Generalization of auditory expertise in audio engineers and instrumental musicians.

From auditory perception to general cognition, the ability to play a musical instrument has been associated with skills both related and unrelated to music. However, it is unclear if these effects are bound to the specific characteristics of musical instrument training, as little attention has been paid to other populations such as audio engineers and designers whose auditory expertise may match or surpass that of musicians in specific auditory tasks or more naturalistic acoustic scenarios. We explored this possibility by comparing students of audio engineering (n = 20) to matched conservatory-trained instrumentalists (n = 24) and to naive controls (n = 20) on measures of auditory discrimination, auditory scene analysis, and speech in noise perception. We found that audio engineers and performing musicians had generally lower psychophysical thresholds than controls, with pitch perception showing the largest effect size. Compared to controls, audio engineers could better memorise and recall auditory scenes composed of non-musical sounds, whereas instrumental musicians performed best in a sustained selective attention task with two competing streams of tones. Finally, in a diotic speech-in-babble task, musicians showed lower signal-to-noise-ratio thresholds than both controls and engineers; however, a follow-up online study did not replicate this musician advantage. We also observed differences in personality that might account for group-based self-selection biases. Overall, we showed that investigating a wider range of forms of auditory expertise can help us corroborate (or challenge) the specificity of the advantages previously associated with musical instrument training.

The influence of hatha yoga on stress, anxiety, and suppression: A randomized controlled trial.

Engaging in yoga may mitigate stress and anxiety in individuals while potentially enhancing one's capacity to manage distractions. Our research aimed to explore the relation between these two outcomes: Can an eight-week yoga program foster distraction suppression, thereby reducing stress and discomfort? To answer this question, we used Hatha Yoga, the most commonly practiced form of yoga. We tested if the intervention improved participants' ability to suppress distractions and selectively decrease self-reported stress and stress reactivity. In Addition, we investigated whether such an intervention would increase participants' mindfulness. Our study included 98 healthy yoga novices between 18 and 40 years who were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a waitlist condition, with each participant completing pre- and post-intervention assessments, including questionnaires, as well as electrophysiological and behavioral measures. After eight weeks of yoga practice, significant reductions in self-reported stress and stress reactivity levels, as well as increased mindfulness, were observed among those participating in the intervention relative to those in the waitlist control group. There were, however, no significant changes in state or trait anxiety due to the intervention. Changes in stress measures could not be explained by changes in participants' ability to suppress distractors, which was not affected by the intervention. Overall, our findings suggest that regular participation in Hatha Yoga can improve mental health outcomes without impacting cognitive functioning directly related to distractor suppression. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05232422.

The impact of visual gaze direction on auditory object tracking.

Subjective experience suggests that we are able to direct our auditory attention independent of our visual gaze, e.g when shadowing a nearby conversation at a cocktail party. But what are the consequences at the behavioural and neural level? While numerous studies have investigated both auditory attention and visual gaze independently, little is known about their interaction during selective listening. In the present EEG study, we manipulated visual gaze independently of auditory attention while participants detected targets presented from one of three loudspeakers. We observed increased response times when gaze was directed away from the locus of auditory attention. Further, we found an increase in occipital alpha-band power contralateral to the direction of gaze, indicative of a suppression of distracting input. Finally, this condition also led to stronger central theta-band power, which correlated with the observed effect in response times, indicative of differences in top-down processing. Our data suggest that a misalignment between gaze and auditory attention both reduce behavioural performance and modulate underlying neural processes. The involvement of central theta-band and occipital alpha-band effects are in line with compensatory neural mechanisms such as increased cognitive control and the suppression of task irrelevant inputs.

Temporal orienting precedes intersensory attention and has opposing effects on early evoked brain activity.

Intersensory attention (IA) describes the process of directing attention to a specific modality. Temporal orienting (TO) characterizes directing attention to a specific moment in time. Previously, studies indicated that these two processes could have opposite effects on early evoked brain activity. The exact time-course and processing stages of both processes are still unknown. In this human electroencephalography study, we investigated the effects of IA and TO on visuo-tactile stimulus processing within one paradigm. IA was manipulated by presenting auditory cues to indicate whether participants should detect visual or tactile targets in visuo-tactile stimuli. TO was manipulated by presenting stimuli block-wise at fixed or variable inter-stimulus intervals. We observed that TO affects evoked activity to visuo-tactile stimuli prior to IA. Moreover, we found that TO reduces the amplitude of early evoked brain activity, whereas IA enhances it. Using beamformer source-localization, we observed that IA increases neural responses in sensory areas of the attended modality whereas TO reduces brain activity in widespread cortical areas. Based on these findings we derive an updated working model for the effects of temporal and intersensory attention on early evoked brain activity.

