Research ReportAuditory temporal edge detection in human auditory cortex
Section snippets
Constant↔Regular edges
Magnetic waveform and field distribution analyses reveal that participants had comparable response trajectories. Fig. 2 shows the root mean square (RMS) of the grand-averaged auditory evoked responses to constant-to-regular (CONST–REG; in grey) and regular-to-constant (REG–CONST; in black) edges. The origin of the time scale coincides with the onset of the signals and the transition occurs at 900 ms post stimulus onset. The evoked MEG activity exhibits a series of deflections at about 100 ms
Discussion
The emergence of an object within a background is often signaled by the existence of edges, or transitions in the properties of the stimulus as one moves (in space for a visual scene, in time for an auditory scene) across the sensory map. The experiment described here used MEG because of its compelling sensitivity for human auditory cortical activity, in particular in the time domain, to probe a hypothesized process that may lie at the basis of auditory scene analysis — temporal edge detection.
Subjects
Twelve subjects (mean age 24.8 years, 4 female) participated in the experiment. All were right handed (Oldfield, 1971), reported normal hearing, and had no history of neurological disorder. The experimental procedures were approved by the University of Maryland institutional review board and written informed consent was obtained from each participant. Subjects were paid for their participation.
Stimuli
The experiment consisted of three successive blocks, each containing different stimuli (see below; the
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Jeff Walker for excellent technical support and to Alain de Cheveigné for comments and discussion. This research was supported by NIH grant R01DC05660 to DP and European grant IST Project FP6-03773 to École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France.
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