A corticothalamic circuit model for sound identification in complex scenes

The identification of the sound sources present in the environment is essential for the survival of many animals. However, these sounds are not presented in isolation, as natural scenes consist of a superposition of sounds originating from multiple sources. The identification of a source under these...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2011-09, Vol.6 (9), p.e24270-e24270
Main Authors: Otazu, Gonzalo H, Leibold, Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Acoustics
Albinism
Algorithms
Animals
Auditory Cortex - physiology
Auditory Pathways - physiology
Auditory Perception - physiology
Biology
Circuits
Computational neuroscience
Cortex (auditory)
Dictionaries
Echolocation - physiology
Identification
Models, Neurological
Nerve Net - physiology
Neural Pathways - physiology
Neurobiology
Neurons
Neurosciences
Object recognition
Sound
Sound sources
Thalamus
Thalamus - physiology
Trends
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Summary:The identification of the sound sources present in the environment is essential for the survival of many animals. However, these sounds are not presented in isolation, as natural scenes consist of a superposition of sounds originating from multiple sources. The identification of a source under these circumstances is a complex computational problem that is readily solved by most animals. We present a model of the thalamocortical circuit that performs level-invariant recognition of auditory objects in complex auditory scenes. The circuit identifies the objects present from a large dictionary of possible elements and operates reliably for real sound signals with multiple concurrently active sources. The key model assumption is that the activities of some cortical neurons encode the difference between the observed signal and an internal estimate. Reanalysis of awake auditory cortex recordings revealed neurons with patterns of activity corresponding to such an error signal.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0024270