Attention modulates sound processing in human auditory cortex but not the inferior colliculus

Auditory attention powerfully influences perception and modulates sound processing in auditory cortex, but the extent of attentional modulation in the subcortical auditory pathway remains poorly understood. We examined the effects of intermodal attention using functional magnetic resonance imaging of the inferior colliculus and auditory cortex in a demanding intermodal selective attention task using a silent imaging paradigm designed to optimize inferior colliculus activations. Both the inferior colliculus and auditory cortex showed strong activations to sound, but attentional modulations were restricted to auditory cortex.

[1]  S. Hillyard,et al.  Delayed Striate Cortical Activation during Spatial Attention , 2002, Neuron.

[2]  Lutz Jäncke,et al.  Attention modulates activity in the primary and the secondary auditory cortex: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in human subjects , 1999, Neuroscience Letters.

[3]  M. Pinsk,et al.  Attention modulates responses in the human lateral geniculate nucleus , 2002, Nature Neuroscience.

[4]  J. R. Baker,et al.  Imaging subcortical auditory activity in humans , 1998, Human brain mapping.

[5]  S. Treue.  Visual attention: the where, what, how and why of saliency , 2003, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[6]  Nobuo Suga,et al.  Multiparametric corticofugal modulation and plasticity in the auditory system , 2003, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[7]  Michael F. Bunting,et al.  Working memory and flexibility in awareness and attention , 2005, Psychological research.

[8]  E. Yund,et al.  Attentional modulation of human auditory cortex , 2004, Nature Neuroscience.

[9]  R. Patterson,et al.  Encoding of the temporal regularity of sound in the human brainstem , 2001, Nature Neuroscience.

[10]  R. Hernández-Peón,et al.  Modification of electric activity in cochlear nucleus during attention in unanesthetized cats. , 1956, Science.

[11]  M. Harms,et al.  Sound repetition rate in the human auditory pathway: representations in the waveshape and amplitude of fMRI activation. , 2002, Journal of neurophysiology.

[12]  Nobuo Suga,et al.  Corticofugal modulation of the midbrain frequency map in the bat auditory system , 1998, Nature Neuroscience.

[13]  I. T. Diamond,et al.  The function of the tectum for attention to auditory stimuli in the cat , 1965, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[14]  Robert J. Zatorre,et al.  Neural substrates for dividing and focusing attention between simultaneous auditory and visual events , 2006, NeuroImage.

[15]  Xiaojian Kang,et al.  Improving the resolution of functional brain imaging: analyzing functional data in anatomical space. , 2007, Magnetic resonance imaging.

[16]  W. Chambers,et al.  Attentive, Affective, and Adaptive Behavior in the Cat , 1961, Science.

[17]  J. Winer.  Decoding the auditory corticofugal systems , 2005, Hearing Research.

[18]  Torsten Marquardt,et al.  Representation of interaural time delay in the human auditory midbrain , 2006, Nature Neuroscience.

[19]  B R Rosen,et al.  Modulation of auditory and visual cortex by selective attention is modality-dependent. , 1996, Neuroreport.

[20]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  The functional anatomy of attention to visual motion. A functional MRI study. , 1998, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[21]  Mark W. Woolrich,et al.  Advances in functional and structural MR image analysis and implementation as FSL , 2004, NeuroImage.

[22]  M. Schönwiesner,et al.  Hemispheric asymmetry for auditory processing in the human auditory brain stem, thalamus, and cortex. , 2006, Cerebral cortex.

[23]  Richard Bowtell,et al.  Detecting activations in event‐related fMRI using analysis of variance , 1999, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[24]  Mikko Sams,et al.  Modulation of auditory cortex activation by sound presentation rate and attention , 2005, Human brain mapping.