Cortical alpha oscillations as a tool for auditory selective inhibition

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Volumn 8, Issue MAY, 2014, Pages

  Strauß, Antje ^a   Wöstmann, Malte ^a   Obleser, Jonas ^a  

^a MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN COGNITIVE AND BRAIN SCIENCES   (Germany)

Author keywords

Aging; Alpha; Effortful listening; Hearing loss; Inhibition; Masking; Neural oscillations; Speech

Indexed keywords

AGE; ALPHA RHYTHM; AUDITORY MASKING; AUDITORY NERVOUS SYSTEM; AUDITORY RESPONSE; COGNITIVE DEFECT; HEARING IMPAIRMENT; HUMAN; NOISE REDUCTION; REVIEW; SELECTIVE ATTENTION; TASK PERFORMANCE;

EID: 84901609925     PISSN: None     EISSN: 16625161     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00350     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. Ahveninen, J., Huang, S., Belliveau, J. W., Chang, W.-T., and Hämäläinen, M. (2013). Dynamic oscillatory processes governing cued orienting and allocation of auditory attention. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 25, 1926-1943. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00452
2. Arbogast, T. L., Mason, C. R., and Kidd, G. Jr. (2005). The effect of spatial separation on informational masking of speech in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 2169-2180. doi: 10.1121/1.1861598
3. Banerjee, S., Snyder, A. C., Molholm, S., and Foxe, J. J. (2011). Oscillatory alpha-band mechanisms and the deployment of spatial attention to anticipated auditory and visual target locations: supramodal or sensory-specific control mechanisms? J. Neurosci. 31, 9923-9932. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4660-10.2011
4. Berger, H. (1931). Über das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen. Arch. Psychiatr. Nervenkr. 94, 16-60. doi: 10.1007/BF01835097
5. Bizley, J. K., and Cohen, Y. E. (2013). The what, where and how of auditory-object perception. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 14, 693-707. doi: 10.1038/nrn3565
6. Böttger, D., Herrmann, C. S., and von Cramon, D. Y. (2002). Amplitude differences of evoked alpha and gamma oscillations in two different age groups. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 45, 245-251. doi: 10.1016/S0167-8760(02)00031-4
7. Broadbent, D. E. (1958). Perception and Communication. Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press. doi: 10.1037/10037-000
8. Brungart, D. S., Simpson, B. D., Ericson, M. A., and Scott, K. R. (2001). Informational and energetic masking effects in the perception of multiple simultaneous talkers. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 110, 2527-2538. doi: 10.1121/1.1408946
9. Buffalo, E. A., Fries, P., Landman, R., Buschman, T. J., and Desimone, R. (2011). Laminar differences in gamma and alpha coherence in the ventral stream. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 11262-11267. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011284108
10. Busch, N. A., Dubois, J., and VanRullen, R. (2009). The phase of ongoing EEG oscillations predicts visual perception. J. Neurosci. 29, 7869-7876. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0113-09.2009
11. Chang, E. F., Rieger, J. W., Johnson, K., Berger, M. S., Barbaro, N. M., and Knight, R. T. (2010). Categorical speech representation in human superior temporal gyrus. Nat. Neurosci. 13, 1428-1432. doi: 10.1038/nn.2641
12. Chao, L. L., and Knight, R. T. (1997). Prefrontal deficits in attention and inhibitory control with aging. Cereb. Cortex7, 63-69. doi: 10.1093/cercor/7.1.63
13. Cherry, E. C. (1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and with two ears. J. Accoust. Soc. Am. 25, 975-979. doi: 10.1121/1.1907229
14. Cohen, M. X., Elger, C. E., and Fell, J. (2009). Oscillatory activity and phase-amplitude coupling in the human medial frontal cortex during decision making. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 21, 390-402. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2008.21020
15. Desimone, R., and Duncan, J. (1995). Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 18, 193-222. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ne.18.030195.001205
