Representations of specific acoustic patterns in the auditory cortex and hippocampus.
Sukhbinder Kumar, Heidi M Bonnici, Sundeep Teki, Trevor R Agus, Daniel Pressnitzer, Eleanor A Maguire, Timothy D Griffiths
Author Information
Sukhbinder Kumar: Institute of Neuroscience, Medical School, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HH, UK Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK sukhbinder.kumar@ncl.ac.uk.
Heidi M Bonnici: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Sundeep Teki: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Trevor R Agus: Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, CNRS UMR 8248, and Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France.
Daniel Pressnitzer: Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, CNRS UMR 8248, and Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France.
Eleanor A Maguire: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Timothy D Griffiths: Institute of Neuroscience, Medical School, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HH, UK Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Previous behavioural studies have shown that repeated presentation of a randomly chosen acoustic pattern leads to the unsupervised learning of some of its specific acoustic features. The objective of our study was to determine the neural substrate for the representation of freshly learnt acoustic patterns. Subjects first performed a behavioural task that resulted in the incidental learning of three different noise-like acoustic patterns. During subsequent high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, subjects were then exposed again to these three learnt patterns and to others that had not been learned. Multi-voxel pattern analysis was used to test if the learnt acoustic patterns could be 'decoded' from the patterns of activity in the auditory cortex and medial temporal lobe. We found that activity in planum temporale and the hippocampus reliably distinguished between the learnt acoustic patterns. Our results demonstrate that these structures are involved in the neural representation of specific acoustic patterns after they have been learnt.
