Neuronal Substrates of Perceptual Salience in the Auditory System

Jennifer Linden (primary)
Ear Institute
University College London
Maneesh Sahani (secondary)
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
University College London

Abstract

You are daydreaming at a party while the sound of multiple ongoing conversations washes over you. Suddenly, you hear your name mentioned in one of those conversations, and what was formerly an indistinct hum of voices separates into background noise and a foreground conversation that now commands your full attention. How does this happen? How is perceptual salience represented in the auditory brain? This project will investigate the impact of behavioural state and sensory attention on neuronal representations of complex sounds in the auditory cortex of mice. Our aim is to understand the brain mechanisms that differentiate hearing from listening.


References

  1. Wiliamson RS, Ahrens MB, Linden JF* and Sahani M* (2016). Input-specific modulation by local sensory context shapes cortical and thalamic responses to complex sounds. Neuron 91(2): 467-81. *equal contributions
  2. Ahrens MB, Linden JF and Sahani M (2008). Nonlinearities and contextual influences in auditory cortical responses modelled with multilinear spectrotemporal methods. Journal of Neuroscience 28(8): 1929-42.
  3. Poort J, Khan AG, Pachitariu M, Nemri A, Orsolic I, Krupic J, Bauza M, Sahani M, Keller GB, Mrsic-Flogel TD and Hofer SB (2015). Learning enhances sensory and multiple non-sensory representations in primary visual cortex. Neuron 86(6): 1478-90

BBSRC Area
Genes, development and STEM* approaches to biology
Area of Biology
BiotechnologyNeurobiology
Techniques & Approaches
Mathematics / StatisticsMicroscopy / ElectrophysiologySimulation / Modelling