16. Ding, N., and Simon, J. Z. (2012). Emergence of neural encoding of auditory objects while listening to competing speakers. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S. A 109, 11854-11859. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1205381109
17. Durlach, N. I., Mason, C. R. Jr., G. K., Arbogast, T. L., Colburn, H. S., and Shinn-Cunningham, B. G. (2003). Note on informational masking (l). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 2984-2987. doi: 10.1121/1.1570435
18. Farah, M. J., Wong, A. B., Monheit, M. A., and Morrow, L. A. (1989). Parietal lobe mechanisms of spatial attention: modality-specific or supramodal? Neuropsychologia 27, 461-470. doi: 10.1016/0028-3932(89)90051-1
19. Fostick, L., and Babkoff, H. (2013). Temporal and non-temporal processes in the elderly. J. Basic Clin. Physiol. Pharmacol. 24, 191-199. doi: 10.1515/jbcpp-2013-0049
20. Foxe, J. J., and Snyder, A. C. (2011). The role of alpha-band brain oscillations as a sensory suppression mechanism during selective attention. Front. Psychol. 2:154. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00154
21. Freunberger, R., Fellinger, R., Sauseng, P., Gruber, W., and Klimesch, W. (2009). Dissociation between phase-locked and nonphase-locked alpha oscillations in a working memory task. Hum. Brain Mapp. 30, 3417-3425. doi: 10.1002/hbm.20766
22. Fritz, J. B., Elhilali, M., David, S. V., and Shamma, S. A. (2007). Auditory attention-focusing the searchlight on sound. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 17, 437-455. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2007.07.011
23. Griffiths, T. D., and Warren, J. D. (2004). What is an auditory object? Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 5, 887-892. doi: 10.1038/nrn1538
24. Gutschalk, A., Micheyl, C., and Oxenham, A. J. (2008). Neural correlates of auditory perceptual awareness under informational masking. PLoS Biol. 6:e138. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060138
25. Haegens, S., Luther, L., and Jensen, O. (2012). Somatosensory anticipatory alpha activity increases to suppress distracting input. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 24, 677-685. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00164
26. Haegens, S., Nácher, V., Luna, R., Romo, R., and Jensen, O. (2011). α-oscillations in the monkey sensorimotor network influence discrimination performance by rhythmical inhibition of neuronal spiking. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 19377-19382. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1117190108
27. Hartmann, T., Schlee, W., and Weisz, N. (2012). It's only in your head: expectancy of aversive auditory stimulation modulates stimulus-induced auditory cortical alpha desynchronization. Neuroimage 60, 170-178. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.12.034
28. Heinrich, A., Carlyon, R. P., Davis, M. H., and Johnsrude, I. S. (2011). The continuity illusion does not depend on attentional state: FMRI evidence from illusory vowels. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 23, 2675-2689. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2011.21627
29. Helfer, K. S., Chevalier, J., and Freyman, R. L. (2010). Aging, spatial cues, and single-versus dual-task performance in competing speech perception. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 128, 3625-3633. doi: 10.1121/1.3502462
30. Jensen, O., Bonnefond, M., and VanRullen, R. (2012). An oscillatory mechanism for prioritizing salient unattended stimuli. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 200-206. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.03.002
31. Jensen, O., Gelfand, J., Kounios, J., and Lisman, J. E. (2002). Oscillations in the alpha band (9-12 hz) increase with memory load during retention in a short-term memory task. Cereb. Cortex 12, 877-882. doi: 10.1093/cercor/12.8.877
32. Jensen, O., and Mazaheri, A. (2010). Shaping functional architecture by oscillatory alpha activity: gating by inhibition. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 4:186. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2010.00186
