Neurophysiological markers of perceptual learning in awake and sleeping humans
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1
Ecole Normale Superieure, Department of Cognitive Studies, France
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2
Queen's University Belfast, School of Creative Arts, United Kingdom
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3
Hôtel Dieu, Centre du Sommeil et de la Vigilance, France
During noise repetition-detection tasks, participants have to discriminate between sequences of continuously running white noise and sequences made of repeated fragments of the same noise. When one repeated fragment recurs across the experiment, performance increases dramatically for this particular fragment, revealing perceptual learning of complex arbitrary patterns in the acoustic environment. A previous MEG study suggests that increased inter-trial phase coherence is associated with learning, but the underlying neural mechanism remains to be further specified. Here we adapted this paradigm and recorded EEG in human participants as they detected white noise repetitions. Participants (N=13) had to discriminate between 1.5 s of continuously running noise (condition “Ns”) and 1.5 s of 0.5 s noise fragment repeated 3 times. Among these repeated fragments, some appeared only once during a block (“RNs”) and some recurred across a block (reference noises, “RefRNs”). At the behavioural level, our study replicates previous studies by showing increased sensitivity to reference-noises (i.e., performance for RefRNs was statistically higher than for RNs), and thus perceptual learning for noise patterns. At the neurophysiological levels, repetitions were associated with an increase in both power and phase coherence below 4 Hz, more-so for RefRNs than RNs. Performance was correlated with the strength of these EEG markers. We then adapted our paradigm to a night-study (N=16 subjects) to test whether noise repetition-detection could be automated and pursued during sleep. For each sleep and wakefulness stage, participants listened to different sets of RefRNs, which were then re-tested in the morning. Both our behavioral and electrophysiological findings were here replicated. Most importantly, EEG recordings revealed evidence of repetition-detection even in light sleep. Moreover, performances at re-test suggested learning effects for reference-noises heard during wake and sleep.
Keywords:
Humans,
Sleep,
EEG,
Perceptual memory,
Noise repetition-detection task
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Memory and Learning
Citation:
Andrillon
T,
Pressnitzer
D,
Agus
T,
Léger
D and
Kouider
S
(2015). Neurophysiological markers of perceptual learning in awake and sleeping humans.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00070
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Thomas Andrillon, Ecole Normale Superieure, Department of Cognitive Studies, Paris, France, thomas.andrillon@monash.edu