Interaction between Attention and Bottom-Up Saliency Mediates the Representation of Foreground and Background in an Auditory Scene

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000129
• Publication Date: 2009-06-15T17:44:13Z
• Authors: Mounya Elhilali; Juanjuan Xiang; Shihab A. Shamma; Jonathan Z. Simon
• Keywords: Stimulus (psychology); Auditory scene analysis; Neurophysiology; Auditory perception

The mechanism by which a complex auditory scene is parsed into coherent objects depends on poorly understood interactions between task-driven and stimulus-driven attentional processes. We illuminate these in simultaneous behavioral-neurophysiological study we manipulate participants' attention to different features of an (with regular target embedded irregular background). Our experimental results reveal that the target, rather than background, correlates with sustained (steady-state) increase measured neural representation over entire stimulus sequence, beyond attention's well-known transient effects onset responses. This enhancement, both power phase coherence, occurs exclusively at frequency rhythm, only revealed when contrasting two states direct focus acoustic stimulus. enhancement originates cortex covaries behavioral task bottom-up saliency target. Furthermore, target's perceptual detectability improves time, correlating strongly, within participants, representation's buildup. These have substantial implications for models foreground/background organization, supporting role neuronal temporal synchrony mediating object formation.