33. Kaiser, J., Heidegger, T., Wibral, M., Altmann, C. F., and Lutzenberger, W. (2007). Alpha synchronization during auditory spatial short-term memory. Neuroreport 18, 1129-1132. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e32821c553b
34. Kerlin, J. R., Shahin, A. J., and Miller, L. M. (2010). Attentional gain control of ongoing cortical speech representations in a "cocktail party". J. Neurosci. 30, 620-628. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3631-09.2010
35. Kinsey, K., Anderson, S. J., Hadjipapas, A., and Holliday, I. E. (2011). The role of oscillatory brain activity in object processing and figure-ground segmentation in human vision. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 79, 392-400. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.12.007
36. Klimesch, W. (1999). EEG alpha and theta oscillations reflect cognitive and memory performance: a review and analysis. Brain Res. Rev. 29, 169-195. doi: 10.1016/S0165-0173(98)00056-3
37. Klimesch, W. (2012). Alpha-band oscillations, attention, and controlled access to stored information. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 606-617. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.10.007
38. Larsby, B., Hällgren, M., Lyxell, B., and Arlinger, S. (2005). Cognitive performance and perceived effort in speech processing tasks: effects of different noise backgrounds in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired subjects. Int. J. Audiol. 44, 131-143. doi: 10.1080/14992020500057244
39. Lee, A. K. C., Larson, E., Maddox, R. K., and Shinn-Cunningham, B. G. (2013). Using neuroimaging to understand the cortical mechanisms of auditory selective attention. Hear. Res. 307, 111-120. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.06.010
40. Leiberg, S., Lutzenberger, W., and Kaiser, J. (2006). Effects of memory load on cortical oscillatory activity during auditory pattern working memory. Brain Res. 1120, 131-140. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2006.08.066
41. Leske, S., Tse, A., Oosterhof, N. N., Hartmann, T., Müller, N., Keil, J., et al. (2013). The strength of alpha and beta oscillations parametrically scale with the strength of an illusory auditory percept. Neuroimage 88C, 69-78. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.11.014
42. Lorenzi, C., Gilbert, G., Carn, H., Garnier, S., and Moore, B. C. J. (2006). Speech perception problems of the hearing impaired reflect inability to use temporal fine structure. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 103, 18866-18869. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0607364103
43. Luo, H., Husain, F. T., Horwitz, B., and Poeppel, D. (2005). Discrimination and categorization of speech and non-speech sounds in an MEG delayed-match-to-sample study. Neuroimage 28, 59-71. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.05.040
44. Mathewson, K. E., Lleras, A., Beck, D. M., Fabiani, M., Ro, T., and Gratton, G. (2011). Pulsed out of awareness: EEG alpha oscillations represent a pulsed-inhibition of ongoing cortical processing. Front. Psychol. 2:99. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00099
45. Mattys, S. L., Brooks, J., and Cooke, M. (2009). Recognizing speech under a processing load: dissociating energetic from informational factors. Cogn. Psychol. 59, 203-243. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2009.04.001
46. Mattys, S. L., Davis, M. H., Bradlow, A. R., and Scott, S. K. (2012). Speech recognition in adverse conditions: a review. Lang. Cogn. Process. 27, 953-978. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2012.705006
47. Melara, R. D., Rao, A., and Tong, Y. (2002). The duality of selection: excitatory and inhibitory processes in auditory selective attention. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 28, 279-306. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.28.2.279
48. Meyer, L., Obleser, J., and Friederici, A. D. (2013). Left parietal alpha enhancement during working memory-intensive sentence processing. Cortex 49, 711-721. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.03.006
