A roadmap for the study of conscious audition and its neural basis

Abstract

One contribution of 15 to a theme issue 'Auditory and visual scene analysis'. Subject Areas: cognition, neuroscience, behaviourKeywords: audition, auditory scene analysis, conscious perception, neural correlates of consciousness, perceptual awareness Author for correspondence: Andrew R. Dykstra e-mail: andrew.dykstra@med.uni-heidelberg.de A roadmap for the study of conscious audition and its neural basis Andrew R. Dykstra 1 , Peter A. Cariani 2 and Alexander Gutschalk 1 1 Department of Neurology, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany 2 Hearing Research Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA ARD, 0000-0001-8075-6374How and which aspects of neural activity give rise to subjective perceptual experience-i.e. conscious perception-is a fundamental question of neuroscience. To date, the vast majority of work concerning this question has come from vision, raising the issue of generalizability of prominent resulting theories. However, recent work has begun to shed light on the neural processes subserving conscious perception in other modalities, particularly audition. Here, we outline a roadmap for the future study of conscious auditory perception and its neural basis, paying particular attention to how conscious perception emerges (and of which elements or groups of elements) in complex auditory scenes. We begin by discussing the functional role of the auditory system, particularly as it pertains to conscious perception. Next, we ask: what are the phenomena that need to be explained by a theory of conscious auditory perception? After surveying the available literature for candidate neural correlates, we end by considering the implications that such results have for a general theory of conscious perception as well as prominent outstanding questions and what approaches/techniques can best be used to address them.This article is part of the themed issue 'Auditory and visual scene analysis'. IntroductionHow subjective perceptual experience-i.e. conscious perception-emerges from patterns of brain activity is a fundamental question of modern neuroscience. Although relationships between neural activity and conscious perception have been pondered since the beginning of the mind-brain sciences [1][2][3][4][5][6], many have viewed the problem as scientifically intractable. However, employing increasingly powerful methods [7], recent years have seen a dramatic increase in studies pursuing the so-called neural correlates of consciousness, or NCC [8], defined as the 'the minimal set of neural events jointly sufficient for a specific conscious experience' [9] (e.g. the phenomenal experience of hearing a sound). This definition, in contrast with others that distinguish between the NCC and the NCCC (neural correlates of the contents of consciousness), subsumes both the 'preconditions' and content-specific processes associated with specific conscious percepts [10], acknowledging that all conscious experiences have content (though varying in richness [11,12], an idea also underscored by early auditory selective-a...

Processing of Auditory Novelty Across the Cortical Hierarchy: An Intracranial Electrophysiology Study

“…Previous reports have emphasized a distributed network engaged by global deviance detection, involving anterior cingulate, parietal, temporal and prefrontal regions (Bekinschtein et al, 2009;El Karoui et al, 2015;Uhrig et al, 2014). This overlaps with the postulated global workspace network subserving conscious sensory processing (Dehaene and Changeux, 2011;Dykstra et al, 2017). Similar to these studies, the present study revealed a GD network widely distributed in space and time, with significant responses observed in all regions of interest, from core auditory cortex to PFC (Fig.…”

Leveraging Nonhuman Primate Multisensory Neurons and Circuits in Assessing Consciousness Theory

“…We can somewhat confidently assume that macaques have a subjective experience, given their similar behavioral repertoire to ours, but this remains a hypothesis. Regardless of model organism (macaque, human, or other), we consider that using sensory stimulation from distinct and multiple sensory modalities (e.g., Noel et al, 2015Noel et al, , 2018Dykstra et al, 2017), as highlighted in the current report, may afford important leverage in the study of perceptual awareness and consciousness level by allowing functional characterization of neurons and neuronal ensembles.…”

Resolving the neural dynamics of visual and auditory scene processing in the human brain: a methodological approach

“…However, at a given moment, only fragments of scenes are accessible to consciousness, guided and filtered by attention [46], salience [84] and task demands. The strength and flexibility of our approach—accessing and relating fine-grained representations in a variety of data modalities—can also be applied here, offering an additional tool to pursue elusive signals such as the auditory neural correlate of consciousness (NCC A , [85]).…”