Concurrent temporal channels for auditory processing: Oscillatory neural entrainment reveals segregation of function at different scales.

ABSTRACT: Natural sounds convey perceptually relevant information over multiple timescales, and the necessary extraction of multi-timescale information requires the auditory system to work over distinct ranges. The simplest hypothesis suggests that temporal modulations are encoded in an equivalent manner within a reasonable intermediate range. We show that the human auditory system selectively and preferentially tracks acoustic dynamics concurrently at 2 timescales corresponding to the neurophysiological theta band (4-7 Hz) and gamma band ranges (31-45 Hz) but, contrary to expectation, not at the timescale corresponding to alpha (8-12 Hz), which has also been found to be related to auditory perception. Listeners heard synthetic acoustic stimuli with temporally modulated structures at 3 timescales (a

SUBMITTER: Teng X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5667736 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature