TY - JOUR
T1 - 'Primitive intelligence' in the auditory cortex
AU - Näätänen, Risto
AU - Tervaniemi, Mari
AU - Sussman, Elyse
AU - Paavilainen, Petri
AU - Winkler, István
N1 - Funding Information:
In summary, this article has reviewed MMN (and MMNm) evidence to suggest the existence of different forms of pre-attentive cognitive operations in audition. It is of considerable interest that these cognitive processes occur, mostly, at the level of the auditory cortex (most probably in the secondary and association areas 27,29,30 ) where we can observe these manifestations of primitive sensory level intelligence, such as anticipation of next stimuli, speech sound perception (irrespective of the wide acoustical variation), and even simple concept formation, by recording MMN or MMNm. (This predominantly auditory cortex locus is supported by the results of related positron emission tomography 16 and functional magnetic resonance imaging 32,33 studies mentioned above.) Although we cannot definitely rule out the participation of suprasensory processes in the neural network involved, the role of the auditory cortex nevertheless seems to be predominant in carrying out these cognitive operations that go much beyond the role traditionally given to it as the highest end station of auditory perception. Consequently, it appears that the electrophysiological data reviewed represent a major step towards making the ‘black box’ of the cognitive operations of the human brain, as far as central auditory processing is concerned, somewhat more transparent, so that we now are able, probably for the first time, to monitor the occurrence of these higher order processes on-line and phase-by-phase as they occur in the brain.
PY - 2001/5/1
Y1 - 2001/5/1
N2 - The everyday auditory environment consists of multiple simultaneously active sources with overlapping temporal and spectral acoustic properties. Despite the seemingly chaotic composite signal impinging on our ears, the resulting perception is of an orderly 'auditory scene' that is organized according to sources and auditory events, allowing us to select messages easily, recognize familiar sound patterns, and distinguish deviant or novel ones. Recent data suggest that these perceptual achievements are mainly based on processes of a cognitive nature ('sensory intelligence') in the auditory cortex. Even higher cognitive processes than previously thought, such as those that organize the auditory input, extract the common invariant patterns shared by a number of acoustically varying sounds, or anticipate the auditory events of the immediate future, occur at the level of sensory cortex (even when attention is not directed towards the sensory input).
AB - The everyday auditory environment consists of multiple simultaneously active sources with overlapping temporal and spectral acoustic properties. Despite the seemingly chaotic composite signal impinging on our ears, the resulting perception is of an orderly 'auditory scene' that is organized according to sources and auditory events, allowing us to select messages easily, recognize familiar sound patterns, and distinguish deviant or novel ones. Recent data suggest that these perceptual achievements are mainly based on processes of a cognitive nature ('sensory intelligence') in the auditory cortex. Even higher cognitive processes than previously thought, such as those that organize the auditory input, extract the common invariant patterns shared by a number of acoustically varying sounds, or anticipate the auditory events of the immediate future, occur at the level of sensory cortex (even when attention is not directed towards the sensory input).
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U2 - 10.1016/S0166-2236(00)01790-2
DO - 10.1016/S0166-2236(00)01790-2
M3 - Review article
C2 - 11311381
AN - SCOPUS:0035341475
SN - 0166-2236
VL - 24
SP - 283
EP - 288
JO - Trends in Neurosciences
JF - Trends in Neurosciences
IS - 5
ER -