Auditory Selective Attention: An fMRI Investigation

In the present experiment, 25 adult subjects discriminated speech tokens ([ba]/[da]) or made pitch judgments on tone stimuli (rising/falling) under both binaural and dichotic listening conditions. We observed that when listeners performed tasks under the dichotic conditions, during which greater demands are made on auditory selective attention, activation within the posterior (parietal) attention system and at primary processing sites in the superior temporal and inferior frontal regions was increased. The cingulate gyrus within the anterior attention system was not influenced by this manipulation. Hemispheric differences between speech and nonspeech tasks were also observed, both at Broca's Area within the inferior frontal gyrus and in the middle temporal gyrus.

[1]  L. Katz,et al.  Sex differences in the functional organization of the brain for language , 1995, Nature.

[2]  Walter Schneider,et al.  Controlled and Automatic Human Information Processing: 1. Detection, Search, and Attention. , 1977 .

[3]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Lateralization of phonetic and pitch discrimination in speech processing. , 1992, Science.

[4]  Allen Allport,et al.  Visual attention , 1989 .

[5]  M. Posner,et al.  Selective attention and cognitive control , 1987, Trends in Neurosciences.

[6]  M. Posner,et al.  The attention system of the human brain. , 1990, Annual review of neuroscience.

[7]  Stephen J. Boies,et al.  Components of attention. , 1971 .

[8]  S E Petersen,et al.  The processing of single words studied with positron emission tomography. , 1993, Annual review of neuroscience.

[9]  Kenneth M. Heilman,et al.  Directional hypokinesia , 1985, Neurology.

[10]  K. Luh,et al.  Interhemispheric Cooperation: Left Is Left and Right Is Right, but Sometimes the Twain Shall Meet , 1995 .

[11]  D. Navon.  Resources—a theoretical soup stone? , 1984 .

[12]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Attention and Effort , 1973 .

[13]  M. Posner,et al.  Attentional networks , 1994, Trends in Neurosciences.

[14]  Christopher D. Wickens,et al.  The Structure of Attentional Resources , 1980 .

[15]  Anne Treisman,et al.  Monitoring and storage of irrelevant messages in selective attention , 1964 .

[16]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Functional activation of the human frontal cortex during the performance of verbal working memory tasks. , 1993, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[17]  M. Corbetta,et al.  A PET study of visuospatial attention , 1993, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[18]  M. Raichle,et al.  The anterior cingulate cortex mediates processing selection in the Stroop attentional conflict paradigm. , 1990, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[19]  Editor's Note: Attention as a Cognitive Neurosystem , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[20]  M. Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  Hemispheric specialization for speech perception. , 1970, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[21]  M. Raichle,et al.  Localization of a human system for sustained attention by positron emission tomography , 1991, Nature.

[22]  M. Corbetta,et al.  Selective and divided attention during visual discriminations of shape, color, and speed: functional anatomy by positron emission tomography , 1991, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[23]  D. Broadbent.  Perception and communication , 1958 .

[24]  S. Petersen,et al.  Practice-related changes in human brain functional anatomy during nonmotor learning. , 1994, Cerebral cortex.

[25]  R. Shiffrin,et al.  Controlled and automatic human information processing: I , 1977 .

[26]  Daniel Gopher,et al.  On the Economy of the Human Processing System: A Model of Multiple Capacity. , 1977 .