Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG
Previous findings have suggested that auditory attention causes not only enhancement in neural processing gain, but also sharpening in neural frequency tuning in human auditory cortex. The current study was aimed to reexamine these findings, and investigate whether attentional gain enhancement and f...
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| Format: | Article |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press
2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49723/ |
| _version_ | 1848798062384775168 |
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| author | de Boer, Jessica Krumbholz, Katrin |
| author_facet | de Boer, Jessica Krumbholz, Katrin |
| author_sort | de Boer, Jessica |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Previous findings have suggested that auditory attention causes not only enhancement in neural processing gain, but also sharpening in neural frequency tuning in human auditory cortex. The current study was aimed to reexamine these findings, and investigate whether attentional gain enhancement and frequency sharpening emerge at the same or different processing levels, and whether they represent independent or cooperative effects. For that, we examined the pattern of attentional modulation effects on early, sensory-driven cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) occurring at different latencies. Attention was manipulated using a dichotic listening task and was thus not selectively directed to specific frequency values. Possible attention-related changes in frequency tuning selectivity were measured with an EEG adaptation paradigm. Our results show marked disparities in attention effects between the earlier N1 CAEP deflection and the subsequent P2 deflection, with the N1 showing a strong gain enhancement effect, but no sharpening, and the P2 showing clear evidence of sharpening, but no independent gain effect. They suggest that gain enhancement and frequency sharpening represent successive stages of a cooperative attentional modulation mechanism, which appears to increase the representational bandwidth of attended versus unattended sounds. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:13:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-49723 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:13:48Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-497232020-05-04T19:35:06Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49723/ Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG de Boer, Jessica Krumbholz, Katrin Previous findings have suggested that auditory attention causes not only enhancement in neural processing gain, but also sharpening in neural frequency tuning in human auditory cortex. The current study was aimed to reexamine these findings, and investigate whether attentional gain enhancement and frequency sharpening emerge at the same or different processing levels, and whether they represent independent or cooperative effects. For that, we examined the pattern of attentional modulation effects on early, sensory-driven cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) occurring at different latencies. Attention was manipulated using a dichotic listening task and was thus not selectively directed to specific frequency values. Possible attention-related changes in frequency tuning selectivity were measured with an EEG adaptation paradigm. Our results show marked disparities in attention effects between the earlier N1 CAEP deflection and the subsequent P2 deflection, with the N1 showing a strong gain enhancement effect, but no sharpening, and the P2 showing clear evidence of sharpening, but no independent gain effect. They suggest that gain enhancement and frequency sharpening represent successive stages of a cooperative attentional modulation mechanism, which appears to increase the representational bandwidth of attended versus unattended sounds. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press 2018-05-02 Article PeerReviewed de Boer, Jessica and Krumbholz, Katrin (2018) Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30 (6). pp. 785-798. ISSN 1530-8898 Human auditory cortex attentional modulation repetition suppression stimulus-specific adaptation cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_01245 doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01245 doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01245 |
| spellingShingle | Human auditory cortex attentional modulation repetition suppression stimulus-specific adaptation cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) de Boer, Jessica Krumbholz, Katrin Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG |
| title | Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency
sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG |
| title_full | Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency
sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG |
| title_fullStr | Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency
sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG |
| title_full_unstemmed | Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency
sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG |
| title_short | Auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency
sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human EEG |
| title_sort | auditory attention causes gain enhancement and frequency
sharpening at successive stages of cortical processing: evidence from human eeg |
| topic | Human auditory cortex attentional modulation repetition suppression stimulus-specific adaptation cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49723/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49723/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/49723/ |