Atypical perceptual narrowing in prematurely born infants is associated with compromised language acquisition at 2 years of age

Abstract Background Early auditory experiences are a prerequisite for speech and language acquisition. In healthy children, phoneme discrimination abilities improve for native and degrade for unfamiliar, socially irrelevant phoneme contrasts between 6 and 12 months of age as the brain tunes itself to, and specializes in the native spoken language. This process is known as perceptual narrowing, and has been found to predict normal native language acquisition. Prematurely born infants are known to be at an elevated risk for later language problems, but it remains unclear whether these problems relate to early perceptual narrowing. To address this question, we investigated early neurophysiolog…

Activity in the rabbit somatosensory cortex reflects the active procedural memory trace of a classically conditioned eyeblink response.

Behavioral responses and neural responses in the somatosensory cortex were recorded in nine rabbits during the unpaired and paired treatments of classical eyeblink conditioning with a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and an airpuff unconditioned stimulus. During the unpaired treatment, neither the behavioral nor neural responses to the CS were observed. During the paired treatment, behavioral conditioned response (CR), accompanied by neural activity, was developed. In well-trained animals occasional failures to elicit the CR were accompanied by an absence of neural responses. Nevertheless, the CS modified the behavioral unconditioned response in paired trials, implying that the CR-failures co…

Bilaterally recorded multiple-unit activity of the cingulate cortex during head turning conditioning with unilateral medial forebrain bundle stimulation.

Cats were conditioned to turn their heads using a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and medial forebrain bundle stimulation (MFB) unconditioned stimulus (US). The CS+ was delivered to one ear at a time, in random order, followed by the US. A tone of a different frequency was used as a CS-. The cats learned to respond differentially to the CSs showing head movements of greater acceleration to the CS+ than CS- over sessions. Bilateral recordings of cingulate cortex multiple-unit activity showed increased response amplitudes over sessions and larger responses in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the US. Since ipsilateral multiple-unit responses did not differ for the CSs, the asymmetry was probably d…

Automatic auditory intelligence: an expression of the sensory-cognitive core of cognitive processes.

Abstract In this article, we present a new view on the nature of cognitive processes suggesting that there is a common core, viz., automatic sensory–cognitive processes that form the basis for higher-order cognitive processes. It has been shown that automatic sensory–cognitive processes are shared by humans and various other species and occur at different developmental stages and even in different states of consciousness. This evidence, based on the automatic electrophysiological change-detection response mismatch negativity (MMN), its magnetoencephalographic equivalent MMNm, and behavioral data, indicates that in audition surprisingly complex processes occur automatically and mainly in the…

Preattentive and attentive responses to changes in small numerosities of tones in adult humans

The brain hosts a primitive number sense to non-symbolically represent numerosities of objects or events. Small exact numerosities (~4 or less) can be individuated in parallel. In contrast, large numerosities (more than ~4) can only be approximated. However, whether small numerosities can be approximated without their parallel individuation remains unclear. Parallel individuation is suggested to be an attentive process and numerical approximation an automatic process. We, therefore, tested whether small numerosities can be represented preattentively. We recorded adult humans׳ event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral responses to 300-ms sequences of six tones (each of either 440 Hz or …

Behavioral and hippocampal evoked responses in an auditory oddball situation when an unconditioned stimulus is paired with deviant tones in the cat: Experiment II

Event-related potentials (ERP) in the areas CA1, CA3 and dentate fascia (Df) of the hippocampal formation were recorded during an oddball situation in the cat. A rewarding electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus (US) was paired with deviant tones (2500 Hz) that occurred randomly in a series of the standard tones (2000 Hz) given to the left ear. In addition to developing orienting head movements to the side of the deviant tones, an increase in the amplitude of parallel hippocampal ERPs was observed. Both the behavioral and neural responses appeared not until a 50 ms latency range. Furthermore, time-amplitude characteristics of the ERPs corresponded to time-acceleration characteris…

