Dissociable Influences of Auditory Object vs. Spatial Attention on Visual System Oscillatory Activity
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: Given that both auditory and visual systems have anatomically separate object identification ("what") and spatial ("where") pathways, it is of interest whether attention-driven cross-sensory modulations occur separately within these feature domains. Here, we investigated how auditory "what" vs. "where" attention tasks modulate activity in visual pathways using cortically constrained source estimates of magnetoencephalograpic (MEG) oscillatory activity. In the absence of visual stimuli or tasks, subjects were presented with a sequence of auditory-stimulus pairs and instructed to selectively attend to phonetic ("what") vs. spatial ("where") aspects of these sounds, or to listen passively. To investigate sustained modulatory effects, oscillatory power was estimated from time periods between sound-pair presentations. In comparison to attention to sound locations, phonetic auditory attention was associated with stronger alpha (7-13 Hz) power in several visual areas (primary visual cortex; lingual, fusiform, and inferior temporal gyri, lateral occipital cortex), as well as in higher-order visual/multisensory areas including lateral/medial parietal and retrosplenial cortices. Region-of-interest (ROI) analyses of dynamic changes, from which the sustained effects had been removed, suggested further power increases during Attend Phoneme vs. Location centered at the alpha range 400-600 ms after the onset of second sound of each stimulus pair. These results suggest distinct modulations of visual system oscillatory activity during auditory attention to sound object identity ("what") vs. sound location ("where"). The alpha modulations could be interpreted to reflect enhanced crossmodal inhibition of feature-specific visual pathways and adjacent audiovisual association areas during "what" vs. "where" auditory attention.
Source: PLoS ONE
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,382
Funders: National Science Foundation, American Heart Association, Academy of Finland, Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Ella ja Georg Ehrnroothin Säätiö, Emil Aaltosen Säätiö, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: G2227408383, Catagorizing Parallel Human Auditory Pathways by Spatiotemporally Focused TMS, Tools for Large-Scale Platform-Independent MEG Data Analysis, Inferring Cortical Feed-Forward and Feedback Processes with Human Neuroimaging, G393103480, 306 CHANNEL MEG INSTRUMENT, Spatiotemporal Brain Imaging of Human Auditory Cognition, Inferring Cortical Feed-Forward and Feedback Processes with Human Neuroimaging, Center for Functional Imaging Technologies, Computeserver Structural &Functional Image Analysis, Dynamic imaging of oscillatory brain networks controlling selective attention, Spatiotemporal Imaging of Human Visual System Processing, A Storage Area Network for Structural and Functional Image Analysis, Computational Properties of Human Auditory Cortex, Neural mechanisms: Learned audio-visuo-motor integration, Silicon Graphics Prism Extreme 128P/1TB
OpenAlex ID: W2080890481