%0 Journal Article
%T Auditory-Cortex Short-Term Plasticity Induced by Selective Attention
%A Iiro P. J£¿£¿skel£¿inen
%A Jyrki Ahveninen
%J Neural Plasticity
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/216731
%X The ability to concentrate on relevant sounds in the acoustic environment is crucial for everyday function and communication. Converging lines of evidence suggests that transient functional changes in auditory-cortex neurons, ¡°short-term plasticity¡±, might explain this fundamental function. Under conditions of strongly focused attention, enhanced processing of attended sounds can take place at very early latencies (~50£¿ms from sound onset) in primary auditory cortex and possibly even at earlier latencies in subcortical structures. More robust selective-attention short-term plasticity is manifested as modulation of responses peaking at ~100£¿ms from sound onset in functionally specialized nonprimary auditory-cortical areas by way of stimulus-specific reshaping of neuronal receptive fields that supports filtering of selectively attended sound features from task-irrelevant ones. Such effects have been shown to take effect in ~seconds following shifting of attentional focus. There are findings suggesting that the reshaping of neuronal receptive fields is even stronger at longer auditory-cortex response latencies (~300£¿ms from sound onset). These longer-latency short-term plasticity effects seem to build up more gradually, within tens of seconds after shifting the focus of attention. Importantly, some of the auditory-cortical short-term plasticity effects observed during selective attention predict enhancements in behaviorally measured sound discrimination performance. 1. Introduction As so eloquently defined more than a century ago by philosopher William James, selective attention is ¡°the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state¡± [1]. Subsequent behavioral research has elucidated the principles governing, for example, the role of memory in enabling selective attention in complex auditory scenes (see [2]). Elucidating the neural basis of the outright amazing ability to select task-relevant stimuli, including both external and internal ones such as memories and thoughts, and ignore task-irrelevant stimuli is one of the most fundamental research questions in cognitive neuroscience [3]. As will be reviewed in detail in the following, a number of recent findings have significantly shed light on the neural basis of selective
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/2014/216731/