Modulation of Early Sensory Processing in Human Auditory Cortex During Auditory Selective Attention

Neuromagnetic fields were recorded from human subjects as they listened selectively to sequences of rapidly presented tones in one ear while ignoring tones of a different pitch in the opposite ear. Tones in the attended ear evoked larger magnetic brain responses than did unattended tones in the late...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 1993-09, Vol.90 (18), p.8722-8726
Main Authors: Woldorff, Marty G., Gallen, Christopher C., Hampson, Scott A., Hillyard, Steven A., Pantev, Christo, Sobel, David, Bloom, Floyd E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic data
Acoustic Stimulation
Analysis of Variance
Attention
Auditory cortex
Auditory Cortex - anatomy & histology
Auditory Cortex - physiology
Auditory Perception
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain Mapping
Coordinate systems
Ears
Ears & hearing
Electrophysiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Geodetic position
Humans
Magnetic fields
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Magnetics
Magnetism
Nervous system
Perceptual localization
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Selective attention
Sensors
Time Factors
Waveforms
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Summary:Neuromagnetic fields were recorded from human subjects as they listened selectively to sequences of rapidly presented tones in one ear while ignoring tones of a different pitch in the opposite ear. Tones in the attended ear evoked larger magnetic brain responses than did unattended tones in the latency ranges 20-50 msec and 80-130 msec poststimulus. Source localization techniques in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging placed the neural generators of these early attention-sensitive brain responses in auditory cortex on the supratemporal plane. These data demonstrate that focused auditory attention in humans can selectively modulate sensory processing in auditory cortex beginning as early as 20 msec poststimulus, thereby providing strong evidence for an "early selection" mechanism of auditory attention that can regulate auditory input at or before the initial stages of cortical analysis.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.90.18.8722