Researcher
Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology
Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Funded by
Temporal processing in audition: from sound patterns to cognition
The sense of hearing rests on the processing of events unfolding in time. The temporal structure of sound events conveys patterns of variable complexity, from the clicks of a metronome to music, from morse-code to speech. Efficient use of regular inter-event-relations, e.g., probabilistic associations or temporal regularity, allows predicting the type and timing of future events, which may spare cognitive resources and optimize adaptation to an ever-changing environment. In a series of experiments, we used electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings obtained during auditory “oddball” tasks to investigate the modulation of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) by different low-level temporal ordering principles (regularity, grouping, predictability, periodicity) in healthy and patient populations. The results confirm dissociable effects of these ordering principles on several ERPs, suggesting that similar manipulations could be used to optimize function in more complex forms of auditory cognition and thereby potentially also to compensate for dysfunction in patients.
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