Are there neurons detecting direction of sound source motion?

doi:10.1016/0014-4886(68)90016-2

Experimental Neurology

Volume 22, Issue 1, September 1968, Pages 13-25

https://doi.org/10.1016/0014-4886(68)90016-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

The activity of inferior colliculus single neurons was recorded extracellularly in cats anesthetized with chloralose and urethane. Binaurally presented trains of clicks were used as a sound signal, the time interval within each pair of clicks being diminished and then raised gradually. The use of the signal, which has some special features of a moving sound, models motion of the sound from one ear to the midline and backwards. It was possible to isolate units, which can fix some special features of this signal and respond to the direction of sound “motion” with a specific response. Different types of responses of these neurons are presented.

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Citation Excerpt :
To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to reveal the influence of sound motion on the evoked oscillatory activity. According to accumulated evidence in auditory research, moving sounds may specifically activate subcortical and cortical areas (single-unit recordings in animals: Altman, 1968; Spitzer and Semple, 1991; Ahissar et al., 1992; Toronchuk et al., 1992; human neuroimaging studies: Baumgart et al., 1999; Bremmer et al., 2001; Griffiths et al., 1994, 1998, 2000; Lewis et al., 2000; Warren et al., 2002; Hall et al., 2003; Krumbholz et al., 2005). Nevertheless, the brain rhythms which lie behind the motion-related cortical responses have never been studied, and functional interrelation of delta-theta and alpha-band oscillations during perception of moving sounds remains to be clarified.
The present study investigates the event-related oscillations underlying the motion-onset response (MOR) evoked by sounds moving at different velocities. EEG was recorded for stationary sounds and for three patterns of sound motion produced by changes in interaural time differences. We explored the effect of motion velocity on the MOR potential, and also on the event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) and inter-trial phase coherence (ITC) calculated from the time-frequency decomposition of EEG signals. The phase coherence of slow oscillations increased with an increase in motion velocity similarly to the magnitude of cN1 and cP2 components of the MOR response. The delta-to-alpha inter-trial spectral power remained at the same level up to, but not including, the highest velocity, suggesting that gradual spatial changes within the sound did not induce non-coherent activity. Conversely, the abrupt sound displacement induced theta-alpha oscillations which had low phase consistency. The findings suggest that the MOR potential could be mainly generated by the phase resetting of slow oscillations, and the degree of phase coherence may be considered as a neurophysiological indicator of sound motion processing.
Discrimination of auditory motion patterns: The mismatch negativity study
2012, Neuropsychologia
Citation Excerpt :
The processing of acoustical cues of moving sounds has been one of the targets of psychoacoustic and neurophysiologic research for years now. There is plenty of evidence that there are subcortical and cortical areas selectively activated by moving sounds (human neuroimaging studies: Baumgart, Gaschler-Markefski, Woldorff, Heinze, & Schleich, 1999; Bremmer et al., 2001; Griffiths, Bench, & Frackowiak, 1994; Griffiths et al., 1998; Griffiths, Green, Rees, & Rees, 2000; Hall, Hart, & Johnsrude, 2003; Krumbholz et al., 2005; Lewis, Beauchamp, & DeYoe, 2000; Warren, Zielinski, Green, Rauschecker, & Griffiths, 2002; single-unit recordings in animals: Altman, 1968; Spitzer & Semple, 1991; Ahissar, Ahissar, Bregman, & Vaadia, 1992; Toronchuk, Stumpf, & Cynader, 1992). It has been suggested that there are specialized neural elements in hearing system (“motion detectors”) that provide for the ongoing analysis of the sound source movement (Altman, 1968).
The aim of the present study is to test whether mismatch negativity (MMN) response can be elicited by changes in auditory motion dynamics. The discrimination of auditory motion patterns was investigated using psychophysical and electrophysiological methods in the same group of subjects. Auditory event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded for stationary midline noises and moving noises shifting to the left/right from the head midline. Two patterns of auditory motion were used with gradual (Motion) and stepwise (Step) movements which started and ended at the same loci. Auditory motion was produced by linear and abrupt changes of interaural time differences (ITD) in binaurally presented stimuli.
In Experiment 1, ERPs were recorded for stationary midline standards and for Motion and Step deviants. It was found that Step deviants result in larger MMN amplitudes than Motion deviants with the same distance travelled, which implies that information contained in the stimulus midportion could be involved in the processing of the auditory motion. The threshold ITD values for the detection of Step and Motion stimuli displacement obtained during psychoacoustic tests were greater than the minimal ITD changes which elicited significant MMN. Experiment 2 demonstrated that Step deviants elicited significant MMNs in the context of Motion standards, although these stimuli could not be discriminated behaviourally. MMNs elicited by Step deviants in different acoustic contexts are discussed from the viewpoint of different brain processes underlying the discrimination of the abrupt ITD change.
These results suggest that the early cortical mechanism of auditory motion processing reflected by MMN could not be considered as a spatial discriminator of the onset/offset stimulus positions, that is, a simple onset-offset detector. Combining psychoacoustic data with MMN results we may conclude that motion discrimination in auditory system might be better at the preattentive level.
Mismatch negativity evoked by stationary and moving auditory images of different azimuthal positions
2005, Neuroscience Letters
The present study has been designed to evaluate the preattentive detection of the location changes for stationary and moving sound sources. Auditory event-related potentials to the click trains simulating stationary and moving fused auditory images were recorded from healthy subjects using an oddball paradigm. The spatial characteristics of stimuli were created by introducing constant or variable interaural time delay (ITD) into the click trains. Repetitive standard auditory images (0 or 800 μs ITD, p = 0.9) were interspersed by infrequent deviants (p = 0.1) of three types: stationary and moving to or from standards. The deviants moving to standards elicited similar mismatch negativities (MMNs) as compared to the stationary ones. The deviants moving from standards evoked the lowest and latest MMNs depending on standard location. Results suggest that preattentive ITD discrimination is essentially dependent on the pattern of ITD changes at the moment of the deviant onset.
Multisensory contributions to the perception of motion
2003, Neuropsychologia
The ability to process motion is crucial for coherent perception and action. While the majority of studies have focused on the unimodal factors that influence motion perception (see, for example, the other chapters in this Special Issue), some researchers have also investigated the extent to which information presented in one sensory modality can affect the perception of motion for stimuli presented in another modality. Although early studies often gave rise to mixed results, the development of increasingly sophisticated psychophysical paradigms are now enabling researchers to determine the spatiotemporal constraints on multisensory interactions in the perception of motion. Recent findings indicate that these interactions stand over-and-above the multisensory interactions documented previously for static stimuli, such as the oft-cited ‘ventriloquism’ effect. Neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies are also beginning to elucidate the network of neural structures responsible for the processing of motion information in the different sensory modalities, an important first step that will ultimately lead to the determination of the neural substrates underlying these multisensory contributions to motion perception.
Encoding of sound motion by binaural brainstem units in a Horseshoe bat
2002, Neuroscience Research
In order to study how and if single brainstem units respond to moving compared with stationary sounds, radially moving sound sources were presented to the bat, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum. This time-variant binaural stimulation was simulated dichotically through earphones (closed-acoustic-field for the virtual azimuth range of ±40° from the midline). Neurophysiologically recorded responses primarily showed a function of interaural intensity difference (IID) which is considered a direct correlate of the sound source's azimuth angle. However, this is only true for the stationary case. Unit's response did not remain unaffected by the dynamic stimulus cues of sound source movement (velocity and direction). Maximal discharge rate became a function of motion velocity as well as the slopes of the response profiles. Hence, coding of IID became ambiguous as, depending on the unit, the response profiles and therefore a unit's receptive field, became spatially shifted with respect to one another when the direction of the sound source movement was reversed. Shifts within the movement direction (hysteresis) as well as against it (termed here ‘advance’) were observed: hysteresis is typical for units with non-monotonic, stationary rate/intensity functions, whereas those units with monotonic functions predominantly show advances. Further dynamic response features in form of transient peaks and troughs, superimposed on the response profiles, were registered. It appears that the ongoing firing rate no longer represents azimuth position alone, but vigorously reproduces the dynamic cues (velocity and movement direction), too. With respect to the neural mechanisms leading to dynamic response features, it is proposed that, as long excitation and inhibition act with similar short time constants, neural activity can rapidly and faithfully follow changing IIDs. Different time constants for excitation, inhibition, facilitation, and depression may be responsible for the dynamic ‘features’ such as transient responses and hysteresis/advance. They may provide biologically relevant information for nocturnally hunting bats to efficiently guide their flight maneuvers.
The perception of auditory motion in sighted and early blind individuals
2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

