title: Brain electric activity for active inhibition of auditory irrelevant information.
abstract: We applied high resolution event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess brain activities associated with inhibition of irrelevant information processing during auditory selective attention. Ten healthy subjects performed an auditory selective attention task. ERPs in response to standard stimuli delivered to the unattended ear (irrelevant stimuli) and those delivered to the attended ear (relevant stimuli) were evaluated using temporally sequential scalp current density (SCD) mappings. For the irrelevant stimuli, current sources were located in the mid-frontal regions at 140-220 ms post-stimuli, and these SCD values were significantly larger than those for the relevant stimuli. These results suggest that auditory selective attention process involves not only focusing attention on relevant information, but also inhibitory processing of irrelevant information mediated by the frontal cortex.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan. taraki-tky@umin.ac.jp
authors.forename: Tsuyoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Araki
authors.forename: Kiyoto
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kasai
authors.forename: Kazuyuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nakagome
authors.forename: Masato
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fukuda
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Itoh
authors.forename: Ichiro
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Koshida
authors.forename: Nobumasa
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.forename: Akira
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Iwanami
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*