title: How the Non-attending Brain Hears Its Owner's Name.
abstract: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how attended and non-attended hearing of a subject's own name (SON) captures his or her attention. It has been reported that SON presentation activates the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is considered to be the key region for self-recognition. However, it remains unclear whether non-attended SON presentation also activates the mPFC. We hypothesized that an attended SON should activate mPFC more than a non-attended SON. To test this hypothesis, we designed an experiment in which we manipulated the task-relevance of SON; in a name-detection task, SON was a target stimulus, whereas in a tone-judgment task, SON was unrelated to the task. In each condition, identical sets of sound stimuli were presented. SON activated mPFC in the name-detection task but not in the tone-judgment task, supporting our hypothesis. In contrast, non-attended SON activated midbrain reticular formation, thalamus, insula, auditory cortex, and precuneus. We interpreted these to be related to low-level, automatic SON detection. Thus, hearing one's own name in a non-attended condition does not primarily engage the mPFC, but recruits a cortico-subcortical auditory attention network; this may account for the oft-observed salience of SON.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Aichi 466-8550, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshiki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakane
authors.affiliation: Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, Institute for Neural Computation, University of California San Diego 0559, La Jolla, CA 92093-0559, USA Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Makoto
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miyakoshi
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Neuroimaging and Informatics, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Ohbu, Aichi 474-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshiharu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakai
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Aichi 466-8550, Japan.
authors.forename: Shinji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Naganawa
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009275:Names; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time; D012649:Self Concept; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: attention; cocktail-party effect; functional MRI; one's own name; self-relevance