Tang, Macquarie University, Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie Park, NSW, 2113, Australia, joann.tang@mq.edu.au