title: Object-related brain potentials associated with the perceptual segregation of a dichotically embedded pitch.
abstract: The cortical mechanisms of perceptual segregation of concurrent sound sources were examined, based on binaural detection of interaural timing differences. Auditory event-related potentials were measured from 11 healthy subjects. Binaural stimuli were created by introducing a dichotic delay of 500-ms duration to a narrow frequency region within a broadband noise, and resulted in a perception of a centrally located noise and a right-lateralized pitch (dichotic pitch). In separate listening conditions, subjects actively discriminated and responded to randomly interleaved binaural and control stimuli, or ignored random stimuli while watching silent cartoons. In a third listening condition subjects ignored stimuli presented in homogenous blocks. For all listening conditions, the dichotic pitch stimulus elicited an object-related negativity (ORN) at a latency of about 150-250 ms after stimulus onset. When subjects were required to actively respond to stimuli, the ORN was followed by a P400 wave with a latency of about 320-420 ms. These results support and extend a two-stage model of auditory scene analysis in which acoustic streams are automatically parsed into component sound sources based on source-relevant cues, followed by a controlled process involving identification and generation of a behavioral response.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. m.hautus@auckland.ac.nz
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hautus
authors.forename: Blake W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods; D008875:Middle Aged; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*