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The Journal of Neuroscience, December 6, 2006, 26(49):12708-12716; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2254-06.2006

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Perceptual-Learning Evidence for Separate Processing of Asynchrony and Order Tasks

Julia A. Mossbridge,¹ Matthew B. Fitzgerald,¹ Erin S. O'Connor,¹ and Beverly A. Wright^1,2

¹Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Frances Searle Building, Evanston, Illinois 60208, and ²Northwestern University Institute for Neuroscience, Chicago, Illinois 60611-3010

Correspondence should be addressed to Beverly A. Wright, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Frances Searle Building, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208. Email: b-wright{at}northwestern.edu

Normal perception depends, in part, on accurate judgments of the temporal relationships between sensory events. Two such relative-timing skills are the ability to detect stimulus asynchrony and to discriminate stimulus order. Here we investigated the neural processes contributing to the performance of auditory asynchrony and order tasks in humans, using a perceptual-learning paradigm. In each of two parallel experiments, we tested listeners on a pretest and a posttest consisting of auditory relative-timing conditions. Between these two tests, we trained a subset of listeners 1 h/d for 6–8 d on a single relative-timing condition. The trained listeners practiced asynchrony detection in one experiment and order discrimination in the other. Both groups were trained at sound onset with tones at 0.25 and 4.0 kHz. The remaining listeners in each experiment, who served as controls, did not receive multihour training during the 8–10 d between the pretest and posttest. These controls improved even without intervening training, adding to evidence that a single session of exposure to perceptual tasks can yield learning. Most importantly, each of the two groups of trained listeners learned more on their respective trained conditions than controls, but this learning occurred only on the two trained conditions. Neither group of trained listeners generalized their learning to the other task (order or asynchrony), an untrained temporal position (sound offset), or untrained frequency pairs. Thus, it appears that multihour training on relative-timing skills affects task-specific neural circuits that are tuned to a given temporal position and combination of stimulus components.

Key words: asynchrony; order; relative timing; temporal perception; auditory processing; human perceptual learning

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Received May 26, 2006; revised Oct. 17, 2006; accepted Oct. 18, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Beverly A. Wright, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Frances Searle Building, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208. Email: b-wright{at}northwestern.edu

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