Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-4-2023
Publication Title
Neuroscience of Consciousness
Volume
2023
Issue
1
First page number:
1
Last page number:
12
Abstract
Current theories of perception emphasize the role of neural adaptation, inhibitory competition, and noise as key components that lead to switches in perception. Supporting evidence comes from neurophysiological findings of specific neural signatures in modality-specific and supramodal brain areas that appear to be critical to switches in perception. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity around the time of switches in perception while participants listened to a bistable auditory stream segregation stimulus, which can be heard as one integrated stream of tones or two segregated streams of tones. The auditory thalamus showed more activity around the time of a switch from segregated to integrated compared to time periods of stable perception of integrated; in contrast, the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and the inferior parietal lobule showed more activity around the time of a switch from integrated to segregated compared to time periods of stable perception of segregated streams, consistent with prior findings of asymmetries in brain activity depending on the switch direction. In sound-responsive areas in the auditory cortex, neural activity increased in strength preceding switches in perception and declined in strength over time following switches in perception. Such dynamics in the auditory cortex are consistent with the role of adaptation proposed by computational models of visual and auditory bistable switching, whereby the strength of neural activity decreases following a switch in perception, which eventually destabilizes the current percept enough to lead to a switch to an alternative percept.
Keywords
Bistable Perception; Auditory Cortex; Adaptation; Auditory Stream Segregation
Disciplines
Communication Sciences and Disorders | Medicine and Health Sciences | Psychology
File Format
File Size
4900 KB
Language
English
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Repository Citation
Higgins, N. C.,
Scurry, A. N.,
Jiang, F.,
Little, D. F.,
Elhilali, M.,
Snyder, J. S.
(2023).
Adaptation In the Sensory Cortex Drives Bistable Switching During Auditory Stream Segregation.
Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2023(1),
1-12.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac019