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Responses of auditory-cortex neurons to structural features of natural sounds

Author

Listed:
  • Israel Nelken

    (Hadassah Medical School, Ein Karem)

  • Yaron Rotman

    (Hadassah Medical School, Ein Karem)

  • Omer Bar Yosef

    (Hadassah Medical School, Ein Karem)

Abstract

Sound-processing strategies that use the highly non-random structure of natural sounds may confer evolutionary advantage to many species. Auditory processing of natural sounds has been studied almost exclusively in the context of species-specific vocalizations1,2,3,4, although these form only a small part of the acoustic biotope5. To study the relationships between properties of natural soundscapes and neuronal processing mechanisms in the auditory system, we analysed sound from a range of different environments. Here we show that for many non-animal sounds and background mixtures of animal sounds, energy in different frequency bands is coherently modulated. Co-modulation of different frequency bands in background noise facilitates the detection of tones in noise by humans, a phenomenon known as co-modulation masking release (CMR)6,7. We show that co-modulation also improves the ability of auditory-cortex neurons to detect tones in noise, and we propose that this property of auditory neurons may underlie behavioural CMR. This correspondence may represent an adaptation of the auditory system for the use of an attribute of natural sounds to facilitate real-world processing tasks.

Suggested Citation

  • Israel Nelken & Yaron Rotman & Omer Bar Yosef, 1999. "Responses of auditory-cortex neurons to structural features of natural sounds," Nature, Nature, vol. 397(6715), pages 154-157, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:397:y:1999:i:6715:d:10.1038_16456
    DOI: 10.1038/16456
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    Cited by:

    1. Lingyun Zhao & Li Zhaoping, 2011. "Understanding Auditory Spectro-Temporal Receptive Fields and Their Changes with Input Statistics by Efficient Coding Principles," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(8), pages 1-16, August.
    2. Julie E Elie & Frédéric E Theunissen, 2019. "Invariant neural responses for sensory categories revealed by the time-varying information for communication calls," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-43, September.
    3. Mina Sadeghi & Xiu Zhai & Ian H Stevenson & Monty A Escabí, 2019. "A neural ensemble correlation code for sound category identification," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(10), pages 1-41, October.
    4. Klaus Wimmer & K Jannis Hildebrandt & R Matthias Hennig & Klaus Obermayer, 2008. "Adaptation and Selective Information Transmission in the Cricket Auditory Neuron AN2," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(9), pages 1-18, September.
    5. Clara Suied & Isabelle Viaud-Delmon, 2009. "Auditory-Visual Object Recognition Time Suggests Specific Processing for Animal Sounds," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(4), pages 1-9, April.
    6. Jacob N Oppenheim & Pavel Isakov & Marcelo O Magnasco, 2013. "Degraded Time-Frequency Acuity to Time-Reversed Notes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-6, June.

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