Stable bottom-up processing during dynamic top-down modulations in monkey auditory cortex
Publication year
2013Number of pages
13 p.
Source
European Journal of Neuroscience, 37, 11, (2013), pp. 1830-1842ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
Display more detailsDisplay less details
Organization
Cognitive Neuroscience
Biophysics
Otorhinolaryngology
Journal title
European Journal of Neuroscience
Volume
vol. 37
Issue
iss. 11
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 1830
Page end
p. 1842
Subject
Biophysics; DCN PAC - Perception action and controlAbstract
It is unclear whether top-down processing in the auditory cortex (AC) interferes with its bottom-up analysis of sound. Recent studies indicated non-acoustic modulations of AC responses, and that attention changes a neuron's spectrotemporal tuning. As a result, the AC would seem ill-suited to represent a stable acoustic environment, which is deemed crucial for auditory perception. To assess whether top-down signals influence acoustic tuning in tasks without directed attention, we compared monkey single-unit AC responses to dynamic spectrotemporal sounds under different behavioral conditions. Recordings were mostly made from neurons located in primary fields (primary AC and area R of the AC) that were well tuned to pure tones, with short onset latencies. We demonstrated that responses in the AC were substantially modulated during an auditory detection task and that these modulations were systematically related to top-down processes. Importantly, despite these significant modulations, the spectrotemporal receptive fields of all neurons remained remarkably stable. Our results suggest multiplexed encoding of bottom-up acoustic and top-down task-related signals at single AC neurons. This mechanism preserves a stable representation of the acoustic environment despite strong non-acoustic modulations.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238441]
- Electronic publications [122508]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [90373]
- Faculty of Science [34986]
- Open Access publications [97504]
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