Processing of speech and nonspeech sounds occurs bilaterally within primary auditory cortex and surrounding regions of the superior temporal gyrus; however, the manner in which these regions interact during speech and nonspeech processing is not well understood. Here, we investigate the underlying neuronal architecture of the auditory system with magnetoencephalography and a mismatch paradigm. ...

Single-unit responses were studied in the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN) of cats as formant and trough features of the vowel /epsilon/ were shifted in the frequency domain to each unit's best frequency (BF; the frequency of greatest sensitivity). Discharge rates sampled with this spectrum manipulation procedure (SMP) were used to estimate vowel representations provided by populations of VCN neu...

Behavioral improvement within the first hour of training is commonly explained as procedural learning (i.e., strategy changes resulting from task familiarization). However, it may additionally reflect a rapid adjustment of the perceptual and/or attentional system in a goal-directed task. In support of this latter hypothesis, we show feature-specific gains in performance for groups of participan...

Introduction Auditory perception can be enhanced by musical training and practice. Considering the multiple brain areas involved in learning, good auditory perceptual skills contribute to phonological awareness, speech recognition presence of noise, reading, syllable recognition, other language skills. Material methods There were 30 adults between 18 27 years old who participated. They divided ...

Our ability to discriminate sounds is not uniform throughout acoustic space. One example of auditory space warping, the perceptual magnet effect, appears to arise from exposure to the phonemes of an infant’s native language. We have developed a neural model that accounts for the magnet effect in terms of neural map dynamics in auditory cortex. This model predicts that it should be possible to i...

Earlier studies have shown that children are efficient second language learners. Research has also musical background might affect learning. A two-day auditory training paradigm was used to investigate whether studying in a music-oriented education program affects children’s sensitivity acquire non-native vowel contrast. Training effects were measured with listen-and-repeat production tests. Tw...

Human-machine interface (HMI) designs offer the possibility of improving quality of life for patient populations as well as augmenting normal user function. Despite pragmatic benefits, utilizing auditory feedback for HMI control remains underutilized, in part due to observed limitations in effectiveness. The goal of this study was to determine the extent to which categorical speech perception c...

Based on results from functional imaging, cortex along the superior temporal sulcus (STS) has been suggested to subserve phoneme and pre-lexical speech perception. For vowel classification, both superior temporal plane (STP) and STS areas have been suggested relevant. Lesion of bilateral STS may conversely be expected to cause pure word deafness and possibly also impaired vowel classification. ...