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¹: The morophological control was performed by G. Ratnikova and G. Shmigidina, the technical assistance by A. Markovich and A. Likhnitsky. Their help is gratefully acknowledged.

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Are there neurons detecting direction of sound source motion?

Abstract

Vision Res.

Activity of neural units in medial geniculate body of cat and rabbit

J. Neurophysiol.

Responses of the inferior colliculus neurones of the cat by changing time intervals between binaural presented stimuli

Biofisica

Responses of the inferior colliculus neurones of the cat by changing the intensity of one of the binaural presented stimuli

J. Physiol. USSR

Characteristics of impulse activity of neurones in the inferior colliculus of the cat by monaural and binaural stimulation

Responses of the inferior colliculus neurones by lateralization of rhythmical sound stimulation

J. Higher Nervous Activity

Some discharge characteristics of single neurones in cat's auditory cortex

Science

The responses of single units of the inferior colliculus of the cat to acoustic stimulation

A rapid method for locating intracerebral electrodes

Stain Technol.

Microelectrode study of the superior olivary nuclei

Am J. Physiol.

Impulse activity of the inferior colliculus neurones on amplitude-modulated acoustical signals

J. Physiol. USSR

The neurophysiology of audition of bats: 3. Directional localization and binaural interaction

J. Physiol. London

Neurophysiological investigations of the bat, Myotis lucifugus, stimulated by frequency modulated acoustical pulse

Science

Binaural interaction in the accessory superior-olivary nucleus of the cat

J. Acoust. Soc. Am.

Some discharge characteristics of single neurones in the inferior colliculus of the cat: II. Timing of the discharges and observations of binaural stimulation

J. Neurophysiol.

Receptive fields of single neurones in the cat's striate cortex

J. Physiol. London