Distinct patterns of local oscillatory activity and functional connectivity underlie intersensory attention and temporal prediction.

Intersensory attention (IA) describes our ability to attend to stimuli of one sensory modality, while disregarding other modalities. Temporal prediction (TP) describes the process of directing attention to specific moments in time. Both attention mechanisms facilitate sensory stimulus processing, yet it is not understood whether they rely on common or distinct network patterns. In this electroencephalography (EEG) study, we presented auditory cues followed by visuo-tactile stimuli. The cues indicated whether participants should detect visual or tactile targets in the visuo-tactile stimuli. TP was manipulated by presenting stimuli block-wise at fixed or variable inter-stimulus intervals. We analysed power and functional connectivity of source-projected oscillations. We computed graph theoretical measures to identify networks underlying IA and TP. Participants responded faster when stimuli were presented with fixed compared to variable inter-stimulus intervals, demonstrating a facilitating effect of TP. Distinct patterns of local delta-, alpha-, and beta-band power modulations and differential functional connectivity in the alpha- and beta-bands reflected the influence of IA and TP. An interaction between IA and TP was found in theta-band connectivity in a network comprising frontal, somatosensory and parietal areas. Our study provides insights into how IA and TP dynamically shape oscillatory power and functional connectivity to facilitate stimulus processing.

Taking a call is facilitated by the multisensory processing of smartphone vibrations, sounds, and flashes.

Many electronic devices that we use in our daily lives provide inputs that need to be processed and integrated by our senses. For instance, ringing, vibrating, and flashing indicate incoming calls and messages in smartphones. Whether the presentation of multiple smartphone stimuli simultaneously provides an advantage over the processing of the same stimuli presented in isolation has not yet been investigated. In this behavioral study we examined multisensory processing between visual (V), tactile (T), and auditory (A) stimuli produced by a smartphone. Unisensory V, T, and A stimuli as well as VA, AT, VT, and trisensory VAT stimuli were presented in random order. Participants responded to any stimulus appearance by touching the smartphone screen using the stimulated hand (Experiment 1), or the non-stimulated hand (Experiment 2). We examined violations of the race model to test whether shorter response times to multisensory stimuli exceed probability summations of unisensory stimuli. Significant violations of the race model, indicative of multisensory processing, were found for VA stimuli in both experiments and for VT stimuli in Experiment 1. Across participants, the strength of this effect was not associated with prior learning experience and daily use of smartphones. This indicates that this integration effect, similar to what has been previously reported for the integration of semantically meaningless stimuli, could involve bottom-up driven multisensory processes. Our study demonstrates for the first time that multisensory processing of smartphone stimuli facilitates taking a call. Thus, research on multisensory integration should be taken into consideration when designing electronic devices such as smartphones.

Beta-band activity in auditory pathways reflects speech localization and recognition in bilateral cochlear implant users.

In normal-hearing listeners, localization of auditory speech involves stimulus processing in the postero-dorsal pathway of the auditory system. In quiet environments, bilateral cochlear implant (CI) users show high speech recognition performance, but localization of auditory speech is poor, especially when discriminating stimuli from the same hemifield. Whether this difficulty relates to the inability of the auditory system to translate binaural electrical cues into neural signals, or to a functional reorganization of auditory cortical pathways following long periods of binaural deprivation is unknown. In this electroencephalography study, we examined the processing of auditory syllables in postlingually deaf adults with bilateral CIs and in normal-hearing adults. Participants were instructed to either recognize ("recognition" task) or localize ("localization" task) the syllables. The analysis focused on event-related potentials and oscillatory brain responses. N1 amplitudes in CI users were larger in the localization compared with recognition task, suggesting an enhanced stimulus processing effort in the localization task. Linear beamforming of oscillatory activity in CI users revealed stronger suppression of beta-band activity after 200 ms in the postero-dorsal auditory pathway for the localization compared with the recognition task. In normal-hearing adults, effects for longer latency event-related potentials were found, but no effects were observed for N1 amplitudes or beta-band responses. Our study suggests that difficulties in speech localization in bilateral CI users are not reflected in a functional reorganization of cortical auditory pathways. New signal processing strategies of cochlear devices preserving unambiguous binaural cues may improve auditory localization performance in bilateral CI users.