Processing of melodic contours in urethane-anaesthetized rats

The human brain can automatically detect changes even in repeated melodic contours of spectrally varying sounds. However, it is unclear whether this ability is specific to humans. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in urethane-anaesthetized Wistar rats presented with rare pairs of tones ('deviants') interspersed with frequently repeated ones ('standards'). The frequency of the tones varied nonsystematically across their pairs so that deviants stood out from standards only in the melodic ordering (ascending or descending) of the tones of a pair. We found that the absolute amplitude of the ERP was significantly higher to deviants than standards between 106 and 136 ms from the onset o…

Auditory cortical and hippocampal local-field potentials to frequency deviant tones in urethane-anesthetized rats: An unexpected role of the sound frequencies themselves

The human brain can automatically detect auditory changes, as indexed by the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials. The mechanisms that underlie this response are poorly understood. We recorded primary auditory cortical and hippocampal (dentate gyrus, CA1) local-field potentials to serial tones in urethane-anesthetized rats. In an oddball condition, a rare (deviant) tone (p = 0.11) randomly replaced a repeated (standard) tone. The deviant tone was either lower (2200, 2700, 3200, 3700 Hz) or higher (4300, 4800, 5300, 5800 Hz) in frequency than the standard tone (4000 Hz). In an equiprobability control condition, all nine tones were presented at random (p = 0.11). Differential respo…

Memory-Based Mismatch Response to Frequency Changes in Rats

Any occasional changes in the acoustic environment are of potential importance for survival. In humans, the preattentive detection of such changes generates the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related brain potentials. MMN is elicited to rare changes (‘deviants’) in a series of otherwise regularly repeating stimuli (‘standards’). Deviant stimuli are detected on the basis of a neural comparison process between the input from the current stimulus and the sensory memory trace of the standard stimuli. It is, however, unclear to what extent animals show a similar comparison process in response to auditory changes. To resolve this issue, epidural potentials were recorded above the pr…

Cooling of the cerebellar interpositus nucleus abolishes somatosensory cortical learning-related activity in eyeblink conditioned rabbits.

Nictitating membrane movement and multiple-unit activity in the somatosensory cortex were recorded from rabbits during paired (N = 6) and unpaired (N = 5) presentations of a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and an airpuff unconditioned stimulus (US). A behavioural conditioned response (CR) to the CS and an accompanying neural response in the somatosensory cortex developed only in the paired group. Inactivation of the cerebellar interpositus nucleus abolished both the acquired CR and the accompanying neural response. However, the CS facilitated both behavioural and neural responses to the US during the inactivation. Thus, the absence of the CR could not be accounted for by the general inabilit…

Affective modulation of conditioned eyeblinks

Affective states are known to modulate reflexive actions. Aversive states potentiate defensive reflexes while appetitive states diminish them. The present study examined whether the same holds for associatively learned defensive eyeblinks to mild, initially neutral auditory stimuli. First, delay eyeblink conditioning was applied to human participants while they viewed emotionally neutral images. Next, the conditioned eyeblink responses (CRs) of the participants were tested during the viewing of unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant images. The most vigorous CRs were found during the unpleasant images, although they did not differ between neutral and pleasant images. The results add to the motiva…

Auditory cortical and hippocampal-system mismatch responses to duration deviants in urethane-anesthetized rats.

Any change in the invariant aspects of the auditory environment is of potential importance. The human brain preattentively or automatically detects such changes. The mismatch negativity (MMN) of event-related potentials (ERPs) reflects this initial stage of auditory change detection. The origin of MMN is held to be cortical. The hippocampus is associated with a later generated P3a of ERPs reflecting involuntarily attention switches towards auditory changes that are high in magnitude. The evidence for this cortico-hippocampal dichotomy is scarce, however. To shed further light on this issue, auditory cortical and hippocampal-system (CA1, dentate gyrus, subiculum) local-field potentials were …

ERPs to pitch changes: a result of reduced responses to standard tones in rabbits.

