title: Detecting changes in dynamic and complex acoustic environments.
abstract: Natural sounds such as wind or rain, are characterized by the statistical occurrence of their constituents. Despite their complexity, listeners readily detect changes in these contexts. We here address the neural basis of statistical decision-making using a combination of psychophysics, EEG and modelling. In a texture-based, change-detection paradigm, human performance and reaction times improved with longer pre-change exposure, consistent with improved estimation of baseline statistics. Change-locked and decision-related EEG responses were found in a centro-parietal scalp location, whose slope depended on change size, consistent with sensory evidence accumulation. The potential's amplitude scaled with the duration of pre-change exposure, suggesting a time-dependent decision threshold. Auditory cortex-related potentials showed no response to the change. A dual timescale, statistical estimation model accounted for subjects' performance. Furthermore, a decision-augmented auditory cortex model accounted for performance and reaction times, suggesting that the primary cortical representation requires little post-processing to enable change-detection in complex acoustic environments.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, CNRS UMR 8248, Paris, France.|Département d'études cognitives, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Yves
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0106-6947
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Boubenec
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, CNRS UMR 8248, Paris, France.|Département d'études cognitives, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6116-3001
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lawlor
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurophysiology, Donders Centre for Neuroscience, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen, Netherlands.|Psychophysiology Laboratory, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.|Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.
authors.forename: Urszula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Górska
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, CNRS UMR 8248, Paris, France.|Département d'études cognitives, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France.|Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, United States.|Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, United States.
authors.forename: Shihab
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shamma
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, CNRS UMR 8248, Paris, France.|Département d'études cognitives, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France.|Department of Neurophysiology, Donders Centre for Neuroscience, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Englitz
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception; D004569:Electroencephalography; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D011601:Psychophysics
keywords: EEG; auditory decision-making; auditory textures; centro-parietal positivity; change detection; human; neuroscience; psychophysics