49. Müller, N., and Weisz, N. (2012). Lateralized auditory cortical alpha band activity and interregional connectivity pattern reflect anticipation of target sounds. Cereb. Cortex 22, 1604-1613. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr232
50. Neher, T., Behrens, T., Carlile, S., Jin, C., Kragelund, L., Petersen, A. S., et al. (2009). Benefit from spatial separation of multiple talkers in bilateral hearing-aid users: effects of hearing loss, age, and cognition. Int. J. Audiol. 48, 758-774. doi: 10.3109/14992020903079332
51. Obleser, J., and Weisz, N. (2012). Suppressed alpha oscillations predict intelligibility of speech and its acoustic details. Cereb. Cortex 22, 2466-2477. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr325
52. Obleser, J., Wöstmann, M., Hellbernd, N., Wilsch, A., and Maess, B. (2012). Adverse listening conditions and memory load drive a common alpha oscillatory network. J. Neurosci. 32, 12376-12383. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4908-11.2012
53. Palva, S., and Palva, J. M. (2011). Functional roles of alpha-band phase synchronization in local and large-scale cortical networks. Front. Psychol. 2:204. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00204
54. Park, H. L., O'Connell, J. E., and Thomson, R. G. (2003). A systematic review of cognitive decline in the general elderly population. Int. J. Geriatr. Psychiatry 18, 1121-1134. doi: 10.1002/gps.1023
55. Passow, S., Westerhausen, R., Hugdahl, K., Wartenburger, I., Heekeren, H. R., Lindenberger, U., et al. (2014). Electrophysiological correlates of adult age differences in attentional control of auditory processing. Cereb. Cortex24, 249-260. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhs306
56. Petkov, C. I., Kang, X., Alho, K., Bertrand, O., Yund, E. W., and Woods, D. L. (2004). Attentional modulation of human auditory cortex. Nat. Neurosci. 7, 658-663. doi: 10.1038/nn1256
57. Pfurtscheller, G., Stancák, Jr., A., and Neuper, C. (1996). Event-related synchronization (ERS) in the alpha band-an electrophysiological correlate of cortical idling: a review. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 24, 39-46. doi: 10.1016/S0167-8760(96)00066-9
58. Pichora-Fuller, M. K. (2003). Cognitive aging and auditory information processing. Int. J. Audiol. 42, 2S26-2S32. doi: 10.3109/14992020309074641
59. Rabinowitz, N. C., Willmore, B. D. B., King, A. J., and Schnupp, J. W. H. (2013). Constructing noise-invariant representations of sound in the auditory pathway. PLoS Biol. 11:e1001710. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001710
60. Rauschecker, J. P., and Scott, S. K. (2009). Maps and streams in the auditory cortex: nonhuman primates illuminate human speech processing. Nat. Neurosci. 12, 718-724. doi: 10.1038/nn.2331
61. Romei, V., Gross, J., and Thut, G. (2010). On the role of prestimulus alpha rhythms over occipito-parietal areas in visual input regulation: correlation or causation? J. Neurosci. 30, 8692-8697. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0160-10.2010
62. Romei, V., Thut, G., Mok, R. M., Schyns, P. G., and Driver, J. (2012). Causal implication by rhythmic transcranial magnetic stimulation of alpha frequency in feature-based local vs. global attention. Eur. J. Neurosci. 35, 968-974. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2012.08020.x
63. Roux, F., and Uhlhaas, P. J. (2014). Working memory and neural oscillations: alpha-gamma versus theta-gamma codes for distinct WM information? Trends Cogn. Sci. 18, 16-25. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.10.010
64. Roux, F., Wibral, M., Singer, W., Aru, J., and Uhlhaas, P. J. (2013). The phase of thalamic alpha activity modulates cortical gamma-band activity: evidence from resting-state MEG recordings. J. Neurosci. 33, 17827-17835. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5778-12.2013
65. Schneider, B. A., Li, L., and Daneman, M. (2007). How competing speech interferes with speech comprehension in everyday listening situations. J. Am. Acad. Audiol. 18, 559-572. doi: 10.3766/jaaa.18.7.4
66. Scott, S. K., and McGettigan, C. (2013). The neural processing of masked speech. Hear. Res. 303, 58-66. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.05.001
