Auditory attentional control and selection during cocktail party listening.
In realistic auditory environments, people rely on both attentional control and attentional selection to extract intelligible signals from a cluttered background. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine auditory attention to natural speech under such high processing-load conditions. Participants attended to a single talker in a group of 3, identified by the target talker's pitch or spatial location. A catch-trial design allowed us to distinguish activity due to top-down control of attention versus attentional selection of bottom-up information in both the spatial and spectral (pitch) feature domains. For attentional control, we found a left-dominant fronto-parietal network with a bias toward spatial processing in dorsal precentral sulcus and superior parietal lobule, and a bias toward pitch in inferior frontal gyrus. During selection of the talker, attention modulated activity in left intraparietal sulcus when using talker location and in bilateral but right-dominant superior temporal sulcus when using talker pitch. We argue that these networks represent the sources and targets of selective attention in rich auditory environments.
Hill
Kevin T
KT
Center for Mind and Brain, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95618, USA.
Miller
Lee M
LM
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
D010100:Oxygen