EVENT-RELATED potentials (ERPs) were recorded in rabbits when pitch deviant tones occurred in a series of standard tones (oddball situation). In control recordings, the deviant tones were presented without the standard tones (deviant-alone situation). In the oddball situation, significant difference ERPs (deviant ERPs - standard ERPs) could be found in the hippocampal and cerebellar recordings but not in the visual cortex. All the ERPs to the deviant stimuli observed in the oddball situation were also present in the deviant-alone situation. The difference ERPs were therefore based on reduced responses to the standards. The results are discussed in the context of a mismatch negativity (MMN) …

Hippocampal responses to pitch deviant tones in rabbits

Auditory cortical and hippocampal local-field potentials to frequency deviant tones in urethane-anesthetized rats: An unexpected role of the sound frequencies themselves

Abstract The human brain can automatically detect auditory changes, as indexed by the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials. The mechanisms that underlie this response are poorly understood. We recorded primary auditory cortical and hippocampal (dentate gyrus, CA1) local-field potentials to serial tones in urethane-anesthetized rats. In an oddball condition, a rare (deviant) tone ( p  = 0.11) randomly replaced a repeated (standard) tone. The deviant tone was either lower (2200, 2700, 3200, 3700 Hz) or higher (4300, 4800, 5300, 5800 Hz) in frequency than the standard tone (4000 Hz). In an equiprobability control condition, all nine tones were presented at random ( p  = 0.11). Diffe…

Proactive interference of a sequence of tones in a two-tone pitch comparison task

Subjects compared pitches of a standard tone and a comparison tone separated by 1,300-3,000 msec and responded according to whether the comparison tone sounded higher or lower in pitch than the standard tone. Three interfering tones at 300-msec intervals were presented before each pair of tones. Their pitch range varied, being either below or above the pitch of the standard tone; in some of the trials, their pitches were identical to the pitch of the standard tone (no interference). The highest error rate in performance was found when the interfering tones and the comparison tone deviated in the same direction in pitch from the standard tone. In turn, their deviations in the opposite direct…

Differences in pitch between tones affect behaviour even when incorrectly identified in direction.

The ability to detect differences between simultaneously presented contra- and ipsilesional stimuli but not to identify the former on neurological patients with the symptom termed 'extinction' has given rise to the hypothesis that extinguished stimuli have impaired access to attentive processing but are detected pre-attentively. Such a dissociation found in normal participants with experimentally degraded sensory information, and its absence in equivalent tasks in terms of the amount of information required has, however, led to an alternative hypothesis that the lesser amount of information required to perform same/different judgements is sufficient to explain this dissociation. In the pres…

A simple windows program for coding fast-changing events in observational situations divided into variable intervals

Hippocampal evoked potentials to pitch deviances in an auditory oddball situation in the rabbit: no human mismatch-like dependence on standard stimuli.

Hippocampal auditory evoked potentials (AEP) were recorded in 10 rabbits when pitch deviant tones occurred in a series of standard tones (oddball situation). In control recordings, deviant tones were presented without intervening standard tones (deviant-alone situation). All AEP deflections observed in the oddball situation were found also in the deviant-alone situation. Thus, it appeared that none of the AEP deflections to deviant tones in the oddball situation was specific to a memory trace of preceding standard tones. This observation was in contradiction to such a specificity of the mismatch negativity (MMN) found in humans. Instead, a connection to a neuronal orienting reaction interpr…

Effects of emotional picture viewing on voluntary eye blinks

Eyeblinks, whether reflexive or voluntary, play an important role in protecting our vision. When viewing pictures, reflexive eyeblinks are known to be modulated by the emotional state induced thereby. More specifically, the hedonic valence (unpleasantness-pleasantness) induced by the picture has been shown to have a linear relationship with the amplitude of a startle blink elicited during picture viewing. This effect has been attributed to congruence between an ongoing state and task demands: an unpleasant emotional state is assumed to bias our attention towards potentially harmful stimuli, such as startle tones. However, recent research suggests that the valence-specific modulation may not…

