The auditory brainstem response to natural speech is not affected by selective attention.

ABSTRACT: The ability to pick out and attend to one sound in a noisy mixture underpins successful communication in many natural scenarios. Selective attention has been shown to drastically alter sound encoding in the cortex and has been hypothesized to modulate subcortical processing via an extensive efferent network. The body of work investigating this possibility in humans has not resulted in a clear consensus, possibly owing to limitations in the available methodologies. Here, we used new experimental tools that allowed distinct neural responses from across the auditory pathway to be simultaneously acquired from human listeners attending to the sound of one person talking while ignoring a second. Our series of experiments provide convergent evidence that selective attention does not influence sou

SUBMITTER: Stoll TJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12500158 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature