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01-05-2015 | Original Paper

Temporal Evolution of Neural Activity Underlying Auditory Discrimination of Frequency Increase and Decrease

Authors: Yasuki Noguchi, Mana Fujiwara, Saki Hamano

Published in: Brain Topography | Issue 3/2015

Abstract

Discriminating a direction of frequency change is an important ability of the human auditory system, although temporal dynamics of neural activity underlying this discrimination remains unclear. In the present study, we recorded auditory-evoked potentials when human subjects explicitly judged a direction of a relative frequency change between two successive tones. A comparison of two types of trials with ascending and descending tone pairs revealed that neural activity discriminating a direction of frequency changes appeared as early as the P1 component of auditory-evoked potentials (latency 50 ms). Those differences between the ascending and descending trials were also observed in subsequent electroencephalographic components such as the N1 (100 ms) and P2 (200 ms). Furthermore, amplitudes of the P2 were significantly modulated by behavioral responses (upward/downward judgments) of subjects in the direction discrimination task, while those of the P1 were not. Those results indicate that, while the neural responses encoding a direction of frequency changes can be observed in an early component of electroencephalographic responses (50 ms after the change), the activity associated (correlated) with behavioral judgments evolves over time, being shaped in a later time period (around 200 ms) of the auditory processing.

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Title: Temporal Evolution of Neural Activity Underlying Auditory Discrimination of Frequency Increase and Decrease
Authors: Yasuki Noguchi
Mana Fujiwara
Saki Hamano
Publication date: 01-05-2015
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Brain Topography / Issue 3/2015
Print ISSN: 0896-0267
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6792
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-014-0410-6

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Temporal Evolution of Neural Activity Underlying Auditory Discrimination of Frequency Increase and Decrease

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