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In the first comprehensive study of the relationship between music and language from the standpoint of cognitive neuroscience, Aniruddh D. Patel challenges the widespread belief that music and language are processed independently. This volume argues that music and language share deep and critical connections, and that comparative research provides a powerful way to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these uniquely human abilities.

An adequate capacity for cognitive control, the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior despite conflicting environmental demands, is a requirement for effective functioning. Whether it be the capacity to delay gratification or to effectively regulate emotions, various types of cognitive control allow us to function effectively despite the enormous complexity encountered in everyday life. Yet, some forms of cognitive control, such as thought suppression, have been shown to have delayed and potentially adverse consequences. Previous research has largely neglected to study cognitive control in the auditory domain, yet task-irrelevant and potentially distracting sounds are omnipresent, making this a highly interesting area of research. In the current thesis, I present findings from four experimental studies with an overall aim to investigate the use, effectiveness, and delayed consequences of cognitive control in the auditory domain. In Study II and Study IV, the aim was to investigate the use of four common emotion regulation strategies in response to task-irrelevant, potentially distracting sound. Measures of emotional responding were also included to determine whether the use and effectiveness of these strategies was related to subjective emotion. In Study II, participants received either positive or negative information about an inherently neutral sound in an attempt to manipulate their emotional experience of the sound. In contrast, sounds used in Study IV were inherently negative or neutral. Results from both studies showed that all four of the surveyed emotion regulation strategies were used to some degree, and that participants reported use of multiple regulatory strategies. Results also suggest that subjective ratings of negative emotion in response to the sound were related to greater use of mental suppression, in line with findings from other sensory domains. In Study I and Study III, we specifically investigated the delayed consequences of mental suppression. In line with previous research from other sensory modalities, results from the two experiments reported in Study I suggest that mentally suppressing awareness of a task-irrelevant sound results in delayed consequences. However, the nature of these consequences varied between experiments. This may be due to the use of different sound stimuli in the two experiments, where sounds from the first experiment were emotionally neutral and unintrusive, while sounds from the second were inherently aversive. In Study III, the aim was to replicate and expand on the findings from Study I, and specifically test for delayed consequences on perceptual responding. Mental suppression, conceptualized as an experiential avoidance strategy, was compared to an approach focused strategy, with the hypothesis that mental suppression would result in hypervigilance toward previously suppressed stimuli. Results from the two experiments reported in Study III did not provide support for this hypothesis. In conclusion, results from the studies presented in the current thesis suggest that people regularly use cognitive control strategies in response to task-irrelevant sound, and that the use of these strategies may be related to subjective emotional experiences of the sound. Additionally, attempting to mentally suppress awareness of a sound may result in delayed consequences, but the circumstance under which these delayed consequences can be demonstrated are not yet understood. The included studies provide initial indications that developing adaptive strategies of coping with distracting sound can reduce the risk of long-term maladaptive consequences.

This book deals with the way that the auditory system processes acoustic signals. The current edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the progress that has been made since the previous edition. Particularly major updates have been made in the following areas: cochlear function, including cochlear mechanics, hair cell function and mechanisms of transduction; the auditory central nervous system, a major area of advance in recent years; physiological correlates of auditory perception, including speech perception; and, cochlear pathophysiology and sensorineural hearing loss, including the restoration of hearing by electrical stimulation of the ear, and molecular and cellular approaches to hair cell repair, replacement, and regeneration.A reading scheme has been provided to guide readers to the section most appropriate for their interests. The book is written so that those entering auditory research from very little background in auditory neuroscience are able to understand the current research issues and research literature. It is also intended to be a source book and reference work for advanced undergraduates studying the special senses, and for clinicians in the speciality of Otorhinolaryngology.It offers a contemporary look at the physiology of hearing: each chapter has been thoroughly revised. It is an excellent reading companion to practitioners and scholars. It is also suitable for those undertaking auditory research. It includes a reading scheme to guide readers through the book.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, German and Austrian concertgoers began to hear new rhythms and harmonies as non-Western musical ensembles began to make their way to European cities and classical music introduced new compositional trends. At the same time, leading physicists, physiologists, and psychologists were preoccupied with understanding the sensory perception of sound from a psychophysical perspective, seeking a direct and measurable relationship between physical stimulation and physical sensation. These scientists incorporated specific sounds into their experiments--the musical sounds listened to by upper middle class, liberal Germans and Austrians. In The Psychophysical Ear, Alexandra Hui examines this formative historical moment, when the worlds of natural science and music coalesced around the psychophysics of sound sensation, and new musical aesthetics were interwoven with new conceptions of sound and hearing. Hui, a historian and a classically trained musician, describes the network of scientists, musicians, music critics, musicologists, and composers involved in this redefinition of listening. She identifies a source of tension for the psychophysicists: the seeming irreconcilability between the idealist, universalizing goals of their science and the increasingly undeniable historical and cultural contingency of musical aesthetics. The convergence of the respective projects of the psychophysical study of sound sensation and the aesthetics of music was, however, fleeting. By the beginning of the twentieth century, with the professionalization of such fields as experimental psychology and ethnomusicology and the proliferation of new and different kinds of music, the aesthetic dimension of psychophysics began to disappear.

