Does timing regularity facilitate sound frequency tracking at the brainstem level?
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1
University of Barcelona, Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology , Spain
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2
Institute for Brain, Cognition & Behavior (IR3C), Spain
Neurons within the inferior colliculus are known to reproduce the envelope and frequency contents of sounds with their oscillatory patterns. Interestingly, the fidelity of this representation depends on various factors such as musical training (Parbery-Clark, Strait, Hittner, & Kraus, 2013), the socioeconomic status of the person (Skoe, Krizman, & Kraus, 2013), and bilingualism (Krizman, Marian, Shook, Skoe, & Kraus, 2012) among others. It follows that the processing of sound at a subcortical level is a dynamic process, malleable through experience. It hasn't been investigated however if a regular and therefore predictable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) facilitates entrainment as compared to a variable SOA. We hypothesized that the cross-correlation of the frequency spectrum of the stimulus with the corresponding brainstem response would be higher when presented with a constant as compared to a random SOA. We presented 20 participants with a syllable (/ba/), 1008 times with a constant SOA (300ms) and 1008 times with a random SOA (256-344ms, mean 300ms). We performed a fast Fourier transformation (FFT) and compared the power of the signal at the fundamental frequency (100Hz) and its harmonics at the steady-state part (the vowel) of the response. The power at the fundamental frequency was significantly increased for the random SOA condition (p=0.027; F=5.77), possibly indicating a rapid adaptation and therefore decrease of the signal in the constant condition.
Keywords:
auditory processing,
brainstem,
SOA,
Speech Processing,
frequency following response
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Sensation and Perception
Citation:
Selinger
L,
Zarnowiec
K and
Escera
C
(2015). Does timing regularity facilitate sound frequency tracking at the brainstem level?.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00401
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
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Correspondence:
Ms. Lenka Selinger, University of Barcelona, Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology, Barcelona, Spain, lenkaselinger@ub.edu