Keynote lecture 3
Friday, Sep 11, 2015
17:00-18:00
Hörsaal 3

Bottom-up triggered and top-down controlled attention to sounds

Kimmo Alho

Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
kimmo.alho@helsinki.fi

Our functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, as well as those of other research groups, indicate that in addition to enhanced activity in the auditory cortex, task-irrelevant physical changes in the auditory environment elicit activity in the parietal and frontal cortices. These activations are likely to be associated with bottom-up triggered, involuntary attention and they are paralleled by the mismatch negativity and P3a event-related potentials (ERPs) with their generators in the auditory and frontal cortices, and at least for the P3a, even in the parietal cortex. According to fMRI, top-down controlled, voluntary shifts of auditory attention are associated with activation of even wider cortical network involved largely also in maintaining attention to particular sounds. Moreover, our meta-analysis of fMRI studies showed that both pitch changes in a repeating sound and voluntary attention to tones with a particular pitch activate predominantly posterior auditory-cortex areas. However, as suggested by our fMRI and ERP studies, in some cases, processing of task-irrelevant sounds may be actively suppressed in the auditory cortex. This suppression might be controlled in a top-down manner by a fronto-parietal network involved also in voluntary division of attention.