Reverse hierarchies and sensory learning

Ahissar, Merav; Nahum, Mor; Nelken, Israel; Hochstein, Shaul

doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0253

Cited by 261 publications

(297 citation statements)

References 154 publications

(185 reference statements)

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“…In terms of neurocomputational plausibility, our data may be accordant with reverse hierarchy theory, which states that, by default, rapid perception is based on high-level (e.g., phonological) representations alone, which are holistic and ecologically meaningful (Hochstein and Ahissar, 2002;Ahissar et al, 2009). Group map of the 30% of active voxels most discriminative for the purely perceptual difference between /aba/ and /ada/ (cortex-based aligned, smoothed).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Auditory Cortex Encodes the Perceptual Interpretation of Ambiguous Sound

Kilian-Hütten¹,

Valente²,

Vroomen³

et al. 2011

J. Neurosci.

114

128

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The confounding of physical stimulus characteristics and perceptual interpretations of stimuli poses a problem for most neuroscientific studies of perception. In the auditory domain, this pertains to the entanglement of acoustics and percept. Traditionally, most study designs have relied on cognitive subtraction logic, which demands the use of one or more comparisons between stimulus types. This does not allow for a differentiation between effects due to acoustic differences (i.e., sensation) and those due to conscious perception. To overcome this problem, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans and pattern-recognition analysis to identify activation patterns that encode the perceptual interpretation of physically identical, ambiguous sounds. We show that it is possible to retrieve the perceptual interpretation of ambiguous phonemes-information that is fully subjective to the listener-from fMRI measurements of brain activity in auditory areas in the superior temporal cortex, most prominently on the posterior bank of the left Heschl's gyrus and sulcus and in the adjoining left planum temporale. These findings suggest that, beyond the basic acoustic analysis of sounds, constructive perceptual processes take place in these relatively early cortical auditory networks. This disagrees with hierarchical models of auditory processing, which generally conceive of these areas as sets of feature detectors, whose task is restricted to the analysis of physical characteristics and the structure of sounds.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Auditory Cortex Encodes the Perceptual Interpretation of Ambiguous Sound

Kilian-Hütten¹,

Valente²,

Vroomen³

et al. 2011

J. Neurosci.

114

128

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“…In all tasks, musicians' final thresholds were still lower than non-musicians'. This suggests that while short-term perceptual learning can influence fine acuity, it appears not to outstrip effects of musical expertise -at least over the relatively brief testing periods used here (for discussion, see Ahissar et al, 2009). Indeed, previous studies have shown that 4-8 hours of training are needed before nonmusicians achieve f0 difference limens on par with musicians (Micheyl et al, 2006).…”

Section: Basic Psychoacoustic Measuresmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…This suggests that sustained auditory attention skills can contribute to fine acoustic perception (further to Ahissar et al, 2009) -but that these attentional skills are modality-delimited, as shown by the lack of relationship between the SAART measures and visual psychophysics performance (see Braga et al, 2013, for a recent demonstration of the modality-specific nature of attentional systems). Our PCA analyses also found that auditory psychophysical performance loaded with sustained auditory attention performance on a single component, thereby further supporting a relationship between auditory attention and some fine perceptual abilities in both musicians and non-musicians (Strait et al, 2010(Strait et al, , 2012bStrait & Kraus, 2011b;Tervaniemi et al, 2005; see also Zhang et al, 2012).…”

Section: Sustained Attention and Perceptual Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Generality and specificity in the effects of musical expertise on perception and cognition

Carey

Rosen²,

Krishnan

et al. 2015

Cognition

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Performing musicians invest thousands of hours becoming experts in a range of perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills. The duration and intensity of musicians' training -far greater than that of most educational or rehabilitation programs -provides a useful model to test the extent to which skills acquired in one particular context (music) generalize to different domains. Here, we asked whether the instrument-specific and more instrument-general skills acquired during professional violinists' and pianists' training would generalize to superior performance on a wide range of analogous (largely non-musical) skills, when compared to closely matched non-musicians.Violinists and pianists outperformed non-musicians on fine-grained auditory psychophysical measures, but surprisingly did not differ from each other, despite the different demands of their instruments. Musician groups did differ on a tuning system perception task: violinists showed clearest biases towards the tuning system specific to their instrument, suggesting that long-term experience leads to selective perceptual benefits given a training-relevant context. However, we found only weak evidence of group differences in non-musical skills, with musicians differing marginally in one measure of sustained auditory attention, but not significantly on auditory scene analysis or multi-modal sequencing measures. Further, regression analyses showed that this sustained auditory attention metric predicted more variance in one auditory psychophysical measure than did musical expertise. Our findings suggest that specific musical expertise may yield distinct perceptual outcomes within contexts close to the area of training. Generalization of expertise to relevant cognitive domains may be less clear, particularly where the task context is non-musical.Keywords: expertise; musicians; perception; cognition; generalization GENERALITY AND SPECIFICITY IN MUSICAL EXPERTISE EFFECTS 3 Highlights 1. We studied generalization of expertise to auditory perceptual and broader cognitive skills.2. Musician groups perceived auditory signal differences more finely than non-musicians.3. Musician groups differed in fine perception given a training-relevant context. 4. Musical expertise did not strongly generalize to several cognitive measures (e.g., auditory scene analysis).5. 5. Sustained attention predicted variance in fine perception of AM depth above expertise. GENERALITY AND SPECIFICITY IN MUSICAL EXPERTISE EFFECTS 4 Generality and Specificity in the Effects of Musical Expertise on Perception and CognitionPerceptual and cognitive skills can be shaped and enhanced through our experience with the world (e.g., Goldstone, 1999;Palmeri & Gauthier, 2004). Pursuit of expertise in a given domain is a particularly striking example: groups as diverse as chess masters, physicians, athletes and musicians spend thousands of hours training and practicing, honing perceptual, cognitive and motor skills critical to success in their field (see Ericsson, 2006;Palmeri et al., 2004; Chi, 200...

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“…For instance, if neural representations evoked by the stimuli differentiated or if attention increased the resolution of relevant dimensions, there may have been a point in learning when novel sounds no longer activated the elements of the representation that caused shift. It could also be that switching to a completely new set of elements by switching the area of perceptual processing (Ahissar et al, 2009) nullified the effect of earlier associations between features and outputs that contributed to peak shift.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Switching the type of representation or processing strategy used to characterize a category can also alter similarity to the category (Johansen & Palmeri, 2002;Smith & Minda, 1998). Because neural circuits differ in their capacity to resolve fine details, it has been hypothesized that decreased perceptual similarity can come about by learning to switch the locus of stimulus processing to circuits with the most appropriate perceptual resolution (Ahissar, Nahum, Nelken, & Hochstein, 2009). These proposed mechanisms assume that representations for experienced events are dynamic over the course of learning and that they may change in nonlinear ways.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%