The human auditory brainstem response to running speech reveals a subcortical mechanism for selective attention

TY - JOUR

T1 - The human auditory brainstem response to running speech reveals a subcortical mechanism for selective attention

AU - Forte, Antonio Elia

AU - Etard, Octave

AU - Reichenbach, Tobias

N1 - Funding Information: We thank Steve Bell, Karolina Kluk-de Kort, Patrick Naylor, David Simpson and Malcolm Slaney for discussion as well as for comments on the manuscript. This research was supported by EPSRC grant EP/M026728/1 to TR as well as in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY-1125915. Publisher Copyright: © Forte et al. Copyright: Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2017/10/10

Y1 - 2017/10/10

N2 - Humans excel at selectively listening to a target speaker in background noise such as competing voices. While the encoding of speech in the auditory cortex is modulated by selective attention, it remains debated whether such modulation occurs already in subcortical auditory structures. Investigating the contribution of the human brainstem to attention has, in particular, been hindered by the tiny amplitude of the brainstem response. Its measurement normally requires a large number of repetitions of the same short sound stimuli, which may lead to a loss of attention and to neural adaptation. Here we develop a mathematical method to measure the auditory brainstem response to running speech, an acoustic stimulus that does not repeat and that has a high ecological validity. We employ this method to assess the brainstem’s activity when a subject listens to one of two competing speakers, and show that the brainstem response is consistently modulated by attention.

AB - Humans excel at selectively listening to a target speaker in background noise such as competing voices. While the encoding of speech in the auditory cortex is modulated by selective attention, it remains debated whether such modulation occurs already in subcortical auditory structures. Investigating the contribution of the human brainstem to attention has, in particular, been hindered by the tiny amplitude of the brainstem response. Its measurement normally requires a large number of repetitions of the same short sound stimuli, which may lead to a loss of attention and to neural adaptation. Here we develop a mathematical method to measure the auditory brainstem response to running speech, an acoustic stimulus that does not repeat and that has a high ecological validity. We employ this method to assess the brainstem’s activity when a subject listens to one of two competing speakers, and show that the brainstem response is consistently modulated by attention.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85036463897&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.7554/eLife.27203

DO - 10.7554/eLife.27203

M3 - Article

C2 - 28992445

AN - SCOPUS:85036463897

SN - 2050-084X

VL - 6

JO - eLife

JF - eLife

M1 - e27203

ER -