Journal article
The neural correlates of processing scale-invariant environmental sounds at birth
NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.), Vol.133, pp.144-150
06/01/2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.03.001
PMID: 26956907
Abstract
Sensory systems are thought to have evolved to efficiently represent the full range of sensory stimuli encountered in the natural world. The statistics of natural environmental sounds are characterized by scale-invariance: the property of exhibiting similar patterns at different levels of observation. The statistical structure of scale-invariant sounds remains constant at different spectro-temporal scales. Scale-invariance plays a fundamental role in how efficiently animals and human adults perceive acoustic signals. However, the developmental origins and brain correlates of the neural encoding of scale-invariant environmental sounds remain unexplored. Here, we investigate whether the human brain extracts the statistical property of scale-invariance. Synthetic sounds generated by a mathematical model to respect scale-invariance or violate it were presented to newborns. In alternating blocks, the two sound types were presented together in an alternating fashion, whereas in non-alternating blocks, only one type of sound was presented. Newborns' brain responses were measured using near-infrared spectroscopy. We found that scale-invariant and variable-scale sounds were discriminated by the newborn brain, as suggested by differential activation in the left frontal and temporal areas to alternating vs. non-alternating blocks. These results indicate that newborns already detect and encode scale-invariance as a characteristic feature of acoustic stimuli. This suggests that the mathematical principle of efficient coding of information guides the auditory neural code from the beginning of human development, a finding that may help explain how evolution has prepared the brain for perceiving the natural world. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The neural correlates of processing scale-invariant environmental sounds at birth
- Creators
- Judit Gervain - Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueJanet F. Werker - University of British ColumbiaAlexis Black - University of British ColumbiaMaria N. Geffen - University of Pennsylvania
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.), Vol.133, pp.144-150
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.03.001
- PMID
- 26956907
- ISSN
- 1053-8119
- eISSN
- 1095-9572
- Number of pages
- 7
- Grant note
- RGY0073/2014 / HFSP Young Researcher Grant Canadian Foundation for Innovation; Canada Foundation for Innovation ANR-10-LABX-0083 / French National Research Agency (ANR) "Investissements d'Avenir"; Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) City of Paris; Region Ile-de-France Klingenstein Award in the Neurosciences; Klingenstein Philanthropies Burroughs Wellcome Award at the Scientific Interface ANR-15-CE37-0009-01 / ANR; Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) R01DC014479; R03DC013660 / NIH; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA DG-81103 / Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Pennsylvania Lions Club Hearing Research Fellowship
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/01/2016
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984627222302771
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