ERP and EOG responses elicited by deviant tones when presented with and without standard tones to reading subjects

Event-related potentials (ERPs) and horizontal electro-oculograms (HEOGs) were recorded in 11 subjects to infrequently presented spatially deviant tones (oddball-deviants) embedded in a series of frequently presented standard tones and also to these deviant tones when presented without the standard tones (alone-deviants). Subjects were instructed to read a self-selected book during the stimulus presentation. The mismatch negativity (MMN), a component of the ERP, was elicited by the oddball-deviants, whereas ERPs to the alone-deviants were characterized by a prominent N1. In an additional counting condition (subjects counting the oddball-deviants), the MMN to the oddball-deviants was followe…

Mismatch brain response to speech sound changes in rats

Understanding speech is based on neural representations of individual speech sounds. In humans, such representations are capable of supporting an automatic and memory-based mechanism for auditory change detection, as reflected by the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials. There are also findings of neural representations of speech sounds in animals, but it is not known whether these representations can support the change detection mechanism analogous to that underlying the mismatch negativity in humans. To this end, we presented synthesized spoken syllables to urethane-anesthetized rats while local field potentials were epidurally recorded above their primary auditory cortex. In a…

Explicit behavioral detection of visual changes develops without their implicit neurophysiological detectability

Change blindness is a failure of reporting major changes across consecutive images if separated, e.g., by a brief blank interval. Successful change detection across interrupts requires focal attention to the changes. However, findings of implicit detection of visual changes during change blindness have raised the question of whether the implicit mode is necessary for development of the explicit mode. To this end, we recorded the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) of the event-related potentials (ERPs) of the brain, an index of implicit pre-attentive visual change detection, in adult humans performing an oddball-variant of change blindness flicker task. Images of 500 ms in duration were prese…

Auditory‐evoked potentials to changes in sound duration in urethane‐anaesthetized mice

Spectrotemporally complex sounds carry important information for acoustic communication. Among the important features of these sounds is the temporal duration. An event-related potential called mismatch negativity indexes auditory change detection in humans. An analogous response (mismatch response) has been found to duration changes in speech sounds in rats but not yet in mice. We addressed whether mice show this response, and, if elicited, whether this response is functionally analogous to mismatch negativity or whether adaptation-based models suffice to explain them. Auditory-evoked potentials were epidurally recorded above the mice auditory cortex. The differential response to the chang…

Auditory cortical event-related potentials to pitch deviances in rats

Abstract We recorded epidural event-related potentials (ERPs) from the auditory cortex in anesthetized rats when pitch-deviant tones were presented in a homogenous series of standard tones (oddball condition). Additionally, deviant tones were presented without standard tones (deviant-alone condition). ERPs to deviant tones in the oddball condition differed significantly from ERPs to standard tones at the latency range of 63–243 ms. On the other hand, ERPs to deviant tones in the deviant-alone condition did not differ from ERPs to standard tones until 196 ms from stimulus onset. The results suggest that oddball stimuli can be neurophysiologically discriminated in anesthetized rats. Furthermo…

Evidence of the origin of specific spontaneous head turns during intertrial intervals.

Direction and the frequency of spontaneous head movements during the ITIs following forward and backward paired trials were compared to an acquisition of a conditioned orienting (alpha) response directed to the side of the tone source. The head movements were analyzed from video recordings using classification of head turns to preferred and to nonpreferred directions. The results showed a significant increase in the alpha responses during the forward paired conditioning to the preferred direction and rapid extinction during the subsequent backward conditioning sessions. Spontaneous head movements during the ITIs increased to the same preferred direction as the conditioned alpha responses. T…

Hippocampal event-related potentials to pitch deviances in an auditory oddball situation in the cat: experiment I.

