Temporal processing ability is related to ear-asymmetry for detecting time cues in sound: a mismatch negativity (MMN) study.
Temporal and spectral sound information is processed asymmetrically in the brain with the left-hemisphere showing an advantage for processing the former and the right-hemisphere for the latter. Using monaural sound presentation we demonstrate a context and ability dependent ear-asymmetry in brain measures of temporal change detection. Our measure of temporal processing ability was a gap-detection task quantifying the smallest silent gap in a sound that participants could reliably detect. Our brain measure was the size of the mismatch-negativity (MMN) auditory event-related potential elicited to infrequently presented gap sounds. The MMN indexes discrimination ability and is automatically generated when the brain detects a change in a repeating pattern of sound. MMN was elicited in unattended sequences of infrequent gap-sounds presented among regular no-gap sounds. In Study 1, participants with low gap-detection thresholds (good ability) produced a significantly larger MMN to gap sounds when sequences were presented monaurally to the right-ear than to the left-ear. In Study 2, we not only replicated a right-ear-advantage for MMN in silence in good temporal processors, but also showed that this is reversed to a significant left-ear-advantage for MMN when the same sounds are presented against a background of constant low-level noise. In both studies, poor discriminators showed no ear-advantage, and in Study 2, exhibited no differential sensitivity of the ears to noise. We conclude that these data reveal a context and ability-dependent asymmetry in processing temporal information in non-speech sounds.
School of Psychology, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia. Juanita.Todd@newcastle.edu.au
Juanita
J
Todd
Brayden
B
Finch
Ellen
E
Smith
Timothy W
TW
Budd
Ulrich
U
Schall
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004423:Ear; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013016:Sound; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult