Elsevier

Cognitive Brain Research

Volume 1, Issue 4, December 1993, Pages 227-240
Cognitive Brain Research

Research report
Anatomical substrates of auditory selective attention: behavioral and electrophysiological effects of posterior association cortex lesions

https://doi.org/10.1016/0926-6410(93)90007-RGet rights and content

Abstract

Even-related brain potentials (ERPs) and reaction times (RTs) were recorded in an auditory selective attention task in control subjects and two groups of patients with lesions centered in (1) the temporal/parietal junction (T/P, n = 9); and (2) the inferior parietal lobe (IPL, n = 7). High pitched tones were presented to one ear and low pitched tones to the other in random sequences that included infrequent longer-duration tones and occasional novel sounds. Subjects attended to a specified ear and pressed a button to the longer-duration tones in that ear. IPL and T/P lesions slowed reaction times (RTs) and increased error rates, but improved one aspect of performance — patients showed less distraction than controls when targets followed novel sounds. T/P lesions reduced the amplitude of early sensory ERPs, initially over the damaged hemisphere (N1a, 70–110 ms) and then bilaterally (N1b, 110–130 ms, and N1c 130–160 ms). The reduction was accentuated for tones presented contralateral to the lesion, suggesting that N1 generators receive excitatory input primarily from the contralateral ear. IPL lesions reduced N1 amplitudes to both low frequency tones and novel sounds. Nd components associated with attentional selection were diminished over both hemispheres in the T/P group and over the lesioned hemisphere in the IPL group independent of ear of stimulation. Target and novel N2s tended to be diminished by IPL lesions but were unaffected by T/P lesions. The mismatch negativity was unaffected by either T/P or IPL lesions. The results support different roles of T/P and IPL cortex in auditory selective attention.

References (63)

  • R.T. Knight et al.

    Pre-movement parietal lobe input to human sensori-motor cortex

    Brain Res.

    (1989)
  • J.P. Makela et al.

    Magnetic responses of the human auditory cortex to noise/square wave transitions

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1988)
  • F. Perrin et al.

    Spherical splines for scalp potential and current density mapping

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1987)
  • M. Sams et al.

    Cerebral neuromagnetic responses evoked by short auditory stimuli

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1985)
  • R. Simson et al.

    The scalp topography of potentials in auditory and visual discrimination tasks

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1977)
  • M.E. Smith et al.

    The intracranial topography of the P3 event-related potential elicited during auditory oddball

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1990)
  • H. Vaughan et al.

    The sources of auditory evoked responses recorded from the human scalp

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1970)
  • M. Woldorff et al.

    Modulation of early auditory processing during selective listening to rapidly presented tones

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1991)
  • J.R. Wolpaw et al.

    Scalp distribution of human auditory evoked potentials. I. Evaluation of reference electrode sites

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1982)
  • C.C. Wood et al.

    Scalp distribution of human auditory evoked potentials. II. Evidence for overlapping sources and involvement of auditory cortex

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1982)
  • D.L. Woods

    Auditory selective attention in middle-aged and elderly subjects: an event-related brain potential study

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1992)
  • D.L. Woods et al.

    Intermodal selective attention. I. Effects on event-related potentials to lateralized auditory and visual stimuli

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1992)
  • D.L. Woods et al.

    Generators of middle- and long-latency auditory evoked potentials: implications from studies of patients with bitemporal lesions

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.: Evoked Potentials

    (1987)
  • D.L. Woods et al.

    Bitemporal lesions dissociate auditory evoked potentials and perception

    Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol.

    (1984)
  • C. Alain et al.

    Distractor clustering enhances detection speed and accuracy during selective listening

    Percept. Psychophys.

    (1993)
  • C. Alcaini et al.

    Selective auditory attention modulates neural activity in tonotopically organized cortical areas

  • Alho, K., Woods, D.L., Algazi, A., Knight, R.T. and Naatanen, R., Lesions of frontal cortex diminish the auditory...
  • U. Blaettner et al.

    Diagnosis of unilateral telencephalic hearing disorders. Evaluation of a simple psychoacoustic pattern discrimination test

    Brain

    (1989)
  • J.S. Buchwald

    Animal models of cognitive event-related potentials

  • M. Colombo et al.

    Auditory association cortex lesions impair auditory short-term memory in monkeys

    Science

    (1990)
  • D.J. Crammond et al.

    Neuronal activity in primate parietal cortex area 5 varies with intended movement direction during an instructed-delay period

    Exp. Brain Res.

    (1989)
  • Cited by (92)

    • Auditory spatial attention modulates the unmasking effect of perceptual separation in a “cocktail party” environment

      2019, Neuropsychologia
      Citation Excerpt :

      The results of the present study revealed that a switch of spatial attention condition from off-signal to on-signal significantly enhanced N1 amplitudes no matter when the signal and masker were perceptually separated or co-located. This result supports previous findings that N1 wave could be modulated by the auditory spatial attention (Eimer, 2014; Woods et al., 1993). Knight et al. (1981) conducted a dichotic listening study in which two sets of tones were respectively displayed to the left and right ear.

    • The role of sensory cortex in behavioral flexibility

      2017, Neuroscience
      Citation Excerpt :

      Impaired ability to filter out visual distractors has also been observed in human patients with brain damage to the temporal lobe (Mendola and Corkin, 1999) and at the temporal-occipital junction (Gallant et al., 2000). Studies of cortical lesions in humans also suggest impairments in spatial attention during dichotic listening tasks (Woods et al., 1993; Bellmann et al., 2001). However, since lesions are not always restricted to the auditory cortex, the exact cause of behavioral deficits are difficult to determine.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text