Hippocampal event-related potentials (ERP) in the areas CA1, CA3, and dentate fascia (Df) were recorded in cats during an oddball situation when pitch deviant tones occurred in a series of standard tones. When difference waves were calculated by subtracting ERPs to the standard tones from those to the deviant tones, no clear N40d, corresponding to a cat analogue of the human mismatch negativity (MMN) observed in earlier studies, could be detected. Instead, a prominent later negativity (N130d) was observed. A possible extra-hippocampal source of the process reflected by the MMN-like negativity, and a relation between an orienting response (OR) and the N130d are discussed.

Rapid categorization of sound objects in anesthetized rats as indexed by the electrophysiological mismatch response

It is not known whether animals can, similarly to humans, categorize auditory objects based on an abstract rule in combining their physical features. We recorded local-field potentials from the dura above the primary auditory cortex in urethane-anesthetized rats presented with sound series occasionally violating a rule (e.g., "the higher the frequency, the weaker the intensity"). In a separate control condition, the same frequency and intensity levels were applied in the sound objects, but they obeyed no rule. Responses found selectively to the violations of the rule suggest that an abstract rule was represented in the rat brain, enabling auditory categorization.

From spatial acoustic changes to attentive behavioral responses within 200 ms in humans

Human event-related potentials (ERPs) and electro-oculograms (EOGs) were recorded in 14 subjects presented with spatially deviant tones in a series of standard tones. In separate sessions, they were instructed to read a book, to count the deviant tones, and to respond to the deviant tones by shifting the eyes towards them from the standard tone source. When reading a book, the mismatch negativity (MMN) of ERP, reflecting pre-attentive detection of acoustic changes, was elicited to the deviant tones at approximately 105-180 ms. No deviance related EOGs were observed in the reading or counting conditions. When the subjects responded behaviorally to the deviant tones, EOGs revealed that the ey…

Somatosensory event-related potentials in the rabbit cerebral and cerebellar cortices: a correspondence with mismatch responses in humans.

Somatosensory event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the cerebellar (CerCx), somatosensory (SomCx) and visual (VCx) cortices in rabbits in two stimulus conditions. In the oddball condition, airpuffs to two different locations in the rabbit's muzzle corresponded to infrequently presented deviant stimuli (oddball-deviants) interspersed with frequently presented standard stimuli. In the deviant-alone condition, deviants (alone-deviants) were presented without standards. ERPs to oddball-deviants differed significantly from those to standards in CerCx and SomCx, but not in VCx. Furthermore, some of these differences were not found between ERPs to alone-deviants and those to standards…

Effects of rewarding electrical stimulation of lateral hypothalamus on classical conditioning of the nictitating membrane response.

1. Adult New Zealand albino rabbits were prepared with chronic hypothalamic stimulating electrodes and hippocampal recording electrodes. 2. Rabbits were restrained and classically conditioned by a tone CS and an airpuff US either followed or preceded by a hypothalamic stimulation (HS). Control rabbits were conditioned without the HS. 3. It was found that HS following the CS facilitated both behavioral and hippocampal responses, while HS preceding the CS inhibited them. 4. Enhanced hippocampal learning-related unit firing to the CS may represent an early indication of conditioning before the behavioral activity produces any observable change.

Visual mismatch negativity for changes in orientation - a sensory memory-dependent response

It remains unclear whether the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials (ERPs) in vision resembles its auditory counterpart in terms of memory relatedness. We recorded ERPs to visual bars in adult humans engaged in an auditory task. In one condition, a bar ('standard') repeated at 400- or 1100-ms non-stimulated intervals was rarely (P = 0.1) replaced by another bar of a different orientation ('deviant'). In the other condition (400-ms intervals), the occurrences of the standards were replaced by 10 (P = 0.1 each) bars of different orientations, including that of the deviant ('control-deviant'). Deviants shifted ERPs towards negative polarity relative to standards in occipital electro…