According to the ideomotor theory, action may serve to produce desired sensory outcomes. Perception has been widely described in terms of sensory predictions arising due to top-down input from higher order cortical areas. Here, we demonstrate that the action intention results in reliable top-down predictions that modulate the auditory brain responses. We bring together several lines of research, including sensory attenuation, active oddball, and action-related omission studies: Together, the results suggest that the intention-based predictions modulate several steps in the sound processing hierarchy, from preattentive to evaluation-related processes, also when controlling for additional prediction sources (i.e., sound regularity). We propose an integrative theoretical framework—the extended auditory event representation system (AERS), a model compatible with the ideomotor theory, theory of event coding, and predictive coding. Initially introduced to describe regularity-based auditory predictions, we argue that the extended AERS explains the effects of action intention on auditory processing while additionally allowing studying the differences and commonalities between intention- and regularity-based predictions—we thus believe that this framework could guide future research on action and perception.

When an auditory stimulus is predicted but unexpectedly omitted, an omission response can be observed in the EEG. This endogenous response to the absence of a stimulus demonstrates the important role of prediction in perception. SanMiguel et al. (2013a) showed that in order to observe an omission response, a specific prediction concerning the identity of an upcoming stimulus is necessary. They used button presses coupled to either a single sound (predictable identity), or a random sound (unpredictable identity). In the event-related potentials, a sequence of omission responses consisting of oN1, oN2, and oP3 was observed in the single condition but not in the random condition. Given the importance of omission studies to understand the role of prediction in perception, we replicated this study. We enhanced statistical power by doubling the sample size and adjusting data pre-processing, and applied temporal principal component analysis and replication Bayes statistics. Results in the single sound condition were successfully replicated. Principal component analysis additionally revealed attenuated oN1 and oP3 omission responses in the random sound condition. These results suggest the existence of both specific and unspecific predictions along the sound processing hierarchy, where precision weighting possibly influences the strength of prediction error. Results are discussed in the framework of predictive coding and are congruent with everyday life, where uncertainty often requires broader or more general predictions. •We replicate ERP components oN1, oN2, oP3 in response to omissions when sound identity is predictable.•In line with earlier findings, higher amplitude omission components are observed when sound identity is predictable.•Contrasting earlier findings, omission components oN1 and oP3 are also observed when sound identity is unpredictable.

Prior experience enables the formation of expectations of upcoming sensory events. However, in the auditory modality, it is not known whether prediction-related neural signals carry feature-specific information. Here, using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we examined whether predictions of future auditory stimuli carry tonotopic specific information. Participants passively listened to sound sequences of four carrier frequencies (tones) with a fixed presentation rate, ensuring strong temporal expectations of when the next stimulus would occur. Expectation of which frequency would occur was parametrically modulated across the sequences, and sounds were occasionally omitted. We show that increasing the regularity of the sequence boosts carrier-frequency-specific neural activity patterns during both the anticipatory and omission periods, indicating that prediction-related neural activity is indeed feature-specific. Our results illustrate that even without bottom-up input, auditory predictions can activate tonotopically specific templates. After listening to a predictable sequence of sounds, we can anticipate and predict the next sound in the sequence. Here, the authors show that during expectation of a sound, the brain generates neural activity matching that which is produced by actually hearing the same sound.