Neural correlates of distraction and conflict resolution for nonverbal auditory events

Stewart, Hannah J.; Amitay, Sygal; Alain, Claude · 2017 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-00811-7

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Summary

This study investigates the neural correlates of two critical auditory attention processes: the suppression of task-irrelevant distractors and the resolution of sensory conflict. While these processes often occur concurrently in everyday listening, prior research typically examined them separately. The authors utilized the Test of Attention in Listening (TAiL) paradigm, which allows for the simultaneous quantification of distraction and conflict resolution using identical stimuli but varying task instructions. Participants were instructed to judge whether two sequential tones shared the same pitch (attend-frequency) or location (attend-location). This design enabled the isolation of neural responses to irrelevant feature changes (distraction) and incongruent feature changes (conflict resolution). Sixteen healthy participants with normal hearing performed the tasks while electroencephalography (EEG) recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral analysis revealed significant interference effects for both distraction and conflict resolution in both tasks. Participants exhibited slower response times and lower accuracy when task-irrelevant features changed or when stimulus features were incongruent. Electrophysiologically, distraction was indexed by a positive component peaking at approximately 250 ms post-stimulus, termed a distraction positivity. Brain electrical source analysis indicated distinct generators for this component: distraction by location originated in more posterior and medial regions compared to distraction by frequency, supporting the dual-pathway theory of auditory processing (dorsal stream for spatial, ventral for non-spatial features). Conflict resolution was characterized by a negative frontocentral component occurring between 270 and 450 ms, resembling the N450 component observed in visual Stroop tasks. In the attend-location task, an additional negative component persisted from 475 to 1100 ms. The timing and distribution of these ERP components suggest that distractor suppression occurs prior to conflict resolution. The study demonstrates that the TAiL paradigm successfully dissociates these processes, revealing that auditory distraction involves earlier neural processing than visual counterparts, likely due to faster auditory sensory transmission. The findings provide evidence that auditory selective attention involves distinct, sequential neural mechanisms for filtering irrelevant information and resolving conflict. The differentiation in neural sources for spatial versus non-spatial distraction supports the modality-specific processing of sound identity versus location. The authors conclude that the TAiL paradigm is a valuable tool for clinical assessment, as it can separate cognitive listening deficits from sensory impairments in populations such as children with Auditory Processing Disorder or older adults with hearing difficulties.

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Topics

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• auditory
• attention selective divided