Unilateral medial forebrain bundle activation selectively enhances conditioned orienting head turns and ipsilateral cingulate cortex evoked field responses in cats

Effects of a unilateral medial forebrain bundle (MFB) stimulation unconditioned stimulus (US) on conditioned head turn and bilateral cingulate cortex field potentials were studied in cats. Conditioned stimuli (CSs) of different frequences were given randomly to either ear. The CS+ was followed by the US, and the CS— was presented alone. Before conditioning most cats predominantly turned toward the ear to which the CSs were presented, whereas after conditioning the head turns were in one direction, most prominently contralateral to the US. Negative field potentials were greater in the cingulate cortex ipsilateral to the US than in the cingulate cortex contralateral to the US. Cross correlati…

Multiple-unit responses to pitch changes in rabbits

Multiple-unit activity (MUA) was recorded from the hippocampus (Hc), the visual cortex (VCx) and the cerebellar cortex (CerCx) in rabbits when pitch deviant tones were presented in a series of standard tones (oddball situation) and when standard tones were absent (deviant-alone situation). Significant MMN-like responses (deviant responses minus standard responses in the oddball situation) occurred in Hc, reflecting a MUA increase to the standards and its decrease to the deviants. In accordance with parallel ERPs reported earlier, the MMN-like responses reflected responses only to different presentation frequencies of stimuli. Non-selectivity in the pitch of such responses in VCx and a lack …

The human brain processes visual changes that are not cued by attended auditory stimulation.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) to visual stimuli were recorded from the scalp of eight adult humans performing a task in which they counted vowels from a heard story. In the oddball condition, a repeated (standard) light bar of 50 ms in duration was rarely (P = 0.1) replaced by a (deviant) one differing in orientation from the standard. In the control condition, standards were simply omitted from the series and only (alone-) deviants retained. In both conditions, visual stimuli were asynchronous with auditory-task-relevant stimuli. ERPs to deviants significantly differed in amplitude from those to standards in the midline electrodes centrally, parietally and occipitally at 160-200 ms from …

Hippocampus responds to auditory change in rabbits

Any change or novelty in the auditory environment is potentially important for survival. The cortex has been implicated in the detection of auditory change whereas the hippocampus has been associated with the detection of auditory novelty. Local field potentials (LFPs) were recorded from the CA1 area of the hippocampus in waking rabbits. In the oddball condition, a rare tone of one frequency (deviant) randomly replaced a repeated tone of another frequency (standard). In the equal-probability condition, the standard was replaced by a set of tones of nine different frequencies in order to remove the repetitive auditory background of the deviant (now labelled as control-deviant) while preservi…

Explicit behavioral detection of visual changes develops without their implicit neurophysiological detectability

Change blindness is a failure of reporting major changes across consecutive images if separated, e.g., by a brief blank interval. Successful change detection across interrupts requires focal attention to the changes. However, findings of implicit detection of visual changes during change blindness have raised the question of whether the implicit mode is necessary for development of the explicit mode. To this end, we recorded the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) of the event-related potentials (ERPs) of the brain, an index of implicit pre-attentive visual change detection, in adult humans performing an oddball-variant of change blindness flicker task. Images of 500 ms in duration were prese…

Auditory cortical and hippocampal-system mismatch responses to duration deviants in urethane-anesthetized rats

Any change in the invariant aspects of the auditory environment is of potential importance. The human brain preattentively or automatically detects such changes. The mismatch negativity (MMN) of event-related potentials (ERPs) reflects this initial stage of auditory change detection. The origin of MMN is held to be cortical. The hippocampus is associated with a later generated P3a of ERPs reflecting involuntarily attention switches towards auditory changes that are high in magnitude. The evidence for this cortico-hippocampal dichotomy is scarce, however. To shed further light on this issue, auditory cortical and hippocampal-system (CA1, dentate gyrus, subiculum) local-field potentials were …