67. Scott, S. K., Rosen, S., Beaman, C. P., Davis, J. P., and Wise, R. J. S. (2009). The neural processing of masked speech: evidence for different mechanisms in the left and right temporal lobes. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125, 1737-1743. doi: 10.1121/1.3050255
68. Scott, S. K., Rosen, S., Wickham, L., and Wise, R. J. S. (2004). A positron emission tomography study of the neural basis of informational and energetic masking effects in speech perception. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 115, 813-821. doi: 10.1121/1.1639336
69. Shinn-Cunningham, B. G. (2008). Object-based auditory and visual attention. Trends Cogn. Sci. 12, 182-186. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.02.003
70. Shinn-Cunningham, B. G., and Best, V. (2008). Selective attention in normal and impaired hearing. Trends Amplif. 12, 283-299. doi: 10.1177/1084713808325306
71. Spaak, E., Bonnefond, M., Maier, A., Leopold, D. A., and Jensen, O. (2012). Layer-specific entrainment of gamma-band neural activity by the alpha rhythm in monkey visual cortex. Curr. Biol. 22, 2313-2318. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.10.020
72. Stone, M. A., Füllgrabe, C., and Moore, B. C. J. (2012). Notionally steady background noise acts primarily as a modulation masker of speech. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 132, 317-326. doi: 10.1121/1.4725766
73. Strauß, A., Kotz, S. A., Scharinger, M., and Obleser, J. (2014). Alpha and theta brain oscillations index dissociable processes in spoken word recognition. Neuroimage. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.04.005. [Epub ahead of print].
74. Strauss, D. J., Corona-Strauss, F. I., Trenado, C., Bernarding, C., Reith, W., Latzel, M., et al. (2010). Electrophysiological correlates of listening effort: neurodynamical modeling and measurement. Cogn. Neurodyn. 4, 119-131. doi: 10.1007/s11571-010-9111-3
75. Tremblay, K. L., Piskosz, M., and Souza, P. (2003). Effects of age and age-related hearing loss on the neural representation of speech cues. Clin. Neurophysiol. 114, 1332-1343. doi: 10.1016/S1388-2457(03)00114-7
76. Tun, P. A., O'Kane, G., and Wingfield, A. (2002). Distraction by competing speech in young and older adult listeners. Psychol. Aging 17, 453-467. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.17.3.453
77. van Dijk, H., Schoffelen, J.-M., Oostenveld, R., and Jensen, O. (2008). Prestimulus oscillatory activity in the alpha band predicts visual discrimination ability. J. Neurosci. 28, 1816-1823. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1853-07.2008
78. Weisz, N., Lüchinger, C., Thut, G., and Müller, N. (2014). Effects of individual alpha rTMS applied to the auditory cortex and its implications for the treatment of chronic tinnitus. Hum. Brain Mapp. 35, 14-29. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22152
79. Wild, C. J., Yusuf, A., Wilson, D. E., Peelle, J. E., Davis, M. H., and Johnsrude, I. S. (2012). Effortful listening: the processing of degraded speech depends critically on attention. J. Neurosci. 32, 14010-14021. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1528-12.2012
80. Wilsch, A., Henry, M. J., Herrmann, B., Maess, B., and Obleser, J. (2014). Alpha oscillatory dynamics index temporal expectation benefits in working memory. Cereb. Cortex. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhu004. [Epub ahead of print].
81. Wingfield, A., Tun, P. A., and McCoy, S. L. (2005). Hearing loss in older adulthood what it is and how it interacts with cognitive performance. Curr. Direct. Psychol. Sci. 14, 144-148. doi: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00356.x
82. Yordanova, J. Y., Kolev, V. N., and Başar, E. (1998). EEG theta and frontal alpha oscillations during auditory processing change with aging. Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol. 108, 497-505. doi: 10.1016/S0168-5597(98)00028-8
83. Zekveld, A. A., Kramer, S. E., and Festen, J. M. (2011). Cognitive load during speech perception in noise: the influence of age, hearing loss, and cognition on the pupil response. Ear Hear. 32, 498-510. doi: 10.1097/AUD.0b013e31820512bb